by Craig Bihrle
North Dakota Outdoors, June 1997
They called themselves the Pittman-Robertson boys, and they were wildlife management pioneers. They flew the country's first aerial big game and waterfowl surveys. They were the first to use airplanes to spread grass seed in inaccessible areas.
No state wildlife agency had attempted such feats before because hunting and fishing license sales, by themselves, generated only enough money for a few game wardens, fish hatchery and game farm attendants. The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act changed that.
New money from taxes on guns and ammunition meant state wildlife agencies could afford to hire graduates of the country's first college wildlife management programs.
While the Wildlife Restoration Act passed Congress in September 1937, it wasn't until 1940 that North Dakota was ready to put the program to use. To receive federal money for the program, the first order of business was for the state legislature to pass a law protecting state hunting and fishing license money from raids by other state agencies. The 1939 legislature passed such a law, and shortly thereafter the state's first two federal aid projects got underway. Both involved improvements to state game refuges (which later became wildlife management areas) owned by the Department.
North Dakota's first Pittman-Robertson biologist was Roy Bach, a young, ambitious college graduate who led the federal aid division. Bach's assistant was Russ Stuart, a Bucyrus native who, later in his career, served as Game and Fish Department commissioner from 1961-1979. Also part of the early P-R crew were Stanley Saugstad and A.H. Erickson who covered upland game.
All pioneers have to start somewhere. For the Pittman- Robertson boys the time was 1940, when a majority of the state's population lived on farmsteads without benefit of electricity or telephones. You can just imagine them looking out over this vast state, considering all wildlife from the badlands to the Red River Valley, and wondering out loud to each other:
"Where do we start!?"
For neophytes in wildlife management, Bach and his cohorts developed an impressive array of survey methods that, with some modifications, are still used today. Their first task was to inventory the state's upland game species. The Pittman- Robertson boys devised a summer roadside survey, using vehicles to census grouse, pheasants and partridge. To get consistent results across the state, Bach insisted on a uniform procedure. Surveys were taken only during defined hours of the day, under certain weather conditions, with routes of the same distance and vehicles traveling at a consistent speed. Summer upland game brood surveys in the 1990s are strikingly similar to the first model developed 57 years ago.
When the Pittman-Robertson boys wrapped up the state's first comprehensive upland game survey in 1940, they had little time to rest. According to Roy Bach, they knew it was "of major and immediate importance" to survey the state's "Virginia" (white-tailed) deer, mule deer, and antelope. But how?
Bach wrote: "The more the problems involved were considered, the more difficult it became to imagine any standard system of census taking that would result in a comprehensive survey that might be somewhat accurate without involving an extraordinary amount of time and money."
The first attempt to count deer in the Turtle Mountains involved a line of 50 or 60 men snowshoeing through the woods. One try was all the Pittman-Robertson boys needed to determine that method was not going to work. They also considered and then abandoned a plan to census deer by counting droppings in the woods.
The next alternative was an aerial census, which seemed incomprehensible. "It was difficult to obtain even a little information regarding the use of a plane in big game census work and it seemed that, for the most part, what little work had been done on this method tended to show that for most areas it was not practical", Bach wrote.
The Pittman-Robertson boys did it anyway. Armed with some ideas about when and where to conduct the census, Bach and crew went in search of a pilot who could meet a strict set of characteristics. They found one in Bruce Wright (a good name for a pilot) of Bottineau. They hired Wright and his plane for $4 an hour while they experimented with different flight methods and observation techniques.
Bach, Stuart and Wright spent a lot of time in the air in January, February and March 1941. They counted deer and antelope in much of the state, and made notes on everything else they saw. They documented how other species reacted to the plane, and if the plane would work for other types of surveys. They determined the best weather and light conditions for seeing animals.
By the time winter was over, the Pittman-Robertson boys had put together what they thought was an accurate count of big game animals in the state. Wrote Bach: "It would seem that the aerial survey as now being run is an answer to longstanding problems of censusing big game."
Previously, population estimates were based on sporadic personal observations by wardens, landowners and others. Every few years the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would compile these observations and issue a report. The FWS report issued in November 1940 said North Dakota had 13,000 white- tailed deer, 55 mule deer and 18 antelope.
The first Pittman-Robertson census produced an estimate of 7,000 whitetails, 925 mule deer and 582 antelope. Addressing the FWS report, Bach wrote: "...it would seem that as far as the state's present carrying capacity is concerned, the deer are near the top of their limit. In other words, it is highly improbable that North Dakota could ever carry as many as 13,000 deer."
In the 1990s, North Dakota has had as many as 200,000 whitetails, 20,000 mule deer and l0,000 antelope - numbers perhaps beyond the wildest dreams of the Pittman-Robertson boys. However, they had no way of knowing the programs and surveys they pioneered would have such a positive long-term influence on wildlife and its management, not only in North Dakota, but throughout the rest of the country.
The primary benefactors of Pittman-Robertson are the people who paid the bills - the sportsmen and sportswomen of the United States. Not only do hunters today have more opportunities, they have more information about the species they hunt. They also have millions of acres of public land bought and managed through the P-R program. Following is a brief look at the four major sections within the Game and Fish Department that carry out "Surveys and Investigations."
CRAIG BIHRLE is associate editor of North Dakota OUTDOORS.