Looking for a new hunting buddy to replace a legend with 8+ field hunting. Anybody in central WI have a young stud springer or welsh spaniel stud who’s looking to get busy shoot me a message 

It will all depend on whether the flu is ravaging its way through the hatching facilities.  This won't only impact the DNR's inventory of stocking birds, but it also impact availability of birds to game farms.  I would expect you will see the cost of a game farm bird to increase this year (like everything else). 

I can tell you for certain, the DNR is in no way looking to reduce stocking numbers.  The program thrives on hunter satisfaction and without that and license/stamp dollars the program will struggle.  

I do applaud both the DNR and Pheasants Forever for working together quite a bit over the course of the last five years to restore native prairies to boost wild bird numbers.  I know I am seeing positive improvements in the wild bird populations that I hunt.  I would rather see the money go towards protecting and restoring habitat than having that money go to supplemental pen birds that will all die from hunters, predation or lack of survival skills anyways. 

I suppose if you live near Madison.  I'm not driving 3 hours to hunt planted birds.  

Plenty of birds this past season. The year before was way down!

In my opinion they are just looking for ways to reduce stocking numbers, so I would expect them to plant even less birds this year than last which was not many.