Prairie Chicken

This is an old webpage carried forward to our new site. Please note that some of the information might be out of date and we probably have newer footage.

Prairie Chicken

Like many game birds, prairie chickens were decimated by over-hunting. However, thanks to modern conservation they have made a recovery in many areas. But many threats remain, perhaps most significantly, habitat destruction. That is why they are still absent from large portions of their historic range, and why some subspecies, such as the Attwater Prairie Chicken in Texas, are still a species of management concern.

Filming Prairie Chicken Stock Footage

There is one time of the year when prairie chickens are at their most fascinating and their most colorful; that is in the spring when they are on their dancing grounds, known as leks. These sites are used morning after morning (and sometimes year after year) meaning that a blind can be set up and you are assured of some great footage (providing that its not windy, a predator doesn’t come by, or any of countless other things that can go wrong!). If you don’t know where a lek is or don’t have a blind contact your local bird club. Many different types of federal and state agencies and other organizations put blinds out every spring (e.g., the Fort Pierre National Grasslands in South Dakota). In some places there are commercial operations that will take you to a blind.