Pheasant hunting is different then pheasant shooting. Finding good habitat, meeting landowners, coming across Hungarians or sharptails, flushing and identifying hens, popping a mallard off a canal, all make it different. Heck you can only shoot two anyways. Better to hunt and not get then just shoot IMO.
Melanistic Pheasants
- Thread starter stubblejumper
- Start date
The biggest difference for many of us is about 4 hours driving each way. We can drive 30 minutes to a release site, and be back home in a few hours or we can drive 4-5 hours to hunt wild birds, hunt, then either drive home, after burning $200 of gas, or stay in a hotel for the night, and spend another $100+.
My comment on it being "insane" was aimed at the guys waiting so close to the truck that the release people were getting hit with pellets. I don't see a problem hunting like stubblejumper does, I've done similar at our release sites. The ones raised by the program here in flying pens are pretty wild, pretty quick. If you come back to the site in a day or two they act just like the wild ones I've hunted.
Also, while not my idea of fun, if its legal and done safely and you enjoy shooting them right off the truck, then fill your boots. Different strokes for different folks as they say. If they are just being released to be shot and don't have a chance at building a wild population they might as well be shot and eaten by hunters.
Also, while not my idea of fun, if its legal and done safely and you enjoy shooting them right off the truck, then fill your boots. Different strokes for different folks as they say. If they are just being released to be shot and don't have a chance at building a wild population they might as well be shot and eaten by hunters.
I raised a couple generations of Chukar, and if you give them a place that is suitable, they still end up about as wild as wild can be.
While i don't have much nice to say about the guys that track the release trucks, a few days later, the birds will be about as smart as any!
While i don't have much nice to say about the guys that track the release trucks, a few days later, the birds will be about as smart as any!
Come on out two days after the last release, and show us how easy it is. The birds that are left are in the bush, so it's like hunting ruffed grouse in heavy cover.
arcticcathonda
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Southern Alberta
Wholeheartedly agree. Unpopular opinion but I'd be okay if release sites were set aside for youth shoots and instruction only. Perhaps to get new hunters versed to some degree. Take the money that's poured into raising farm pheasants and funnel more of it to buying land, creating habitat or developing conservation programs like what the US has in CRP for sustaining wild pheasants. I'd rather come home empty handed having the dogs being outsmarted by a wild pheasants than filling my limit of farmed birds, but I'm a bit of a masochist!
The thought is noble to establish wild populations and frankly when I was young in the lower mainland we had a decent amount of wild birds. But land development ,farmers cutting every bit of cover to maximize yield plus a ballooning predator problem has all but wiped them out. We release birds (cocks) but now are releasing hens as well, Why because the birds that are released are vastly superior to the meat birds of days gone by and we are seeing survivors in the spring. Not 1 or 2 but 10 and 20 that made it through the winter (and floods) .We will see what the future holds but I am optimistic.
arcticcathonda
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Southern Alberta
I don't thinking the stocking here is any attempt to re-establish wild populations. Its simply a put and take. Maybe it takes some pressure off wild pheasants having more guys go shoot released birds than wild ones. Your stocking in the lower mainland must be better than what we experience here in Alberta. Or PF chapter has studies to show "on average, only 60 percent will survive the initial week of release. After one month, roughly 25 percent will remain. Over-winter survival has been documented as high as 10 percent but seldom exceeds 5 percent of birds released."
Definitely more to it and more discussion found here:
https://www.pfcalgary.ca/pheasant-stocking-faqs/
The release program in much of Alberta has nothing to do with establishing a wild population, it is to provide an opportunity to hunt pheasants in areas where they are not native, and will typically not survive winter. It is pretty much like stocking trout in lakes, where they do not reproduce. The release sites do take some pressure off of the wild birds, but personally, if I lived close to where I could hunt wild birds, I wouldn't bother with the release sites. If a pheasant does survive the hunting season in Alberta, the odds of it surviving winter are extremely low, in the less than 5% range in the northern areas.
Shame of it is that farming has moved on from systems that used to provide a LOT of useful cover to the introduced birds. Ditch irrigation, in particular, made an awful lot of great habitat for pheasants that simply does not exist any more.
Parts of Alberta still have pretty decent low bush country along side the grain fields that will provide for some, but not all of the pheasants in an area.
Same went on out here in BC, where the ditch systems and their adjacent bush, used to provide a lot of cover and habitat for the pheasants that were formerly, here.
Where I am, you won't find a pheasant, but you will occasionally run across some large flocks of Chuckar, them preferring a very dry climate to live in. On the coast, I saw plenty of Pheasants, lots of quail too. Lots of quail and chuckar in th eKelowna/Vernon area as well.
