Southern Alberta pheasant hens?!?!
- Thread starter tommy88
- Start date
badgreenbird
Regular
- Location
- Dawson Creek, BC
There is a reproducing population of wild pheasants in southern Alberta, so there must be some hens out there somewhere!
Can we assume they were indeed hen pheasants and not sharp-tailed grouse?
Can we assume they were indeed hen pheasants and not sharp-tailed grouse?
Brooks has a Pheasant Festival and not sure if it is still ongoing...Actually the festival is ongoing and in Taber Ala.
They have a release of 5100 birds and would assume some hens in the mix.
There would no reason these hens wouldnt be wild birds or birds gone feral from previous releases
These birds are not native to Alberta from what I have gleaned in the past, but came with the Chinese immigrants back in the day.
Urban myth , maybe/maybe not ....
Rob
I've hunted pheasants in southern Alberta since the early 70's long before ACA started releasing birds. From what I remember, we flushed a lot more hens than roosters in the early years and now there seems to be more roosters. I live close to a release site east of Edmonton and have seen a few hens over the past few years but not sure if the odd one gets thrown in with the release birds or whether they are moving north. I know for sure that some of the release birds are making it through the winter and even as cold as it was last winter 2 roosters wintered in a friends yard until May. I see pheasants every spring along the ditches close to Vermillion so some are surviving and hopefully multiplying.
I contacted one of the ACA biologists involved with the pheasant program and asked why hens aren't being released espescially in southern Alberta where survival rate is much higher and this may help build up the natural population. This was his reply:
Hen releases in the south – "While the fall pheasant release program only brings in roosters for the hunting season, our partnered project with 4H Alberta brings in over 10,000 hen chicks into the province each year. The 4H kids raise them to 16-18 weeks, and then they are released into suitable habitat areas. Here in the south, there are numerous local Fish and Game clubs who purchase the hens from the 4H kids and then release them where they think is best. The Lethbridge Fish and Game Association purchases 500 hens annually, and they are all released around the Milk River Ridge area. The hens are purchased at a modest price as well, so the dollar is stretched further than buying hens directly from a hatchery. The kids make a bit of money, and we get good quality birds released into the wild (not ‘spent hens’), a win-win situation!"
So there you go.
We are very fortunate to have ACA sponsoring the pheasant program in Alberta. Hopefully the program will grow and funding will be available to continue in the future. I wish that all who appreciate the opportunity to hunt pheasant in this province will consider donating and supporting the ACA.
vmax
I contacted one of the ACA biologists involved with the pheasant program and asked why hens aren't being released espescially in southern Alberta where survival rate is much higher and this may help build up the natural population. This was his reply:
Hen releases in the south – "While the fall pheasant release program only brings in roosters for the hunting season, our partnered project with 4H Alberta brings in over 10,000 hen chicks into the province each year. The 4H kids raise them to 16-18 weeks, and then they are released into suitable habitat areas. Here in the south, there are numerous local Fish and Game clubs who purchase the hens from the 4H kids and then release them where they think is best. The Lethbridge Fish and Game Association purchases 500 hens annually, and they are all released around the Milk River Ridge area. The hens are purchased at a modest price as well, so the dollar is stretched further than buying hens directly from a hatchery. The kids make a bit of money, and we get good quality birds released into the wild (not ‘spent hens’), a win-win situation!"
So there you go.
We are very fortunate to have ACA sponsoring the pheasant program in Alberta. Hopefully the program will grow and funding will be available to continue in the future. I wish that all who appreciate the opportunity to hunt pheasant in this province will consider donating and supporting the ACA.
vmax
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Last several years pretty near every day i see a rooster in my yard
The hens maybe every couple of weeks
Most i have seen at once is about a dozen roosters
A seperate time about 30 hens
A Pair of owls living here too that i suspect are hard on the pheasant
The hens maybe every couple of weeks
Most i have seen at once is about a dozen roosters
A seperate time about 30 hens
A Pair of owls living here too that i suspect are hard on the pheasant
- Location
- Saskatchewan
Good call on not pulling the trigger if you don't know what you are shooting at. But please realize there is no practical difference in the apparent "size" of Sharptail grouse and pheasant hens. It isn't very useful to use size to determine whether a bird is legal game or not.
Shape, wing beat, colour patterns, tail length and voice all differentiate Sharptails from pheasants.
Pheasant= slimmer
Sharptail- wings beat faster, and short flapping bursts more often alternate with gliding.
The coverlets under the legs and wings of sharptails are pure white and flash in the sun. Tail length is shorter on sharptails and the outside tail feathers of a Sharptail are whitish.
Pheasant hens appear a more uniform brownish shade
The flush sounds different. Sharptails usually cluck when flushing pheasant hens are usually silent. The wingbeats sound different too!
and so on...
Ring necked pheasants and Chukar were really popular birds for folks to release into the wild in hopes of creating a stable supply for hunting, starting about the times of the first settlers through the prairies, and there have been more than a few Government sanctioned efforts at it as well.
The Hatchery in Brooks was established for that purpose, as I understood things.
The Hatchery in Brooks was established for that purpose, as I understood things.
