May be another pheasant hunt come spring

[angery jonn]

Your probably right Cat, I'll have to do that!

[calvin]

The one thing about released birds is that they are raised in a pen. when the birds are ready to go, most of them get rounded up and rammed into a cage, hauled out to some coulee and turned loose. See ya later and good luck. These birds probably wander around with absolutely no idea what to do in terms of finding food or water. If you think about it for a minute, since they were born there was a person delivering food and water in some form or another. Just like a domestic chicken or turkey sees. If you are serious about raising them, then the good producers will take and try some form and introduce something where a bit of naturalness exists. Maybe its dig a hole and fill with water so they can find it in the pen or sprinkle grain out on the ground a few weeks prior to release of whatever lets that bird have some form of experience in finding something to eat and drink on their own. I like to see these birds released into a location in which they have a good chance of living and those areas are usually in farmyards. those locations give them security in terms of predators and hopefully an area in which to find food. any offspring reared by them then should move out of the area and spill out into hunt able areas. The release area should also be posted and no hunting of these birds so they have a chance to settle in and become good producers. Not all birds have good production capabilities either. so then they need to be supplemented with more females to provide a larger base of good producers. My personal hunting rule with pheasants is 'Yardbirds' are off limits. Those birds are the ones that provide good offspring.

[densa44]

In the olden days when I was a kid there was NO environment, just indoors and outdoors. I'm sure the original birds were what ever the people who planted them could round up. The habitat was excellent, the prairie had very few people and I guess the winters couldn't have been too bad because there used to be a stable population but now they are gone.

The attempts at reintroduction that you are reading about here are paid for by the hunters. In the first year we were told that it won't work, just like the Wright brothers, but we went ahead anyway and so far we are very satisfied with the results.

If there are people who can do better go for it.

[bessiedog]

Densa

You guys should release a few goldens for craps and giggles during your next event.

Would be entertaining to see the looks on guys when the dog flushes one of them....

[Salavee]

Originally Posted by trapperdodge

At one time within memory pheasants occupied habitat north as far as Camrose. Lots of the locals there remember hunting them into the 60's.
Habitat was lost to Ag and the birds disappeared. They ended up hanging on in the south in local populations.
Sacrificing even one wild bird on the alter of a canned shoot is not right.
I'm good with economic promotion and canned shoots to get it done I just think thinking a shot wild bird is not replaced by a released bird that wasn't harvested.
The genetic pool of domestic birds is significantly inferior to the wild population.

I agree. Years ago, when the hatchery in Brooks was in full swing there were still a lot of three and four year old birds populating the Tilley, Rosemary area and as far north as Camrose. They acted like "wild birds" and often chose to run or flush long rather than fly, Observing the pens at the hatchery many times, there was one thing that became apparent. When disturbed, the penned birds would panic . As the pens were not overly large, inevitably the nervous birds would either jump, run or fly and would collide with the wire every time. It seems pen-raised birds become imprinted with this result and soon learn that jumping, running or flushing becomes hazardous to their physical well being and choose to stay put. Perhaps that is the reason
many of the birds on release sites are such easy pickings for the Fox, Coyotes, flushing dogs and airborne predators. It seemed like they required a year or so in the wild to get over this "wire syndrome" ..if they survived that long. That may also explain the large amount predator kills around the brushpiles at some of the release sites. Just an observation.. nothing else.