SFR Pheasant Farming for hunting

Sorta fishing-related
Just my two cents.
Upland bird habit is disappearing faster than ever.
Having a good place to train yer dogs and a place for take younger hunters or first time hunters and get into birds like when I was growing up, where I could get my limit and see many other pheasants plus lots of quail.
We farm fish why not upland birds.
 
IMHO, this whole article was an exaggeration and a bunch of anecdotal data. But then lawmakers rarely wanna work with facts and data, especially in New York. I’m so glad to be from New York, far from.
 
Pheasants are not shot with bullets or buckshot as stated in the article. With a good dog, most wounded birds are recovered. In my youth, I shot a banded rooster. I mailed in the band number (long before the internet) and learned that was raised at a correctional facility in Central Washington the previous year. We were hunting on private land and it flew just like all the other wild birds. It survived the previous season and winter. My limited experience with planted birds is that the newly released ones can be pretty tame. I agree with the assessments by @dirty dog and @Roper.
 
I wonder if Mr. Di Leonardo eats beef, drinks milk, eats chicken or chicken eggs (and the beat goes on)?* Any of y'all that visit The Basin from the south or west and drives up SR283 drives by a huge dairy. The cows are in a stall until they stop producing milk (hello Big Mac). Feed lots abound in The Basin and they're especially lovely after a wet period. I'm sure the cattle love bedding down in wet manure. Hello Big Mac.

I grew up outside Sequim where the Department of Game released pheasants on public land that was above the Strait of Juan de Fuca; it was a fun place to hunt "hatchery" birds and sometimes we found pheasants on Hal Olstad's farm.

I used to hunt pheasants and chukar (and Huns) with sometimes a by shoot of quail. Someone told me that in harsh winters there's way more than 50% mortality on wild quail (the number quoated was 80%).

* Such a First World problem, huh. I guess crime in New York is under control these days.
 
My birdhunting childhood was extremely fortunate; my grandfather had two hundred acres of land with a large creek running through it (jump shooting ducks...and the occasional goose because those critters always have lookouts) and thick riparian brush that was ideal for pheasants. He knew all of the surrounding farmers for miles along that creek and we could hunt their acreage as well.

There was also a large WA state game bird farm on the creek about a mile upstream...which continually leaked pheasants into the surrounding area, and that meant Chinese Golden Pheasants also frequently popped up. I don't remember the Golden's, obviously relatively recent game farm escapees, behaving in a particularly stupid manner...they must have acclimated pretty rapidly just like the others.

It was a veritable birdhunting smorgasbord, the upland wooded portions (many of which consisted of the remnants of large apple orchards) were also good for deer hunting, while the open country was an excellent place to hone our skills on ground squirrels and coyotes with scoped rifles...which came in handy during my stint in the Marine Corps.

My first date with my wife of 55 years occurred at a kegger we threw one summer evening among those same ancient apple trees.

I had no idea that I was so lucky to been born in the short moment of time before that entire area became thick with little hobby farms.

So many good memories.

PS...I think most game bird stocking programs have long since been abandoned because (unlike fish stocking), it's a very tough sell to release publicly funded game birds into the relatively few areas open to public hunting. And gamebirds ain't captive and often soon move to private land to escape hunting pressure.
 
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Not sure what tipped me off that this might be a skewed and biased article, probably the reference to shooting pheasants with "bullets and buckshot." That's unfortunate because it misses what I think is the legitimate argument of how public conservation funds (Pittman-Robinson in this case) should be used. I thought it seems kind of wacky to raise farm gamebirds to hunt until I realized that there is little difference between that and using public conservation funds (Dingle-Johnson) to raise hatchery trout to stock for fishing. Just to be clear, conservation does not mean not hunting or not fishing. The PR and DJ acts were written specifically to raise and provide funding to the respective states for game and fish conservation. The federal acts pretty much leave it up to each state to decide what its conservation priorities are. So there is quite a bit of latitude regarding the conservation projects or programs that the funding can be used for.

Here in WA state, most of the lakes that we fish for trout in would be barren of trout without regular stocking from hatcheries. In lakes without natural reproduction, it is more than clear that there is no conservation purpose other than recreational fishing being served, unless you count feeding cormorants and pelicans as a conservation effort. If New Yorkers want to use their PR funds to raise farm pheasants to hunt, it's their prerogative. If there's a bunch of wounded pheasants running around, some hunters need a better dog. The retrievers I have known don't know how to quit.
 
Hunted quail during the 70's on a 1,200 acre coastal valley working cattle ranch where I kept my horse and rented a small house. That property is now the site of multiple luxury estates replete with six car garages and swimming pools.
Between shrinking habitat zones and a general affluence that makes a locker/freezer full of game optional vs mandatory, hunting demographics will just continue to plummet.
And unlike fishing, if not raised with hunting it the least likely thing someone is going to take up.
 
Salmo_g said:
Not sure what tipped me off that this might be a skewed and biased article, probably the reference to shooting pheasants with "bullets and buckshot." That's unfortunate because it misses what I think is the legitimate argument of how public conservation funds (Pittman-Robinson in this case) should be used. I thought it seems kind of wacky to raise farm gamebirds to hunt until I realized that there is little difference between that and using public conservation funds (Dingle-Johnson) to raise hatchery trout to stock for fishing. Just to be clear, conservation does not mean not hunting or not fishing. The PR and DJ acts were written specifically to raise and provide funding to the respective states for game and fish conservation. The federal acts pretty much leave it up to each state to decide what its conservation priorities are. So there is quite a bit of latitude regarding the conservation projects or programs that the funding can be used for.

Here in WA state, most of the lakes that we fish for trout in would be barren of trout without regular stocking from hatcheries. In lakes without natural reproduction, it is more than clear that there is no conservation purpose other than recreational fishing being served, unless you count feeding cormorants and pelicans as a conservation effort. If New Yorkers want to use their PR funds to raise farm pheasants to hunt, it's their prerogative. If there's a bunch of wounded pheasants running around, some hunters need a better dog. The retrievers I have known don't know how to quit.
Click to expand...
I know of a few lightly fished remote lakes that are heavily stocked primarily to support a nesting northern loon population.
 
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Eastside said:
Pheasants are not shot with bullets or buckshot as stated in the article. With a good dog, most wounded birds are recovered. In my youth, I shot a banded rooster. I mailed in the band number (long before the internet) and learned that was raised at a correctional facility in Central Washington the previous year. We were hunting on private land and it flew just like all the other wild birds. It survived the previous season and winter. My limited experience with planted birds is that the newly released ones can be pretty tame. I agree with the assessments by @dirty dog and @Roper.
Click to expand...
I shot one of those birds from Coyote Ridge several years ago. I still have the band…
 
Oh boy... I could go on and on about this topic. Steve accurately describes how both federal acts were designed and implemented. Federal Pittman Robertson (PR) dollars funded many if not most of the projects I worked on throughout my employed life. As the article correctly states, PR dollars are generated from an excise tax on guns, ammunition, archery and other hunting equipment so you can see the nexus between encouraging sport hunting (through bird stocking) and PR. While California did at one point have a state run pheasant farms, those were eliminated in the early 1970's. In the meantime, California hunting (and to a lesser extent, fishing) license sales were in steep decline which was (and still is) important revenue source for state resource agencies. I cannot begin to tell you all how many workshops, conferences, summit meetings and conversations were had to try and figure out how to "create" more hunters and anglers in the US and specifically, California. The larger societal issue is the urbanization of the overall population along with a bunch of other complexities. As Lance stated above, the hunting tradition is typically passed from generation to generation.

One of the solutions California came up with to encourage interest in hunting was and still is the planted pheasant hunting programs. PR funds are used to purchase live pheasants and hunts are run state wide on public lands. These hunts target youth, families and new hunters. We also ran a handful of women only hunts while I was working. The logic at the time was to generate hunting interest in women due to the increase of single parent households. That program was eliminated at some point after I retired in 2016. Do these programs actually make more hunters? That was the debate that was raging internally when I finally pulled the plug.
 
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What RRSmith said. In our state, we’ve done that, too. Pen raised birds dumped on release sites have replaced the old farm raised bird system and private pheasant preserves now allow pay-to-play on some old ranches. Most other private land is now leased by “hunting clubs”. Modern farming has eliminated upland cover to a large extent. So, after a couple of decades, bird hunting is now a sport for the rich. My grandson will never know it. I wonder how he’ll vote about your gun rights, rich guy?
 
Attempts to save birdhunting (such as releasing pen raised pheasants to encourage new entrants), remind me of the desperate social engineering efforts that have been fruitlessly implemented to save other increasingly moribund activities like golf, bowling, and fraternal lodge memberships.

It's tough to buck broad societal trends .....and to accept that the world changes and that your cherished activity has been supplanted by 'sport of the month' stuff like pickleball.
 
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Nobody even shows up at the BPOE bowling night anymore...same with the FOE golf tournament.
They're all trading crypto and posting on instaface.
#sad
 
krusty said:
Kinda hard to trade crypto or instaface from the grave ain't it?
Click to expand...
Meh...
It's like voting...if you really want to there's a way.
:)
 
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