My father worked for the PA Game Commission for 42 years raising pheasants and has some pretty strong opinions on how to raise them and what it would take for a wild population to begin to sustain itself. CJ is partly right, pen raised birds have a harder time avoiding predation, but it is not impossible. According to my old man, and I have to agree because it is so damn logical, the killing of hen birds is what has limited establishing a wild population here in PA.

His example is lets say 1 in ten birds may be skilled enough upon release to avoid being a meal to a bird of prey or canine and make it thru winter to spring. If that bird is a hen and succesfully breeds having young after avoiding death for a year, she will teach them the same skills/habits and they will have a much stronger chance at surviving, not to mention the first goal of wild reproduction being achieved. Dad claims that if you protected the hens, natural selection would eventually allow a wild population. It only stands to reason that the females must remain in the wild population for reproduction to occur, I think the same can be said for any species, why do they call it ladies night if so many guys show up right???

I also know that the number of birds raised isn't what it used to be, so how can you release fewer birds and expect to improve the program?? There used to be like 7 farms in PA rasing birds as well as co-op farms rasing them. Now there is no co-op program and only 4 game farms left, the largest is 5 miles up the road from me, and the majority of the fields that were pens when I was a boy, are now stripped of fencing and routinely brush hogged. We lived in a house owned by the state when I was younger, I grew up on that farm at times when 200,000 birds were hatched and 120,000 reared on site the rest shipped to other farms, now they raise 50,000 and all get released on game lands acrtoss the state. It's all about money.

Personally, I would just buy some good chicken, I ate enough pheasants and pheasant eggs growing up I won't shoot one today. I still love to hear them and see them. I have a cockbird living here now, he stops by the pond twice a day and then you hear him cackling all around here throughout the day, looking for one of those hens. Sorry for my long winded post.