I wouldn't trade my childhood for anything CJ, I still remember riding in the old pickup trucks checking fence traps on those humid summer evenings, dust on it's dashboard, and the sound of fuel sloshing around in tank behind the seat everytime we hit a woodchuck hole. The house was moved, the barn torn down, and nice pheasant habitat now grows in the yard I played in as a boy, time does indeed march on.
I agree on the habitat, the answers are right there, but even with habitat you have to have an existing population of birds to reproduce in it or it is merely put and take.
I've seen the effects of weather, sort of simulated though. Pheasant chicks are smaller than a golf ball at hatching, the water troughs have to be protected so they cannot fall in them. Even under a heat lamp if a newly hatched chick gets completely wet, it is basically dead.
I'm not saying there aren't challenges, I think there is suitable habitat around here for them, just too much pressure on them. They are kind of like Fatheads when you have perch and walleye in the pond.
Sorry for my rants.
