Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Raising/releasing upland game birds

Anyone have any info or experience to lend regarding the benefit of raising pheasants or quail and releasing them? I'm interested in learning more - if it's super labor intensive or even worth the effort. My goal is to create another project to siphon money, time, and hopefully increase my upland game bird population.

TJ:

It depends on what state you are in whether it's legal or not.

A friend of mine was the Head Upland Game Biologist for Region 5 in CA. They tried releasing pen raised Pheasants for a number of years and they didn't last more than a couple of weeks in the wild. They ended up doing a trade with North or South Dakota for wild birds that knew how to avoid predators.

Now if you're talking put-n-take, that's a different story. When we get together I can walk you thru it. I raised between 50 and 100 Pheasants/year for a few years to help reduce the bird bill for training my Springers. Same with Quail. You won't believe how small day old Bobwhite chicks are!!!

I agree with Scott, releasing pen raised pheasants is not going to increase wild bird populations. From my experience with them, you release them within a couple days of when you plan to hunt them. About 95% of pen raised birds released in the fall will not make it to spring. When they do survive, they are generally not as good a parents and rarely raise young successfully. The most important thing you can do for upland game birds like quail and pheasants is habitat, habitat and habitat. A good friend of mine is the upland game bird biologist in Kansas. He is a big fan of controlled burns to keep good pheasant and particularly quail habitat. If you are looking for more specifics, I can post the info.

I will say that as a small land owner, say under 200 acres, the two most important things you can do to keep some birds on your land when surrounded by open expanses of farmland are winter cover and spring nesting areas. These are usually the two areas that are limiting to an upland game bird population. Swamping wetlands thick with reeds and cattails, briars and brambles, switch grass stands and particularly in the east, newly planted pine stands are all excellent upland game bird wintering areas. Spring nesting sites are usually a mix of clovers, alfalfa, and native warm cool season grasses or non natives like timothy. Don't mow them until after the nesting season is over, at least until after July 4.

I can tell you from having stocked a lot of banded birds over the years, if the habitat isn't there they don't survive.

Most states require a permit to raise game birds, both Virginia and Pennsylvania do here in the east. Some states even require you to keep track of how many and what sex of each bird you release and where you release them. Pennsylvania has worked very hard the last few years to bring back wild pheasants to the state. They tried for years to do it via hatchery raised birds to no avail. It wasn't until they started trapping wild birds on Indian Reservations in Montana and South Dakota did they start to have success. That and huge amounts of habitat work. It takes about 25,000 acre of quality pheasant habitat to sustain a long term naturally reproducing pheasant population!

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.

Sounds like you had a rich childhood Joe... The PGC certainly is struggling for money these days, as are most state wildlife agencies.

From Pheasants Forever


Pheasant Population Dynamics
Impacts of predators, hunting and pheasant stocking pale in comparison to the single most important factor for maintaining strong pheasant populations: suitable habitat.

Pheasant hunters have long argued about the impacts predators, hunting and pheasant stocking have on pheasant populations. Although they do influence pheasant populations, they pale in comparison to the single most important limiting factor: HABITAT.

Pheasant Stocking
Stocking with pen-raised pheasants will not effectively increase wild pheasant populations. When habitat conditions improve, wild pheasant populations will increase in response to that habitat. Only by addressing the root problem suppressing populations –habitat - will you have a long term positive impact on pheasant numbers. Habitat is the key to healthy pheasant populations.

Studies have shown that stocked pheasants, no matter when they are released, have great difficulty maintaining self-sustaining populations. Predators take the main toll, accounting for 90 percent of the deaths and at the same time predators become conditioned to the idea that pheasants are an easy target. Pen-raised birds do provide shooting opportunities, a good way to introduce new hunters to hunting in a controlled situation and a chance to keep your dog in shape. Release birds as close to the time you want to hunt as possible, just keep in mind that these pen-raised birds are not going to produce a wild self-sustaining population in the area.

Effects of Hunting
Questions continually arise from both hunters and non-hunters alike about the effects of regulated sport hunting on ring-necked pheasants. Because hens and roosters are easily distinguished in wing shooting situations, and because hens are protected through game regulations, pheasants are actually managed much more conservatively than almost all other upland game birds. Hunting simply removes "surplus" males not needed for reproduction the following spring. In most cases, hunting pressure, success and harvest are greatest during the early part of the season. It is common for 30-50% of the season’s harvest to take place during opening weekend in many states. And considering the majority of hunters are active only during the first two weeks of the season, the effect of restricting season length and daily bag limits would be minimal.

Liberal, lengthy roosters-only seasons do not harm populations. When seasons work as designed, the outcome is a reduced standing population of male ring-necked pheasants. Extensive research has shown this has little or no effect on pheasant reproduction and subsequent populations.

Predators
As they are for all small game species, predators are the principle decimating factor for pheasant nests and adult birds, a fact that is not unusual or unsolvable. Through sound management, the detrimental effects of predation can be reduced. Removal and exclusion of predators are small-scale remedies that are cost prohibitive on a landscape scale. The effect of predators can however be diluted through the addition and management of proper habitat.

Well-designed habitat projects can reduce predation by up to 80%. In addition to decreasing the overall impact predators have on existing nests, this tactic also increases the number of nests on the ground and subsequently the pheasant population in the area. Through the addition and management of habitat, we not only decrease the impact predators have on existing nests, but also increase the number of nests and population size in an area. And habitat for pheasants and other wildlife comes at a fraction of the cost of other predator reduction methods.

Effects of Weather
Weather is another extremely important factor in determining pheasant numbers! Severe winter storms can literally decimate pheasant populations overnight. Cold wet springs can claim an equally devastating number of newborn chicks who do not develop the ability to regulate their own temperature until they are three weeks old. The direct effects of weather are obvious, less obvious is the indirect role that weather can play on pheasant numbers. Hot dry summers can impede insect production, depriving chicks of the protein they need early in life. Drought like conditions will stunt vegetation growth reducing the amount of cover on the landscape and leaving birds vulnerable to winter storms. Precipitation is essential but too much or the wrong form at the wrong time can be the difference between a great and poor pheasant year.

Habitat is the key component to all effective pheasant management plans. For more information, consult Pheasants Forever's Essential Habitat Guide or contact the Pheasants Forever Farm Bill Biologist in your area.

http://www.pheasantsforever.org/ There is just about everything you could possibly want to learn about pheasants on the web site. Join a Pheasant's Forever Chapter nearest you and seek the assistance you need to do the best you can with the acreage you own.

http://qu.org/ Quail Unlimited is another great organization. I have worked more with them as quail are a native bird where as the pheasant is not and quail have naturally reproducing populations in Virginia while pheasants do not. Again, if you are looking for quail related info, the website has great info. Another good website is Quail-Friendly Plants of the Midwest It has good photos to ID plants you may already have growing on your land and information about them along with information about plants you may want to consider cultivating on your land to further your quail.

Pheasants and quail aren't the same bird, but often times areas with good habitat will support healthy wild populations of both birds.

Here is something to check out. I see it advertised all the time on the outdoor channel but I don't know if it works or not:

http://www.wildlifemanagementtechnologies.com/surrogator.html

Bob Whites disappeared from our area about 10 years ago. Over the past couple of years, one of my neighbors has hatched, raised, and released close to 1,000 of them. It doesn't seem to have worked.

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.

Anyone who has hunted public land on the opening day of PA pheasant season knows about hunting pressure! Absolutely crazy...

I agree that pen raised quail don't have a good survivability rate. Pens raised quail don't seem to have the flight from danger down just right. Quail raised in raceways that are able to fly, do a little better. There are virtually no quail left in the county I live in, in Texas. Pen raised birds will not be able to replace native wild birds I'm afraid.

You can tell what put-n-take pheasants were raised in pens that had low "roofs" vs. ones that had high "roofs" as well. Some birds will fly up 6'-8' and level off, while others will tower up like wild birds.

It does not work. You are better off managing for live wild bird expansion by introducing cover, forage and selective harvesting, males only. Nesting areas help a lot.

With pheasants and quail they are basically cannon fodder. Released to be shot that day or the next. The gamekeepers won't release them 3 days or more before the hunts because predators finish them off first. Ignorant birds make one mistake and they are some predators dinner. Especially birds of prey. Coyotes, raccoons and dogs finish the rest. The pen raised birds make all of the mistakes, they don't know any better. Fly straight up, fly when they should run, run when they should fly. Don't use cover. They never had to in a pen, they just don't figure it out when they are released. Don't waste your time.

Well, thanks for the feedback guys. I think I'll just continue to improve my habitat and encourage my Bluestem to grow grow grow and maybe try feeding them...but thats another post - coming now!

I am buying a surragator this spring


http://www.wildlifemanagementtechnologies.com/sparticle.html

I plan on releasing 125 birds 3 times this summer. there is some data that suggests releasing birds at 6 weeks of age allows for birds that still have their natural flight abilities.


I will keep you guys posted.


drp

Great read. I like the success rate was at 0-3% until we developed a product you too can buy. Even with thier $8,000-10,000 worth of stuff they had complete busts. It is pretty much like I said, pen raised birds lose any instinct they could have possibly had, and are easy pickins for predators. This is something where you could posibly make a huge investment and still fail miserably. I don't mind experimenting if the capital investment is not too much, and I might actually have some success.

In order for this to work, you need to do everything right, have the right equipment, right birds, release them at the right time, in the right location, and hope you have the right weather patterns. And a lot of luck. No thanks.

Talk to some Indian reservations and ask to trap and transfer some wild birds from their lands... That's what the Pennsylvania Game Commission did. It's the only thing that has worked. That, and lots and lots of hard work making the habitat right over thousands of acres. For the average Joe who doesn't live in high quality pheasant country, releasing pen raised birds to shoot is the only way to go. Just realize, those pen raised birds aren't going to lead to a wild population except for a minor miracle.