does anyone know why in PA pheasant hunters don't have to buy a pheasant stamp as an extra? they should seeing that it is a non reproducing species in most of the state. I believe the game commission buys each bird for $10 with license holder dollars. archery, muzzleloader, bear, waterfowl, and elk are all species that self reproduce and extra tags are needed to hunt each. just doesn't make sense to me why the commission isn't charging a pheasant stamp so the pheasant hunters are paying for their own birds. I don't like paying for their birds that are going to die anyways. I am not against stocking pheasants I just want them to support their own season. even fishing in PA you have to have an extra trout stamp to help with the stocking efforts. just wondering if anyone out there in PA has ever wondered about this?
No idea. There is no reason for pheasants to not be a reproducing species. The DNR and DOC needs a major shift in thought process to support game bird management. They promote boosting cover to encourage game bird populations and it's the wrong mindset. They will never make any serious gains until they encourage predator management and cereal grain food sources and stop worrying about cover habitat so much. You'd think after years of cover centric management and no success that they'd learn and adapt but they just keep trying the same crap. If they'd learn how to manage the actual problem there would be no concerns about funding released birds.
exactly!!! winters in my area wipe them out every year unless someone is feeding them. our snow pack is just too deep. turkeys even have a heck of a time. I laugh when they do the second pheasant stocking during the season. as soon as the cages open hunters blast em as soon as they hit the ground. how pathetic!!! our commission give hunters the stocking locations and dates so hunters can show up. this is what irritates me about no pheasant stamp. they aren't stocking big bucks for me during archery but I have to buy an archery permit. irritating!!!
Yeah, that's stupid but then again our game commissions are generally led by folks educated on wildlife management from a book and a few credits from scientists rather than woodsmen...intelligence without wisdom. It's funny the game commissions want to make money and complain about a lack of funds yet they will focus on reintroduction of predatory species that are non/rarely-huntable, are protected species or at least very few people actually hunt (so don't make a lot of money). What they should be doing is taking the avian raptors off the federally protected list, initiating a bounty on fur bearers like coons, possums, skunks, yotes, bobcats, hawks (especially the lessor hawks that target game and song birds) and owls. Pay for the bounties offered by cutting wasteful spending on projects that reintroduce and track crap like bear, lions, otter, beaver, etc...also cut spending on migratory bird programs and release some of the contracted leases that cost a ton of annual money. They have allowed bleeding heart activists to determine management foundations by protecting and sheltering species based on romanticized ideals that aren't grounded in a reality that favors game animals...especially game birds.
That is typical PA GC to me. I haven't lived in or hunting PA in several years, so I can't say what all is going on, but it is strange to me that PA has declining deer #'s, yet they limit to 1 buck with a license and you have to draw a doe tag for a specific region. In Maryland, we get 1 buck tag, and can purchase a bonus buck, 8 doe tags (unlimited doe tags in certain counties.. including where I hunt), we have no antler restrictions, yet our deer herds are much more abundant. On the same note, Maryland does have it's own strange ways, such as making "appointments" a minimum of a week in advance to hunt most of the public lands.. and that is after you acquire the special permit from a specific office. Or not opening up, at least to bow hunting, areas where the deer #'s are out of control. Instead, they spend who knows how much money, hiring snipers with silencers and night vision to pick off the deer at night. Close the park/area off to the public for a few weeks and let the hunters do what they do. The state/DNR makes money from the lottery or special permit and the hunters get to tag and bag some fresh venison for their freezer or donate the food to the Hunters and farmers feeding the hungry program.
the problem with declining deer #'s IMO is bears. our bear population is getting out of control. they keep blaming the coyotes but bears have a higher impact on fawns then coyotes ever could. I hunt bears every year, and I'm not partial to blasting a cub if it runs by it will only grow up and become another problem. bears are a real problem yet they won't extend our season. I think if the only way you could be a game warden is to be an avid hunter things would most likely be much different with game laws. I also forgot to add that on top of the $ to buy pheasants we also have to pay the commission workers to drive around stocking them plus fuel for the trucks. so the cost of pheasants, pheasant cages for transporting the birds, man hours, & fuel it starts getting very expensive. covey where are you from, we hunt the LaCyne area out the in KS.
Covey is right on with this one. For a few years we have been stocking roughly two dozen pheasants in the 60 acre crp field behind our house. We usually stock a few days before the season. It never ceases to amaze me how many are killed by the time we go out on opening day. Between the coyotes and red tail hawks they usually get a half dozen before we even start hunting. This year we shot 5 coyotes and have seen a drop in red tail population. I think they will have a chance this year.
Pen raised Pheasants can easily cost 10-$14 to raise...each. I have no idea what the general GC grunt gets paid (likely too much). The cost of their programs should be public knowledge though. It's sad considering they could have a thriving population if the GC actually did it's job. I don't have a problem with the GC raising and propagating birds, I applaud that, to a certain extent...I just wish they'd learn that doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results is stupid. Pheasants have the same problems as quail, predator index. There are other problems but this is the biggest one, they need to learn that they need to manage not only "game" but predators as well. Pheasant and quail are both at the bottom of the food chain and depend on out populating their predators to thrive as a species. When you have habitat loss, predators don't decline at the same rate as game species and you get an unbalanced equation. They are convinced they can promote "quality of habitat" ie, cover...and re-balance the equation. They have simply proven that mindset wrong and need to change strategies. I've argued with biologist after biologist over the subject but they always fall back to their classic education that taught them habitat habitat habitat and ignore the fact that habitat is a holistic term that should include predator index and proper grain and not just grass cover. They are gradually changing positions, in the 90's they "just knew" that promoting native warm season grass was the magic pill to fix it, now they realize that no...grass monocultures might as well be a desert to a game bird. Now they have changed mixes of grass in favor of more forbs and legumes...it's an improvement but only about 10% in the right direction. Look around the country at the states that still have a huntable population of birds and you'll find that they still do a lot of cereal grains like milo. They provide the right habitat and cover mix and winter food/cover residues. Their positive effect would increase exponentially with predator management. There's a certain threshold of predator index (population per acre) that shortly on either side have drastic effects on the birds. Coons are one of the biggest factors, Grant Woods calls them "The grizzly of missouri woods" and they are also (though little known) big time fawn predators.
I am sure bears are part of the problem, but, where I was hunting in Perry county there is 1, maybe 2 bears around and that has only been in the last few years that they have been seen. Between that and bears are ominviours.. they eat plants and meat. Coyotes are much more abundant and are almost, if not, completely carniviours. I hunt central Maryland and haven't seen any coyotes and bears just aren't in this area.. and our deer #'s are very high in certain areas, per the DNR. I have been hunting Monkton in northern Baltimore county for a few seasons. First year, between 2 of us, we took down 12 deer. Since we thinned that herd out (and there is a VERY smart old doe living in the area), we average about 3-4 a year now, but also have limited space as we are hunting private land and focusing on the natural funnel between their food and bed. Pheasants aren't around here at all that I have seen.. but we also have plenty of fox running around. It is all deer and turkey in my area for larger game. More then enough squirrels, but only places to hunt them is public land and that is just a huge hassle.
like I originally said they should implement a pheasant tag as an extra purchase. I just feel like I along with other non pheasant hunters are pulling the pheasant hunters weight financially. if the pheasant could sustain its own population I would have no problem with the current system in place. I feel like my archery and bear tag isn't going to deer and bear completely but is partially funding the pheasant stocking program. I think that any species that is stocked should require a tag or permit to harvest the game being stocked. I totally agree with all you guys are saying as well. as for bears come to the northern part of the state we are getting over run up here. I had one in my yard last night and he ripped the neighbors garbage all over the road. dang things anyways.
I grew up hunting pheasants, when there were pheasants, and watched them disappear through the 1980s. There are a number of factors that wiped out the pheasants in Southeastern PA. Farming practices have dramatically changed. Farmers went from clo-tim hay that was mowed in June, to alfalfa that is mowed in May. A lot of nesting hens were baled. Corn fields used to be cultivated. There was 6-8 in of grass in a mature corn field. Now we have no-till and clean corn fields. Farming operations got bigger, so fewer fence rows. Avaian flu came through and wiped out many wild birds. Then there are the pen raised birds. They roost on the ground, not in trees like the wild birds used to. Between the foxes and the red tail hawks, very few of them last a day, let alone a week. So, if you really want to see wild pheasants in PA, you might contact Pheasants Forever. I know that they were stocking wild birds in some parts of PA. I lost track of whether or not they had any success. Would I want to see a $10 pheasant stamp, to put out more pen raised birds to feed the foxes? Not really. In fact, I would be more in favor of not stocking ANY pen raised birds. BTW, when I was a kid hunting pheasants, just to see a deer in the neighborhood was a big deal. Now, deer are fairly common.
Yeah I talked a bit in an earlier post about the need to take avian raptors off the protected species lists and encourage management of them. When we burn off grass here, the number of hawks flying around is crazy. I know red tails target game birds but the ones I always had problems with were the smaller hawk species. I've sat and watched them flush and chase quail down fence rows while I sat in a deer stand and they would commonly attack my flight pens, sitting on top of the netting raising a ruckus until one bird was unfortunate enough to fly up into their reach. Owls in my opinion and experience are far more of a hazard to quail and pheasants than the larger hawks. Coons were by far the worst predator I ever had to deal with around the pens. They will raid the eggs and kill as many birds as they can kill just for the hell of it and eat their head and butt. I'm over in part of the country where we don't have and never have had any pheasants except the ones I raised and hunted. My experience is more quail focused but it was easy to see here that most of the problems are shared between quail and pheasants. I'm not sure there is any one "biggest" predator of either bird. Being at the bottom of the food chain, they pretty much get targeted by everything from the time the egg leaves the hens posterior until something finally gets lucky and eats them at whatever point. Nest predators, varmints, rodents, hawks owls, etc etc. Still it's the total sum of all the predators that is the problem with our birds. With fair habitat of cover and food, if we could thin out the coons, skunks, possums, hawks and owls, the game birds would rebound in short order. Crops and farming practices in general changing have affected the birds, no doubt. Of all the changes in farming that have had some impact, I believe the soybean is at the top of the list of the most negative. Soybeans have trypsin inhibitors in them and most birds can't eat them without profoundly adverse effects and death. Trypsin inhibitor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia You cannot feed soybeans to chickens, quail or pheasants without them being roasted. To make matters worse, bean fields are completely devoid of cover and food over winter. I disagree that no-till has any significant blame in the bird loss, I think no-till is far better than tillage for the birds and everything in general. There are more bugs, more cover, etc...and the water quality is far better. Complimenting no-till with properly managed grasses, forbes and legumes (and predator management), we would have far better habitat for birds than we ever had in the past. Soybeans don't need to be eradicated, we just need to work more diversity into our crop rotations with cereal grains to fix this problem. Quail and pheasants generally won't eat enough beans to cause a problem in the wild unless they are short on food. Milo production has all but disappeared, wheat production has dropped drastically, oats, barley, are all crops that were once commonplace when bird numbers were good and have since disappeared. Their forage value for bugs, timing for nesting and grain production were all prime for birds, now we have corn and beans...corn is okay but it's largely too large a seed to be preferred by quail and not nearly high enough in protein for a quails metabolism in winter. It's a good residual grain where there is enough diversity to be utilized as a carb for them mixed with other food sources.
Pen raised birds being released is a waste, they simply can't survive. All they are doing is trying to give hunters a chance to shoot a bird. If that's the goal those hunters specifically should be paying for the program. Now, that said, what pen raised birds are good for is if habitat and predator control are being managed...releasing pen raised birds can serve as a buffer to take remaining pressures off the wild birds out there trying to survive. Releasing birds into the current environment that won't support wild birds is insane if the goal is to propagate birds.
Pennsylvania reintroduced the Fisher cat a decade or two ago after nearly being wiped out in the 1880s by hunters and trappers. They eat turkey eggs, pheasant eggs, fawns, chickens, and small pets. I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't have something to do with it. On the PAGC and lack of a pheasant stamp, they do some really weird things and I have no idea why they don't have one. Unfortunately I have gradually stopped hunting PA because of the inconsistencies between WMUs and all the confusion they've created.
Around my area pheasants are a pest. Its nothing to see 3 or 4 in my yard or driving around. We have an outfitter that keeps our area stocked. I would have to disagree with the fact they don't reproduce in the wild. This past summer I seen a hen with some chicks around her in a few different spots. As far as buying a stamp goes I'm surprised our GC doesn't make us buy a stamp for pheasant hunting, because lord knows we have to pay for everything else. I hunted Ohio, WV, and Maryland and I'm almost at the point where I'll buy an out of state license for Ohio and WV instead of buying a PA license. Maryland is ok but I prefer Ohio and WV. Sorry guys, rant over!
sad, but you are speaking the truth. in nw pa I haven't ever seen any pheasants with chicks. but our winters are much harder up here. it is nice to hear of reproduction, but as a whole, statewide they do not. I was thinking about this topic the other day for some reason and grouse are very similar kind of bird and they reproduce naturally. so instead of stocking pheasants let guys just hunt them and eliminate the stocking program. but the grouse will cause guys to actually hunt and have skill. I guess it is just easier to hunt a bird that doesn't have any interest in escaping you and your dogs presence. so if grouse is too hard to hunt then you can opt out and buy a pheasant stamp to hunt a tame bird. I do know that pheasants taste much better is the only thing!! lol
If ya don't mind me asking which part do you agree with? If its the somewhat disgust with the PAGC I got a little ahead of myself, I feel they've done a good job with our deer population. They started letting us hammer down on the does this year however. But I feel they've done a wonderful job with stocking animals and wildlife habitat . They biggest problem is they cut our bow season sooooooooo short. At least in my area the last day is the very crucial part of the rut when bucks cruise around. Everything else is ok with me but the bow season irks me.
