Last year our governor almost shut down our Ring-necked Pheasant program in an attempt to cut the state budget that our greedy legislators have created. The outcry from New York state sportsmen and sportswomen caused that action to be dropped.

At one time there were several state game farms around New York where pheasants were propagated. I’m sure most of you remember the White Game Farm on routes 63 and 77 that was shut down in recent years.

The only remaining game farm left to produce pheasants is the Reynolds Game Farm near Ithaca. The birds that are stocked in our area come from that facility.

The pheasant was actually introduced (originally from Asia) into New York in 1892 on an island near Long Island. By the 1920s the bird had been established across our state and became a very popular game bird.

The peak of this pheasant population was in the 1960s and in 1968 an estimated 272,000 hunters took over 500,000 birds. These game birds reproduced extremely well in the wild in most areas. Where they didn’t they were aided by stocking from these game farms.

Growing up during those heydays was a great experience for me as my dad was a dyed-in-the-wool pheasant hunter and always had a good Springer Spaniel for hunting. My love of hunting was greatly influenced by this great game bird which also made fine table fare.

However, when I came home from Nam in 1970 and went to the fields with our Springer very few birds were found in the old haunts. There were pockets of birds that we went to like in Royalton and Wilson, but those areas dried up as well.

Many factors contributed to the 90 percent decline since the heydays. The drastic change in farming left no area for nesting and raising young birds. Protection of certain predators, such as red-tailed hawks and great horned owls, took their toll in the now open farmlands.

It is possible that if the state had shortened the season or reduced the bag limit to allow the “wild” birds to recover that may have helped. The stocked birds have lost their survival instincts and those that made it through the hunting season usually died during the winter.

Pheasant hunting remains very popular but the stocking program is basically the only source of birds now for an estimated 50,000 hunters.

Recently the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has drawn up some new plans for the pheasants. One of the changes is to allow longer seasons for the taking of propagated pheasants released by the state cooperators in state programs and private individuals who are raising and releasing birds. The birds that are not harvested seldom survive to the following year, thus a longer season would allow a higher harvest of birds that would only be lost anyway.

The plan also calls for the elimination of stocking birds for the National Field Trials held in New York state. In the past, about 600 adult cock birds were provided from the stocking program. The DEC feels that this amount of birds would be better utilized during the regular season or for special youths and for people with disabilities.

They also plan to eliminate the Young Pheasant Release Program in 2011 and increase adult production by 5,000 birds per year. Studies, through banding, have shown that less than 10 percent of these young birds are harvested, meaning predators, etc., have taken these birds before the hunting season.

The final part is to identify a “focus area” in the Lake Plains of Western New York State where most pheasant habitat management resources would be directed to provide the greatest potential to sustain a wild population.

Maybe these new plans will better serve our sportsmen and sportswomen and at the same time reinforce the remaining wild population.

However, don’t plan on the return of the 1960’s heydays, not with our present farming practices and a pile of aerial raptors out there. If like myself you were part of the pheasant glory days be thankful for those memories because today’s young hunters will never know the sport as we did.

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To get sportsman’s news and info into The Great Outdoors, call Doug Domedion at (585) 798-4022 or e-mail him at woodduck2020@yahoo.com.