pen raised versus wild pheasants

[john1984]

Have you ever hunted pen raised pheasants but never wild pheasants??? Did you think wild ones would have been just as easy to kill as the pen raised bird? I heard someone once say that the difference between hunting pen raised and wild pheasants is like nite and day. Have any of you ever killed late season public land WILD pheasants???? Have any of you ever hunted wild pheasants solo, without dog? Man when they flush you nearly have a heart attack. Please don't think pheasant hunting is easy unless you have hunted late season pure wild public land pheasants. But I understand that some of you don't have wild pheasants around. I don't hunt anymore but I shot a few as a kid in south central MN. I think pen raised birds are great for bird dogs and areas with no good habitat. I wish we could find a cheap easy way to make a lot of cheap biofuel from grass like CRP.(Bassboysllc you better get on it) Too many corn fields out there. Pheasants need seas of tall CRP grass, without that you'll probably never have great wild pheasants like in eastern south Dakota. What's your thoughts?

FYI , I'm smart ☺

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[dan]

If your talking Wisconsin, your hunting pen raised birds when you hunt the ones in the wild... Very few survive up here with winters, predators, and such... Probably as many as 95% were released the same year you shoot them... The few that do make it thru, are indeed harder to kill. They get pretty good at running rather than flying and hanging out in non-hunting areas... We had about a dozen release birds hanging out at our bird feeder after the season. Not a one of them is still around. You would find piles of feathers where hawks, coyotes, and foxes would get them.

[obrion]

Most of the pen raised pheasants first time flying is their last, so there a huge difference. But in the end I wouldn't discriminate, it's a blast. Every year my father in law invites me to a tower hunt. It's probably the best 225 dollars i spend each year (we knock down 300-500 birds depending on participation #'s). I would never call it hunting, but it's definitely a nice way to take out the frustrations from the terrible deer season I had last year.

[Stanley]

A good friend of mine just did a hunt this spring. I think he said he got 10 birds. I don't call it hunting, it's shooting. Not my bag of tea.

[BassBoysLLP]

I have wild pheasants behind my house in North Central WI. They are A LOT harder to kill than the farm birds. Most of the time they don't fly to escape. They run.

I've never killed a late season WILD public land pheasant in Wisconsin without a dog. Only the WDNR planters. I'm not saying its harder to kill wild pheasant in the late season...there simply aren't that many in WI to begin with. I've gone rabbit hunting in the great plain states during the late season. There are no shortage of wild pheasants in the late season in that country.

That biofuel thing is already a reality in the form of Miscanthus. The birds love it.

[john1984]

Those late season birds also flush wild. They'd hear you and flush WAY out of range. And the wild ones take off like a rocket,

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[Jackson Marsh]

Wild birds are much more difficult. Sometimes they won't even fly just run. The pen raised birds, if recently planted are dumb for the most part.

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[Singing Bridge]

I have hunted wild birds but things aren't always as they appear- pheasant hunting is big business. I have an operation down the road that ships 30,000 birds at a time from Michigan to South Dakota. The workers plant the birds in the middle of the night in fields and cover while the hunters are sleeping in the lodges and cabins. Most people don't know.

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[Singing Bridge]

Like Dan mentioned, a lot of guys think they are hunting wild birds when they really aren't. PF groups and others spread a lot of birds every year. Pheasant hunting is big business. I have an operation near my home that takes 30,000 birds every trip to South Dakota. They plant them at various times of the year. During the season the workers plant the birds during the middle of the night while the hunters are sleeping in their cabins / hotels / lodges.

Don't get your feathers ruffled, I'm not saying there aren't any wild birds- but most guys don't realize what really goes on out there. It's like the first time a guy in Michigan opens the DNR fish stocking database and sees nearly every river and lake has at least some stocking of fish, even in the Upper Peninsula.

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[john1984]

Maybe i should have stated hunting pheasants on a game preserve versus hunting december roosters on public land.

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[Uncle Lou]

My freshman year in college we found a good population of pheasants in southern Champaign County Illinois. It was nothing to flush or see a hundred birds an outing. Early season on those wild birds were way easier than late season.

Then in 1990 I moved to Michigan and did some pheasant hunting. Far and few between. Wasn't long that I stumbled on a pheasant farm, definitely a different bird. Then in 2002 or 3 I met Preston Mann who ran Farmland Pheasant Hunters and helped me with my pack of chessies. I would say train, but you never really train a chessie, you just let them hunt (You can shock a chessie into listening, but I would rather watch those beasts hunt).

I was surprised by his operation, these were not tame birds, it was the closest thing I ever had to real bird hunting in the late 90s in the farmland of Illinois.

Interesting topic, I miss pheasant hunting and will do a farm hunt once every while now.