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I have always wondered where all the pheasants have gone in mt neck of the woods. This should be ideal habitat for them but in 18 years I have seen 2 maybe 3 pheasants. Going to College I lived in Lindsay for 3 years and never saw a single Pheasant.
I'm told that at one time there were lot's of pheasants but they all disappeared. So where did they go? Did the re-introduction of Turkey's do something are they a competing species?
Does anyone remember when there were lot's of Pheasants?
There is still some in Bradley's marsh area on the east shore of lake st.clair and still a healthy group on Saint Ann's Island part of the Walpole Island native reserve. A few locals have tried establishing them here trying everything from using nesting birds to day olds and you see them for the summer then nothin come fall. Not sure why they don't take to the area, we have great habitat but we also have many predators in the area.
Have a few on the property my son and I hunt, obviously won't be sharing GPS coordinates but there are healthy pockets out there.
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The problem here in Ontario is lack of suitable habitat for them, The pheasant prefers a brushy type grass land cover that we are lacking here in Ontario, they need it to breed raise there young and hide from predators. The cover we have here can hold them in summer and fall but once the deep snow sets in it doesn't leave them with much to hide from hawks and coyotes and also lack of food, they can't eat bark off trees like a cottontail rabbits or burrow in the snow. Ontario once had a good huntable population of pheasant and quail in the 50's to the 70's but change in farming practices changed that. The price of workable land and grain skyrocketed, farmers started to work there land right to the end, no more hedge rows between fields where pheasants could live. New improved machinery left less wast grain behind for them to eat. Thats what happened to Ontario's pheasants, as mentioned there are a few pockets of wild birds left in areas with good habitat, but most of the pheasant hunting here takes place on game farms and county release areas.
To me those look like pen birds especially the rooster in the lower left corner. Although there are some wild birds out there they aren't in that concentration.Quote:
Originally Posted by DGM999
How can you tell that or why do you think that?
When I lived in NS there were ton's of Pheasants around Yarmouth and the Anapolis Valey. My grandfather was the manager of the Yarmouth airport and part of his job was to walk around the airport shooting Pheasants. My Uncle tells me most of the Phesants have now dissappeared they see the odd one when out rabbit hunting. He said he see's turkeys now. He seems to think the Turkey's are forcing the Pheasants out.
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Originally Posted by finsfurfeathers
Does anyone remember hunting Pheasants in the Ottawa Valley?
By the time there's snow on the ground wild roosters would have a yard long tail. Most of those roosters have short tails the one in the lower left got no tail. Where I live as a boy there was numerous pheasants however 40 years later with only the hydro right of way left for cover lucky to see 1 or 2 a year.Quote:
Originally Posted by greatwhite
Although never hunted there myself my dad still tells stories of the Hungarian partridge hunting there not so much pheasant though.Quote:
Originally Posted by greatwhite
I have always wondered where all the pheasants have gone in mt neck of the woods. This should be ideal habitat for them but in 18 years I have seen 2 maybe 3 pheasants. Going to College I lived in Lindsay for 3 years and never saw a single Pheasant.
I'm told that at one time there were lot's of pheasants but they all disappeared. So where did they go? Did the re-introduction of Turkey's do something are they a competing species?
Does anyone remember when there were lot's of Pheasants?
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I do.
I remember m Dad and I walking out our door - when Wharncliffe Road in London was a dirt road- with his .410, crossing the road and having a great pheasant shoot. Got 7 kids through some tough times with little food. Glad was born in the 1940s. :)
My dad tells me stories of him.and grandpa going out to the bush behind the field and shooting 4-5 pheasant a week.. I'm 32 years... I have NEVER seen a pheasant here... Lots of grass and abkndaned farms too..
Yes. People insist on believing the habitat is there, but it just isn't. Pheasants need substantial tracts of weedy grasslands for nesting. That's why they do so well on the prairies. We just don't have very much of that kind of habitat. Where we do have suitable habitat it is difficult for the birds to take hold because they are hunted hard, and we allow shooting hens -- not to mention that the birds we release are pen-raised dopes that would be unlikely to survive in the wild.Quote:
Originally Posted by fishhawk
Seems unlikely. Turkeys are birds of mature hardwood forests, so I don't see they would conflict with pheasants.Quote:
Originally Posted by greatwhite
Never seen a wild one but we plant some for the dogs
I believe its winter habitat that is the limiting factor. Once the crops are harvested plowed under and nothing left but a Brazilian strip of fence row where do you expect them to go. Some sort of American style CRP program is what's needed.Quote:
Originally Posted by welsh
Good point. Fly over southern Ont and the problem is obvious. We typically have large fields now, with no hedgerows, so there is very little winter cover for pheasants across most agricultural areas of the province.
Often daydream on the drive up to Hullet what the upland hunting would be like if all the fence rows where set up like Hullet.
When I was a youngun there was a good population of pheasants in the area. It wasn't uncommon for me to have 5 or 6 hanging in the basement back then. Days gone past.
I don't know why the population decreased but it does seem to be around the same time turkey and coyote populations increased.
Coincidence???
When I was a child, my father used to go pheasant hunting in the Winchester/Mountain area, and also in the Larose Forest area. I went with him a few times, but I don't remember there being lots of pheasants. That would have been in the mid 80s. Prior to that, apparently there was a decent population. But to tell you the truth, I sometimes wonder if these were mostly released pheasants. My understanding is that groups used to hold hunting dog competitions in the Winchester/Mountain area, so it could be that hunters would go in after the competitions and pick up the birds that escaped.
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Originally Posted by greatwhite
When you travel west the first thing you will notice is that the birds have ideal habitat conditions and lots of it. We just don't have that in Ontario any longer, compound that with predators and hunting pressure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roper
Check out ALUS (Alternative Land Use Services). It is similar to the CRP program in the states and has been very successful at putting lots of habitat on the ground so far. Here is the website: alus.caQuote:
Originally Posted by finsfurfeathers
We have some nice hedges along fence rows but our tall trees are also all over the place.
Using these trees, it's easy for predators like hawks and owls to pick them up.
Our fence rows could have 10 ft. of weeds and grass beside them but enough tall trees are always on fence rows.
Some places in Michigan where I used to hunt discourage tall trees along fence rows.
I noticed places I've observed in Iowa that has good Pheasant population don't have tall trees like next to railroad right of way.
Back when fur was big money and socially acceptable.Everything with fur on it was trapped and shot.And farmers with chickens and such would be after all fur bearers and all birds of prey.And we know how populations of both have gone now.
Also the lack of habitat.
Agree with the comment about predators, particularly avian ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by kurt tealo
problem with farm released pheasants is most of them have bin incubator hatched and the broody gene is gone from them, poeple by pheasants from places like freys and release them, and they have no natural instinct to survive or to reproduce... in order for them to actually survive the eggs need to be hatched under a broody chicken, raised by the chicken in a free range environment... after a few years of that they will get that instinct back and will lay on their eggs...
theres is a population up around north bay of naturally producing pheasants ;)
werner you have lived around here longer than I probably. Do you remember when there were lot's of Pheasants?
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Originally Posted by werner.reiche
Habitat, Habitat, Habitat loss and also predators.
The state of South Dakota is also bemoaning the loss of Pheasants, here is the first paragraph from the latest Shooting Sportsman" titled The Pheasant Wars.
This past year, for the first time since 1992, South Dakota's pheasant harvest failed to top the I million mark. The final tally for the 2013 season was 982,679 roosters, down significantly from the 1.428 million harvested in 2012 and roughly half of the 1.83 million bagged just two years earlier. The average harvest per hunter this past season , 7.4 was the lowest recorded since 1089.
They go on in the article to say that habitat loss is the greatest factor and this is due to the fact that corn prices are so high , causing framers to take land out of the CRP designation and putting it into crops [corn ] . One farmer was quoted as saying , "when the prices were low , we listened to you, [the GOV. ] but now that the price of corn is so high we put our land [even marginal land ] into production.
It is a lengthy but interesting article , if you get a chance , pick up the magazine and read it.
No - never saw pheasants around here...only lived in Limoges 25 years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by greatwhite
What I do know about pheasants I know from a guy who releases a few every year near our cottage - trying to get a population established - once he gets a few breeding naturally, they do well until a hawk/owl finds them and then he kills them - one every couple of days until they are all gone. Similar, my brother used to release quite a few (100+ per year) for dog training. He even had hawks kill them between when he planted them and got back to them with the dog. He had a few survive and breed - they all seem to have nesting instincts - and there were about 40 or so going into the winter. But between a fox and a hawk/owl, they didn't make it to the end of January.
I guess it's fair enough to say that the predation to some extent is caused by lack of habitat - they had a cedar swamp for shelter - but not the thick cover like they have in the Dakotas.
Back in the early sixties I lived on Neilson's rd north of Finch. There was four houses within a mile of us that did not raise fields of corn. While we were in a no discharge zone, most townships along the lakeshore raised and released hundreds of birds and then issued township rabbit and pheasant hunting licenses. This let them control the number of hunters and raise money.
The birds around our house had been released years prior by Massey Harris up on their factory farm on Steeles ave. They became a self sustaining flock in our area but Markham was still releasing them in 1964....Now the corn fields are front lawns.
Niagara on the Lake still has many pheasants, they like to hide in the grape rows. Npt sure if there wild or were released.
rem
I also believe that the turkeys are forcing out the pheasants. Have had a spot that held wild pheasant for many many decades, turkeys are in there now...no more ringnecks.
Not very likely , pheasants are birds of vast open grasslands , marsh and low brush, while turkeys are forest dwelling birds , two absolutely different types of habitat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mount Sweetness
+1 on that.Quote:
Originally Posted by jaycee
People blame turkeys for driving everything out, but pheasants are limited in Ontario by a lack of suitable habitat, not by competition from other birds. This is well documented. They need extensive grasslands for nesting and they need low scrubby cover to overwinter. Neither is common in southern Ontario, so pheasants have disappeared, as have other birds that need similar open grassy habitat: bobwhites, eastern bluebirds, bobolinks....
Turkeys are birds of mature hardwood forest. That's why they do well in Ontario.
I am trying to tell you that this has happened in an area that I hunt. I appreciate and understand your opinion.
The area I live also should be prime habitat but I have seen only 2 in 18 years.
You're telling me that pheasants are down and turkeys are up, and you're trying to tell me that these two things must be related. Unless you have some evidence showing how they're related, that's like saying that suicide by handing is caused by US government spending on science and tech -- because as it happens, both have risen at the same rate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mount Sweetness
We don't have pheasants in this province for a few simple, well understood reasons:
1 - we don't have nesting habitat
2 - wintering habitat is also limited
3 - where habitat exists, there has been no serious effort to introduce the birds
4 - where birds are planted and habitat exists, we plant the wrong strains and we allow shooting hens
Minnesota has good pheasant numbers. They allow two birds per day, roosters only. Minnesota, like Ontario, has had a very successful program to reintroduce the wild turkey, over the same time frame as our program.
What does Minnesota have that we don't? Pheasant habitat.
Until Ontario hunters get over their desire to blame everything on turkey reintroduction, we will continue to get the hunting we deserve.
But how else I am going to explain why I missed all those shots this year?Quote:
Originally Posted by welsh
That "PRIME Habitat " that you live in , hundreds to thousands of acres as they have in the Dakota's and in Saskatchewan and Alberta ?, a few acres here and there does not make a prime area for pheasants .Quote:
Originally Posted by greatwhite
I'm not interested in a debate just trying to share with others my observations on a specific piece of land that I have monitored for decades. The pheasants disappeared in this specific location two years ago after running wild for decades. The turkeys appeared in this location two years ago as well. This is just me sharing with you what I have observed in this specific location. I do not know why any of this happened, I do not blame turkeys, but this is what I have observed. These two things happened simultaneously in this specific location.
Pheasants are an introduced species from Asia. It doesnt hurt my feelings at all that native species are forcing them out.
Well, first off, there is no evidence that native species are forcing them out. Their populations have failed in Ontario because the landscape is no longer suitable to them. And we ought to be concerned about that, if we care about native species, because many native species are facing the same problem because of the same changes. Even if we don't care about pheasants, we ought to care about bobwhites.Quote:
Originally Posted by blasted_saber
Taking care of the habitat means better opportunities all around. This is where the Americans are way ahead of us.
This ^^^ even the state of Michigan which has been hit with tough times still recognized that good cover for bird's and more opportunities for hunting are money makers, they have started a program called GEMS.Quote:
Originally Posted by welshWell, first off, there is no evidence that native species are forcing them out. Their populations have failed in Ontario because the landscape is no longer suitable to them. And we ought to be concerned about that, if we care about native species, because many native species are facing the same problem because of the same changes. Even if we don't care about pheasants, we ought to care about bobwhites.Quote:
Originally Posted by blasted_saber
Taking care of the habitat means better opportunities all around. This is where the Americans are way ahead of us.
I think some have missed my point. The habitat around my area is perfect. The habitat in NS where I no the are many is not techincally suitable yet they do very well. That seems to contradict everything.
Refer to points 3 and 4 in my previous list of reasons, GW.
NS limit is two birds, roosters only. Also, I think you need to look more carefully at the kind of habitat they have in the Annapolis Valley before proclaiming that it isn't suitable.
Actually I was thinking Yarmouth, Arcadia and all around there, never hunted in the Annapolis.
Quote:
Originally Posted by welsh
The Annapolis Valley is supposed to be the centre of NS pheasant hunting, where the real numbers are. Of course they have birds elsewhere, too.
Instructive to look at the history of NS pheasants, too. They initially released pheasants for something like 8 years before allowing any hunting. Then they closed the season when things went bad. More recently, when populations crashed after the 1950s, they started releasing tons of birds ... but then realized that the birds they were releasing were unsuitable and were interbreeding and competing with the wild birds, so they stopped the releases. NS has managed their pheasant hunting to sustain wild pheasant numbers all along.
Look to Ontario ... the Pelee hunt started because the island was overrun with tens of thousands of wild birds that were eating the crops. Now, those birds are gone and Pelee is essentially an oversized game farm with released birds. We have never managed for wild birds in Ontario and so we shouldn't be surprised they're gone.
I don't think Ontario hunters would be happy with a five-year moratorium on pheasant hunting, followed by a bag limit of two, roosters only, with a possession limit ... but the fact that we bag hens and shoot all the birds soon after they're released is part of our problem.
I seen a rooster and 4 hens the other day , first pheasants I've seen outside of Hullet is a lot of years
And this one in vaughan today
That's one of the reasons why I still take the dog for a walk around here.
Yes you never know
The economy grows and the birds disappear.
Drove past a few beautiful big woodlots to day, , that I have always enjoyed; they are now sold to be torn down for a new subdivisions.
Having pheasant and quail in SW On is a battle lost imo.
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For those that know London, I lived much of my on Wharncliffe Road South when it was a dirt road. Stepped out the door and went pheasant hunting.
Suppose i wanted to try and release some birds in my neck of the woods just to see if they would stick. Where could i buy a few dozen birds and when would be a good time to release them? i understand about natural insticts of the bird and having difficulty with them reproducing but ive often wondered why they wouldnt thrive in my hunting area. Could be a lost cause but id like to try. any help?
krawler,Quote:
Originally Posted by krawler
I would tred very lightly doing this. While you are allowed to release up to 10 pheasants for the purposes of hunting them without a permit from the ministry, you aren't allowed to release pheasants with the intention of establishing a population without ministry approval. Also from a standpoint of releasing pheasants to establish a population, unless you have a sizable tract of suitable habitat which no one else can either hunt or have access to, those pheasants may or may not stick around and/or they may be hunted fairly hard depending on access to them.
At the very least you could be doing an exercise in futility. At the worst, you could be in hot water with the MNRF.
Dyth
Where there are pockets of wild birds, releasing pen-raised birds will do more harm than good.
Nova Scotia released pen-raised birds in the 1960s after their wild populations crashed, but they stopped doing this when they found that all they had succeeded in doing was to accelerate the decline of the wild birds.
Grew up in the Old South in the sixties. My Grandfather used to hunt pheasant and rabbit in Lambeth/Byron area before annexation.
Where have they gone?
The way of the Dodo.
Lack of management from the Mnrf ,the taking of hens.Allowing the taking of cow moose will have the same effect on the moose population.
Back in the 40's when Minnesota had bludgeoning pheasant populations and again in the 60's they allowed the taking of one hen in the daily bag as a control to lower populations.Ont has always allowed the taking of hens.
Lack of protection from early hay mowing,too many predators ,lack of protection against herbicides,too many Liberals.
That's what happened to the Pheasant.Its not lack of habitat.Its lack of management tools,lack of protective legislation.There are no rules protecting any game animals on private property in S Ont.Fish and fish habitat yes,not the same for other wildlife.
Huns and quail have suffered the same affliction.
While the areas offering remaining pheasant release programs are busy places, it’s mostly because there are only a couple of them. I’m grateful for them they serve as my main training ground for the dog but I spend more time hunting grouse and grouse hunting on mostly public land I haven’t run into another upland hunter with dog afield in 15+ years. I run into bow hunters, waterfowlers, rabbit hunters running hounds but never other upland hunters.
I think the problem is participation and interest. Mainly, there isn’t nearly enough of either in Ontario to drive an upland program on a large scale. Managing a game species with a put and take component or reestablishing a healthy wild population are massively time and $ consuming. We only need to look at the struggles groups like the Lake Huron fishing club are having staying viable. The fundraising and volunteer inputs required are daunting. The interest in sustainable upland hunting is fringe at best, even amongst avid hunters.
on the positive, if we few remaining upland hunters are willing to put the leg work in, there’s plenty of good grouse hunting in southern Ontario with little to no competition. For me, exploring bush lots and old logging roads is time better Spent over fundraisers and raising/releasing birds. Why try to pound a square peg through a round hole? Go with watcha got.....
Interesting discussion here.... South Dakota famous for its pheasants has many of its birds raised and released. This is state sponsored and to keep the important tourist business. With the biologist findings if true, the pheasant capital will be released birds only. Changing birds but New York state will not allow the release of domestic ducks on state land siting a Duck Unlimited report that a high percentage of mallards were found to have domestic DNA. As one New York bird farmer said, in the 60's they paid me to raise mallards to support the tourist trade of duck hunting , now I am being penalized by not being able to train my dog on state lands.
I dont think south Dakota had always raised the birds. I think they had a healthy population of reproducing birds before the the blizzard of 49. The blizzard of 49 virtually wiped out the entire population of them and took a deadly toll on many other live stock. They had a program where they flew food in from planes and dropped it near the heards of cattle. It was the only way reason the rest of the herds survived.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDH
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I remember hunting pheasants with my dad and just jumping the fence after school to go hunt them. I hunted them till I was probably mid 20's. Yes the marshes and some other areas in my area still have pheasants but not many. Back then there were fence rows that were wide and creeks that had brush and weeds for 10 yds on each side. Now most fence rows are gone the ones that are still there are plowed right to the fence, creeks are plowed almost to the water edge. Can't really blame the farmer, he needs to get as much as he can out of the land he has. Government needs to maybe give a break in the tax's or something to if they leave a bit of ground for the wildlife. Everywhere I go I see more wood lots being cut down or the fence rows being pulled out
and my father and me :) also hunted on both sides of the Winery hill.Quote:
Originally Posted by rornato
Great topic for discussion GW.
I have hunted Phez in ON, only at game farms, mainly to keep the rust off, and give the dog some activity in the off season.
I did have an opportunity to hunt wild birds in North Dakota years ago when my dad lived in the Peg. I can say that wild birds are definitely vastly different from their pen raised cousins.
It would be nice if a group like Pheasants Forever could get some momentum going up here, but given the degree of limited success even the RGS gets, I doubt it would fly ( pun intended).