For 2017-18, a modern revision of a century-old program
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When I was a teenage hunter in the 1970s, growing up on the rural side of Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs, our beagle Smoky would run cottontail rabbits and ring-neck pheasants right through our backyard.
I knew the running birds would fly when they reached the abrupt edge of the tall weeds. When Smoky started to wail — it was more of a moan when he was on rabbits — I’d rush with my single-shot 20-gauge to a spot behind my Dad’s garden and wait for the explosion of color, sound and motion. The flushes were spectacular, the action intense and sometimes when my shooting was straight the birds would drop in front of Smoky’s doghouse. I’m sure he loved that.
I was reminded of Smoky’s wail, the abundant pheasant habitat surrounding my boyhood home and the most exciting hunting of my life in January when the state Game Commission announced new regulations it said would keep pheasant hunting alive in Pennsylvania.
When the statewide pheasant season opens Oct. 21, adult and senior license holders who target pheasants will require a new annual pheasant permit costing $25 plus a $1.90 automated licensing fee in addition to a general hunting license. The permit is not required for junior hunters. No permit is required to hunt other small game including cottontail rabbits, ruffed grouse and red, gray and fox squirrels.
Pennsylvania has about 85,000 pheasant hunters. In the program’s inaugural season an estimated 60,000 pheasant permits are expected to be sold generating $1.5 million in revenue, a little less than half of the propagation program’s $3.7 million cost.
A drive through my old neighborhood illustrates the problem. Where once were feral fields of tall THIS WEEK: Revenue from Pennsylvania’s 850,000 hunters should pay for half of an expensive pheasant program used by 85,000 hunters. • Yes • No seedy brush conducive to 36,500 pheasant reproduction, hens), there now stands three “Most private farms in residential housing plans. the Hunter Access Program On adjacent farms where are not being pheasants once thrived on stocked this year,” said uncut edges and wasted Boyd. “We’re putting [the seed, new techniques and pheasants] in state game technologies have pushed lands where we know the them out. harvest rate is significantly
“It’s a combination of higher.” things,” said Bob Boyd, Hunter surveys and the the wildlife manager who last pheasant banding runs the Game Commission’s study in 1998 combine to pheasant propagation show that on private farms program. “First, the pheasant harvest rate pheasants need about was below 40 percent, 20,000 uninterrupted acres while on state game lands of good habitat to have a itwas above 60 percent. reproducing population, Land use, pheasant which is really hard to propagation and the hunters find in Pennsylvania any themselves have more. And costs have changed significantly gone up. The whole since Pennsylvania’s agency budget has doubled pheasant program began since the last time we more than 100 years ago. had an increase in the “After the Commission hunting license fee in introduced the animal 1998.” in the late 1800s, it
A decade ago, the became the state’s most Game Commission popular game bird,” said halved its production Boyd. “Look at Pennsylvania goal of 400,000 pheasants. history in the ’60s In recent years, it mothballed and ’70s when the wild two of its four pheasant population pheasant farms while increasing peaked. Seventy percent efficiency at the of hunters then were remaining facilities. Instead pheasant hunters. Just of breeding the 50 percent were deer birds the agency now purchases hunters.” day-old chicks, another Habitat today simply cost-cutting move. cannot support a sustainable In all, the Game Commission pheasant population trimmed about $1 in numbers sufficient for million from the program’s recreational hunting, he cost and in the said. 2017-18 season will stock Jim Turose, a Westmoreland about about 170,000 birds. County hunter The 10-county southwest who says he’s been shooting region is scheduled to get pheasants for some 40 (27,560 cocks, 8,940 years with five different dogs, said he’s not convinced.
“I accept that housing plans and shopping malls have taken all the good pheasant ground. That’s just the way it is,” he said. “But it’s hard to believe there aren’t enough wild places in this state for pheasants to live if they were managed better.”
Turose said that as early as the 1980s he supported shorter seasons, smaller bag limits “and no-pheasant-hunting areas that shifted every couple of years to give pheasants a chance to come back.”
The Game Commission, he said, allowed some pheasant areas to be hunted out.
“Now look at what they’re doing — stocking less and charging more for a [pheasant] permit than for the whole hunting license,” said Turose.
Boyd said he understands the gripe.
“Paying more and getting less is never a good thing,” he said. “Pheasant hunting is something that’s always been free, and this is something new. But I think it’s good that we have any kind of program at all. Last year when we didn’t get a license fee increase, this program was about to end. A lot of states don’t have pheasant programs anymore. They stopped them.”
Others make pheasant hunters pay up. New Jersey charges $40 for a pheasant-quail stamp in addition to $27.50 for a resident firearm hunting license.
“The fact is, if hunters want pheasants they have to get them from us,” said Boyd. “And until we get a license fee increase, this is probably the best we can afford to offer.”