A proper heavyweight

Earlier this season, I shot a cock pheasant that weighed, in the feather, nearly 4.4lb, or close to 2,000g. I’ve since checked the weight of other shot birds, and the average is closer to 2.5lb (around 1,150g). How unusual was my heavyweight bird?

The average weight of cock pheasants in January is 1,150g, with a maximum of around 1,300g, so your cock was quite a monster. However, the heaviest bird I have found a record of weighed a remarkable 2,304g, or over 5lb, so weights do vary enormously depending on what is has been fed and the strain of pheasant.

In the USA, game farms have developed a heavyweight pheasant, generally known as a ‘jumbo pheasant’, primarily used for meat production. These birds regularly reach 5lb. One American game farm I found advertised these birds as “extralarge Mongolian ringnecks”, noting that “it is a challenging bird for dogs to get into flight as it tends to be a ground runner”. They clearly make good table birds, but are not recommended as a sporting quarry. DT