Pheasant sighting brings back dog days memories
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- September 30, 2024
- 400
If I were to write my own life story, one of the more entertaining revelations for readers would be learning I spent several years of my childhood as a rabbit dog. Too young to carry my own gun on hunts alongside my older brother Pat, I would instead happily earn my ticket to the hunt by diving into the roughest of the rough to drive the bunnies out of hiding.
Every once in a while, I was built pretty well for it. Short and stocky, I was built well for the job and hastened a good many rabbits toward their demise. Occasionally, another creature lurking in the same brambly domain would flush with such a boom and bluster that I’d nearly wet my pants at the spectacle. Half a century later, the ring-necked Pheasant is still fully capable of making my heart skip a beat.
For today’s young hunters, the whole notion of scaring up a pheasant during the course of a simple rabbit hunt seems about as realistic as having a moose walk under their deer stand. It just doesn’t happen. I’d listen to the stories of old-timers like my dad and others who hunted in the heyday and marvel: “If you walked a field’s length of fence line on any given November day and didn’t flush five birds, you might as well go home. It was just a bad day.”
The ring-necked pheasant is a native of Asia but was introduced in many places around the world throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The bird thrived in the agricultural environment of America’s heartland through the mid-20th century when a number of challenges including habitat loss, modernized cropping practices and pesticide use began to take their toll on the ground nesting birds.
The Ohio Division of Wildlife estimates the peak of the pheasant population at 5 million birds in the 1940s, with hunters bagging an amazing 750,000 roosters a year. To put that in perspective, wild populations are now largely nonexistent in most of the state. In an effort to keep the hunting tradition alive, the division released more than 14,000 pheasant roosters across 25 public hunting areas last fall. Similar releases take place each year, but this is not a restocking effort.
Organizations like Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever work to re-establish and conserve critical habitat necessary for wild populations to thrive. With 700 chapters across both the U.S. and Canada, the groups have a combined membership of over 140,000 members.
It’s important to note their efforts improve conditions not just for gamebirds, but also for hundreds of wild species of both plants and animals. Songbirds whose numbers have been in steep decline benefit greatly by their efforts. Each chapter carries on the tradition of local sportsmen and sportswomen leading the charge in wildlife conservation.
If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.