A Youth Pheasant Hunt launched a few years ago by the Finley (N.D.) Wildlife Club has become a popular event with multiple benefits.
This year's Youth Pheasant Hunt is set for Sunday, Oct. 21.
The free event is targeted toward youth hunters, but adults also can take to the field if they bring a young hunter with them, club president Mike Stromsodt said. Registration, which is required, begins at 7 a.m. at the Finley American Legion Hall, 600 Lincoln Ave., where hunters will receive maps of areas where birds are released.
All of the sites are on private land that isn't posted, thanks to willing landowners.
"The idea is to get the kids out, and it's about the most enjoyable hunt there is," Stromsodt said. "You can hunt a lot of things, but to have a pheasant get up in front of you, that's pretty awesome."
As part of the hunt, the wildlife club purchases 300 pheasants _ a mix of roosters and hens _ from a game farm in Fort Ransom, N.D., and releases them the previous day at several sites within about a 10-mile radius of Finley, Stromsodt says.
The local GM dealer, Finley Motors, also is helping to sponsor this year's event, he said.
Most of the release sites are larger tracts of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, providing good habitat for the birds. They might be pen-raised pheasants, but it's not an easy hunt, Stromsodt says; there's a lot of territory for hunters to cover.
"You still have to walk, you've still got to kick that bird out," he said. "People have gotten to really like that."
This is the fourth year the Finley Wildlife Club has offered the pheasant hunt, Stromsodt says; the hunt was launched in 2012 as a biennial event and now is held annually. North Dakota regulations and licensing requirements apply, which means a three-bird limit and roosters only.
"Kids have loved it, and parents have loved it," Stromsodt said. "We've had grandpas with grandkids, we've had aunts and uncles bring kids, we've had neighbors bringing kids out there.
"The kids that are interested, if their parents can't bring them, they usually find somebody who can."
The youth hunt also has a dual benefit, Stromsodt says. Some of the birds released before previous hunts are surviving, providing pheasant hunting opportunities in a part of North Dakota not traditionally known for pheasants.
"We don't have a ton of cover around here, but we're trying to utilize what we have, and it's working," he said." We've got a few spots of CRP, and as long as we can still hang on to that, we're doing pretty good."
With hens on the landscape, people also are seeing the occasional pheasant brood in the spring, Stromsodt says.
"We are making a slight impact on the environment by putting some more birds out there," he said. "If they survive the winter, we've helped to repopulate the next spring, and it's been working. That was kind of the idea _ if we could release them next to these spots (with good cover), the birds have someplace to go in the winter, so we're not just killing them off by putting them in an old cornfield where they have no place to go."
The Youth Pheasant Hunt is just one example of how the Finley Wildlife Club gives back to the community. Every other spring, the club hosts an auction sale fundraiser that pays for the purchase of the pheasants, which cost about $12 each, and other projects.
Beginning in the late '90s, the club helped raise $144,000 to repair a dam south of Finley that had been washed out by flooding in 1969. The Lynch Dam Recreation Area was dedicated in 2005 and now provides a variety of outdoor recreation opportunities, thanks to the wildlife club's efforts.
