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 seedy brush conducive to pheasant reproduction, there now stands three residential housing plans. On adjacent farms where pheasants once thrived on uncut edges and wasted seed, new techniques and technologies have pushed them out.
"It's a combination of things," said Bob Boyd, the wildlife manager who runs the Game Commission's pheasant propagation program. "First, pheasants need about 20,000 uninterrupted acres of good habitat to have a reproducing population, which is really hard to find in Pennsylvania any more. And costs have gone up. The whole agency budget has doubled since the last time we had an increase in the hunting license fee in 1998."
A decade ago, the Game Commission halved its production goal of 400,000 pheasants. In recent years, it mothballed two of its four pheasant farms while increasing efficiency at the remaining facilities. Instead of breeding the birds the agency now purchases day-old chicks, another cost-cutting move. In all, the Game Commission trimmed about $1 million from the program's cost and in the 2017-18 season will stock about 170,000 birds. The 10-county southwest region is scheduled to get 36,500 (27,560 cocks, 8,940 hens),
"Most private farms in the Hunter Access Program are not being stocked this year," said Boyd. "We're putting (the pheasants) in state game lands where we know the harvest rate is significantly higher."
Hunter surveys and the last pheasant banding study in 1998 combine to show that on private farms the pheasant harvest rate was below 40 percent, while on state game lands it was above 60 percent.
Land use, pheasant propagation and the hunters themselves have changed significantly since Pennsylvania's pheasant program began more than 100 years ago.
"After the Commission introduced the animal in the late 1800s, it became the state's most popular game bird," said Boyd. "Look at Pennsylvania history in the '60s and '70s when the wild pheasant population peaked. Seventy percent of hunters then were pheasant hunters. Just 50 percent were deer hunters."
Habitat today simply cannot support a sustainable pheasant population in numbers sufficient for recreational hunting, he said.
Jim Turose, a Westmoreland County hunter who says he's been shooting pheasants for some 40 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."
