2015 Pheasant Forecast - Plainview/Kress??

A

aggie1100

New member
Hello,
I enjoy chasing feathered and four legged critters of all kinds but am fairly new to pheasant hunting and have only been once back in 2010.

I live ~8hr away from the panhandle, so I greatly appreciate any local insight.

There have been a couple of "OK" years for moisture and this year has been especially wet for most of TX.

Can anyone on here comment on what this year's pheasant hunting is looking like around the Kress area?

I have hunted ~10mi East of Kress off 145.

Thanks.
 
I am on the run and I don't have time to go into details, but you will flush a few wild pheasants around Plainview and Kress. Maybe in some pockets quit a few. The early spring growing El Nino and monsoon rains (from Mexico and New Mexico) worked their magic on the wheat crop (very green) and made all of the other vegetation green and nutritious with plenty of high protein insects, which help the hen produce an early healthy bunch of egg. And warm March 2015 temp.

The greater the vegetation the greater the nesting cover. You will find wild pheasant in that area I will give more details late on why we may see a big bounce back in the wild population.
 
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I live in Amarillo and hunt west of plainview near Edmondson on opening weekend. I spend the rest of my season in the Tulia area. Numbers are up, not great but better than the last three years for sure. Quail is what everyone is talking about. They exploded this spring and summer. Make sure you bring 71/2's. We had baseball size hail in Tulia for thirty minutes back in May. We brought in Surogators and have stocked nearly a thousand pheasant back on those farms. Hopefully they will still be ther come Dec.
 
Preston (or anyone else who knows;)), I just got in from Fort Worth, Tx late Monday night. I was only down there for a few days, but amazed at the amount of grassland areas I saw within those few days. I'm assuming there's quail, but best to your knowledge is there a wild pheasant population? If not, has it been tried?


Nick
 
Thank you Preston1 and Skeet Mc for the reports.
For the chance of quail, maybe I'll split the difference and load up w/ Rem Express #6 in case I run across either.

Would be good to know if anyone has seen wild birds running across FM145 East of Kress.
 
1pheas4 said:
Preston (or anyone else who knows;)), I just got in from Fort Worth, Tx late Monday night. I was only down there for a few days, but amazed at the amount of grassland areas I saw within those few days. I'm assuming there's quail, but best to your knowledge is there a wild pheasant population? If not, has it been tried?


Nick
Click to expand...

Nick, you are not the first guy to think about starting wild reproducing pheasants in the N. Texas Fort Worth and Dallas area.

There are bonafide pockets of truly wild pheasants all around that area. Fifty to forty years ago thousands of wilder strains of pen raised pheasants were stocked all over Texas and thousands in that area. I was in touch with one of the biologist involved the the project and they used a wary and alert true pheasant cross as brood stock (f1 brood from California-Sacramento Valley wild-trapped pheasants crossed with pure white winged (bianchi) pheasants and pure Iranian pheasants) all true pheasant ringneck type.

The TP&WD released pheasants years ago when it was cool to release pen raised pheasants to get them started. But now days with the push for everything native, its not environmentally correct or cool to release pen raised pheasants.

With hundreds and hundreds of Texan making the annual long drive to S. Dakota to hunt the wild pheasants up there, I am hoping they will change their tune by starting to release wilder strains of pen raised pheasant again to expand the Texas pheasant range. That hunting money is leaving the state.

Some of those stocked pheasants died, bad timing or dry year etc.. But like it says in the Bible some of the seed landed on good fertile ground and took root.

Look at this thread below on page 1, in the Texas Hunting Forum talking about wild pheasants in Wise and Johnson counties near Fort Worth:

http://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3890494/2

Bird watchers frequently report seeing wild pheasant around Lake Texoma along the Red River. Duck hunters around the small lake near Cleburne, Texas and lake Alvarado see wild pheasants. Added to those wild pheasants are the many escapees from area shooting preserves that get away and have what I call the right stuff to survive in the wild.

Lastly, over the years I have noticed that in that area the wild pheasants that survive best and stayed alive long enough to reproduce gravitate to year round fresh water man made lakes ponds and creeks, water is a big factor in their survival. Wild pheasants are out there but its not enough of them to hunt.
 
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Thanks for the info Preston. Again, I was impressed with the habitat. There seemed to be sources of water here and there too. Hopefully they'll keep expanding down there!

Nick
 
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