Albino pheasant?

dustin mudd

dustin mudd

Active member
Who has ever seen a albino in the wild? Roosters or hen??? I have been hunting over 50 years and do not ever recall seeing one?
I have been to a small simple hunting operation in Mott , North Dakota. They have been hosting hunters for 30 plus years and they have a couple of roosters mounted. I wonder if it genetics could be regional on nature? It would be a kool mount!
 
I saw a rooster in the spring in a dirt field with about 20 other normal colored ones. This was 15 years ago when I was in college on Aberdeen. Hunted the area around that field hard that fall. Public land, ditches as many places I could leagally go. Never found him. A family friend has shot two piebald roosters from the same parcel of public two years apart. If that helps sell the genetics part.
 
So at 60ish you know how unusual they are. In the short amount of time I have been here, forum members here post a pic a maybe couple times a year, of usual color variations, usually the piebald variations. Yes, I think albinos may be out there, but not sure I have seen a true pink eyed, white pheasant. Maybe 15 or more years ago my cousin shot a mostly white one....it cackled when it flushed, 3 of us squeezed off quick shots, but my younger cousin took the extra moment of time and folded him on his first shot. The bird was mounted and was in the landowners office for many years, I think it is in my cousin's home now. I shoot quite a few roosters and over the last close to 50 years of hunting, that is the only substantially different colored rooster I have seen in person. A couple seasons ago a member here shot an unusual one, not sure if I ever saw the mounted rooster, but it was a kool rooster. Maybe someone will find that post and re-post it it here or add to the thread to bring it current.

Keep shooting and looking for an usual one. I love seeing them (pics)...would love getting one too! About 6 months until the Iowa opener!!

***Found the post, it is in the South Dakota section...I brought it to the top, check out that rooster.
 
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I’ve told this story before, so if you’ve heard, sorry.

While cutting oats for a neighbor I was coming back to the buildings on the first round, up jumps a big white rooster. Wow, I stop and watch him fly to see if he lands nearby. He goes over the horizon. I go about fifty feet more and another jumps up ! What are the chances ?

I go another 50 yards and white roosters are getting up all around me. Seems they had a daughter in 4-H that was raising them and the pen door somehow got open.

A few weeks later the local Otis was spouting off about the albino rooster he saw the night before, everyone I guess gave him a hard time about it. He was bound and determined to get that rooster, make himself rich.
 
In the late 70's I shot a totally white pheasant. Unfortunately it ended up being a hen but when it flushed there was no way to tell if it was a hen or rooster.
 
I'm 51 years old, and have been avidly hunting pheasants for 41 years. I've seen one albino pheasant in all that time and that was about 30 miles west of Aberdeen, SD. I saw it standing in cornstalks while doing some scouting before shooting hours. He flushed wild and cackled when we returned and hunted the slough that was next to the stalks. Never saw him again. Back in the late 80's a friend I was hunting with shot one that was about half white/half very light colored. This was in Iroquois County is East Central, IL. Maybe this is what others call piebald. We only knew it was a rooster when it cackled. We were too young and cheap to get it mounted.......
 
I once saw a group of chicks that had two white ones. Never saw them as adults. They stuck out so I assume they were at higher risk.
 
I've never seen an albino pheasant in my 30 years of hunting. When I was a kid, we had twin fawns in the neighborhood that were albino-ish. A guy popped both of them and I believe they (full body mounts) are in the Side Track in Florence still today.
 
I've seen three pairs of white partial white birds. So my guess is yes it's hereditary.
There was a stretch in eastern Iowa roughly from Charles City to Independence that put out a lot of true and partial albinos 30-50 years ago. I never shot one but saw 7 different white pheasants in the time. There was a taxidermist in Winthrop, Ia. who mounted 3-6 every season. I knew a farmer who shot 5 white/partial white birds. I explained to the taxi once that I chased a pure white one for 4 different flushes one day but could never tell if it was a rooster so didn't shoot. He said always shoot it. Said half the birds he mounted were hens and he never told the hunter. Said they're sterile and he would just call the game warden to give him a tag to mount a hen bird. I'm not sure today if I care that I didn't get one. They don't really make a nice mount anyway. Look more like a chicken.
 
Yeah, my Dad and I seen one last fall hunting in central North Dakota. I think it was a hen, it got in the wind and was gone. It came right over our heads.
 
Saw one while Spring Snow Goose hunting in eastern South Dakota in ~2008 or so. I’ve seen an awful lot of pheasants here in Kansas over the years, and all have been normal coloration.
 
Not an inherited trait but a genetic mutation from inbreeding over time. I know local breeders that attempted to hatch and raise only from their own stock for a couple years that started to produce slight piebalds. They are generally sterile so they switched to mixing in birds from other breeders. I have been told GFP doesn't enforce the rules if they are hen or rooster when taken, due to the sterility.

It takes a number of conditions to produce them in the wild like mild winters, good chick survival and lack of hunting to break up the covey. That produces the year over year in-breeding opportunities. Situations like a big farm with ideal crops like milo that doesn't allow hunters. That's where I got my piebald on the edge of that land. The edge of towns with elevators where lots of birds survive but locals won't allow them to be shot at is another common location I've heard of sightings. Most recently I saw one at the edge of a game farm that had been idle for a couple years due to legal issues but it was a quick glimpse and then escaped back into the off-limits fields.
 
Shot one in SE Nodak in the late 90's, pure white. Local sportsman's group in the area did release some birds so it may have been from them although they usually had a little band on there releases and this bird had no band.
 
i have one on my Land this year. First time i have ever seen one. Saw it june 16 with a hen. really neat to see, would love to just let it be, but i am sure it won't be there long. really cool topic d mudd.
 
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