First Wild Pheasant Intrastate Release in PA in 50 yrs!

Fldbred, I think you are referring to the Sichuan pheasant. The study in Wisconsin is what led to the Sichuan pheasant program that what done in PA in the 90s. It was a total failure but I believe the reason for the failure was PA used all game farm pheasants. There were no wild birds in experiment. Sichuans were supposed to nest in woody cover and therefore dodge the haybine in the alfalfa fields. Sichians may have nested in woody cover in China but here they unfortunately liked alfalfa better.
 
I just stumbled onto this thread. I got to help out a little with this project in SD. One of the trapping areas is in my back yard. I never in my life would have thought trapping pheasants is that tough. It has to be absolutely terrible weather before those dang birds will go in the traps. The weather has to be 20 below and at least 2 feet of snow on the ground to stress the birds enough to go into the traps. Its nice you guys appreciate the work going into this. Its not easy to say the least!
 
3car said:
I just stumbled onto this thread. I got to help out a little with this project in SD. One of the trapping areas is in my back yard. I never in my life would have thought trapping pheasants is that tough. It has to be absolutely terrible weather before those dang birds will go in the traps. The weather has to be 20 below and at least 2 feet of snow on the ground to stress the birds enough to go into the traps. Its nice you guys appreciate the work going into this. Its not easy to say the least!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the work you are doing and the input, and trust me, we know how difficult it is! :thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Slammer, The Sichuan project in Pennsylvania was destined to fail from the begining. The birds Pa. received from Michigan were pure Sichaun but no longer wild and to further the derailment they crossbred these birds, creating a "hybrid" bird. But in my opinion the biggest reason for failure was the habitat that these birds went into. I can remember driving through the designated areas and saying to myself here we go again. The habitat in these areas were nothing like the current WPRA's.
The birds Wisconsin used were from Iowa and the Jilin Province. It seems they are no longer doing this, they now concentrate on improving habitat for their existing wild population and provide a pen raised bird for sportsman that don't have the abilty to hunt the wild birds and to provide additional hunting opportunities.
 
This doesn't pertain to pheasants but I thought it was interesting. Surrogators are being used in trap and transfer projects using wild quail. They are kept in the Surrogators for 30 days. Here is what was in the email I got:

RPQRR still seeking Surrogators

surrogatorIf you have a Surrogator you?re not using we?d be interested in borrowing it this winter. We use them to ?sequester? translocated wild bobwhites and blue quail for the month of April. Deemed a ?soft release? we hold the birds in the Surrogators and feed them a layer ration for thirty days before releasing them. This technique was used last year at RPQRR and appeared to help (a) increase number of birds that entered the nesting season (by eliminating mortality from raptors during April, which has been substantial in our ?hard releases? during 2013 and 2014), (b) stimulating nest output (40 nests from 40 female blue quail released last May), and perhaps promoting site fidelity (i.e., when released the blue quail didn?t take off looking for Big Lake?they stayed on site). We will be adding a soft release site to our Operation Transfusion effort in Stephens County next April and maybe expanding our translocation efforts if we can locate enough ?quail donors.? Our goal with these translocation efforts is to determine whether translocations are effective at restoring defunct populations of bobwhites and blues; if we can, we?ve got ammunition for TPWD to approve ?Triple T? permits (?Trap, Transport, Transplant?) as a tool in the quail manager?s toolbox. If you have a Surrogator we can borrow, please contact me (drollins@quailresearch.org) and we?ll make arrangements for picking it (them) up. If you have one you wish to donate to RPQRR, you can claim a non-cash donation on your taxes. If you?d like to make a donation towards purchasing a new Surrogator, I?m negotiating with the owner for a discounted price

I've heard and read about Surrogators before but they were never used like mentioned above. I thought it was interesting.
 
Very interesting, I can never get enough of this stuff! Thanks for sharing.
 
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