Is this pheasant special??

J

Jgreenhead

New member
I hunt pheasants in texas. I took someone hunting and we came home with three birds which is good for a short day. As I’m at home skinning the birds out I get a frantic call from a friend telling me one of the birds we shot is super special and it’s a “silver pheasant”. He said I should mount it because the likely hood of ever shooting another is slim to none. So I came here for your input on this “Silver pheasant” F937D95F-2ED7-4312-94C0-1D644B41DDDA.jpeg
 

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It must be the lighter colored one...is he much different that the other? If so, and you ever wanted to mount one, this would be it. If this is the guy you were hunting with, why didn't he bother mentioning this when you shot it? So did you have that one skinned or not?
 
Thanks for the reply. I did not skin the bird out I put it in the freezer. I posted a picture on social media and people started calling me. They were ones telling me it was a “silver pheasant” The gentleman I was hunting with did not pay much attention to the color.
The bird is noticeably different compared to any other bird I have killed.

thank you for the response
 
Been hunting pheasants for over 60 years and have never heard of a "Silver Pheasant" in the US. If you look online there is such a pheasant but they are in SE Asia and don't look anything like our birds. My guess is that your bird is just a slight color mutation and really nothing special. But I could be wrong. I've seen albino pheasants and some that were partially white or very light in color.

Here's a pic of a Silver Pheasant from the internet.

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That rooster just spent too much time in the sun and got faded...:)
 
He is very cool looking Chestle.

I texted a fella from Kansas that use to guide for us and his reponse was “very rare mount it.” He did not mention it by the term “silver pheasant”. Or give any further insight to why this is a rarity.

I cross posted this question to reddit. The best response is located in the Picture. I’ve added the Facebook link below where a similar bird was being sold. they listed it as a silver ring neck pheasant.

Facebook

www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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Jgreenhead's I've seen before a number of times and it was referred to as blonde or buff since chickens get the same genetic condition and are described that way. Between hunting parties of friends and families over the years I've maybe seen 6,000 pheasants harvested and maybe 5-6 of these had this color variant. Personally, I would mount it only if I already had a mount with a really long tailfeather as it is pretty cool/neat.

Chestle's has a small amount of piebald which is quite a bit rarer but not unheard of. Piebalds are hunted in my circle by SD locals as hard as trophy bucks- as in all rumors are tracked down and all other operations are halted if a good lead is known. Our family has one mounted that is about 80% piebald. That was the second one taken in our circle, third ever seen by our own eyes out of the 10,000s of birds seen in the wild over 40 years. Just a known genetic defect when you get large bird numbers in a spot that isn't hunted heavily and they survive 2-3 years with enough chance to inbreed.
 
Congratulations on a beautiful rooster.

I've always called them a buff. I shot one in a 1/4 section field that was waste deep in tumble weeds. It fell in front of another hunter that joined our party through a mutual friend. He was newbie. Since the cover was so thick I asked him to pick it up as he kept walking forward. He bent down picked it up and hollered back that I had shot a hen. I asked if it had along tail and he said yes but it was all brown like a hen with spots. I told him to put it in his game bag. As we kept walking through the thick cover several of the guys bailed out half way through and headed for the road because it was so thick. When I got back to the truck I was sick to my stomach to find out that they had cleaned all the days birds while they waited on us to get back to the truck.....including the only buff bird I have ever shot. Still haunts me. My fault I guess, I should have told him what he was holding was a rare rooster pheasant.

10 years later, I was hunting in Colorado. I had two roosters flush from a point and I pulled a double with my over/under. As soon as I pulled the trigger on the last barrel a BUFF bird jumped up and laughed at me as he flew across the road on to some private ground that was posted.

If I am ever lucky enough to shoot another one he will be hanging on my office wall!
 
No doubt you got a cool looking bird there. I've seen them. Wild ones. Not common, but not a once-in-a-lifetime bird in my opinion, for somebody who shoots quite a few anyway. I'd eat him. Or....freeze it & take it to the next Pheasant Fest & see how much someone will give you for it, so they can call it their own.
 
Jgreenhead, mount him if you think you ever will want one, you almost need a nice old "normal" one to show-off the difference. Chestle's bird deserved a mount....if you were ever going to mount one, those pale legs are great! I had been hunting pheasants for over 40 years before I had the urge to mount one. Once you start looking for a nice or unusual one, it seems like you are down to maybe 1 or 2% of them (unusual <1%, an older bird 20% maybe, not shot-up bad <50%, not roughed-up by the dogs <50%). It might take a couple seasons for a guy that only shoots 30 a year to get a really nice one to mount. Seems like it should be easy, but last year I was looking for 1 or 2, I shot 57 and finally I did get 2 nice old birds with mininal danage, nice spurs and tail length and it was in the last few weeks of the season. I keep the feet (maybe I am twisted, my wife thinks so) on the old ones I get. Use a boot lace, twine or this freebee PF deal and hang from the rearview mirror in my vehicles or in the garage....like a high school kid would do. Guessing this was a 3 year old.spurs.jpg
 
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