Pheasant Industry in SD

A5 Sweet 16

A5 Sweet 16

Well-known member
Didn't want to highjack Mr. Peters' waterfowl thread.

Per SPUR60...

"As far as pheasants are concerned, it's not a sport or leisure activity anymore in SD, its an entire industry sustained at current levels of participation (and $pending) only by the raise and release of somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000+ birds onto private land annually."

I kind of feel like the private shooting preserve industry is somewhat unrelated to the non-preserve pheasant hunting industry here in SD, which is also really significant. I mean, obviously they're somewhat connected, to what extend I don't know. I wonder what the economic impact of each actually is. Any thoughts??
 
does anyone have any proof that the state releases a million birds a year? I've heard repeated claims of it over the years but never seen a claim that had any supporting documentation to the claim
 
A5 Sweet 16 said:
Didn't want to highjack Mr. Peters' waterfowl thread.

Per SPUR60...

"As far as pheasants are concerned, it's not a sport or leisure activity anymore in SD, its an entire industry sustained at current levels of participation (and $pending) only by the raise and release of somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000+ birds onto private land annually."

I kind of feel like the private shooting preserve industry is somewhat unrelated to the non-preserve pheasant hunting industry here in SD, which is also really significant. I mean, obviously they're somewhat connected, to what extend I don't know. I wonder what the economic impact of each actually is. Any thoughts??
Click to expand...
Well for one thing, these operations that raise pheasants, are a huge industry in itself. There is a lot of work and technology that goes into these pheasants that they release.
 
Duluthian said:
does anyone have any proof that the state releases a million birds a year? I've heard repeated claims of it over the years but never seen a claim that had any supporting documentation to the claim
Click to expand...

The State of SD releases zero pheasants. Licensed shooting preserves are required by law to release mature roosters. That data is published annually by the Dept of Game Fish & Parks. Last year 235 licensed preserves released 632k roosters and harvested 357k of them, along with 23k wild birds. I assume the vast majority of the remaining released birds became fox food. Those preserve numbers are NOT included in the GF&P's annual harvest estimate, which was 1,311k last year.

What is unknown is the number released by other non-preserve operations, as they're obviously allowed to, but not required to report to the GF&P. That number could be included in the GF&P's harvest estimate. I strongly suspect that number is less than 100k. But say it was 3x that....300k & the harvest rate was similar to preserves, so about 170k. That's still only 13% of 1,311k, & the wild harvest would've been 1,141. I firmly believe that so far, released birds have very little impact on our wild population, which I think recently has varied between 6M & 9M pheasants. Right now I think we're toward the high side of that range.
 
A5 Sweet 16 said:
The State of SD releases zero pheasants. Licensed shooting preserves are required by law to release mature roosters. That data is published annually by the Dept of Game Fish & Parks. Last year 235 licensed preserves released 632k roosters and harvested 357k of them, along with 23k wild birds. I assume the vast majority of the remaining released birds became fox food. Those preserve numbers are NOT included in the GF&P's annual harvest estimate, which was 1,311k last year.

What is unknown is the number released by other non-preserve operations, as they're obviously allowed to, but not required to report to the GF&P. That number could be included in the GF&P's harvest estimate. I strongly suspect that number is less than 100k. But say it was 3x that....300k & the harvest rate was similar to preserves, so about 170k. That's still only 13% of 1,311k, & the wild harvest would've been 1,141. I firmly believe that so far, released birds have very little impact on our wild population, which I think recently has varied between 6M & 9M pheasants. Right now I think we're toward the high side of that range.
Click to expand...
is there a searchable directory for private preserve license holders?
 
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