Wanted....a new and different gamebird

[mustistuff]

invasion of kansas

going back more than a few year, when i would hunt pheasants in mostly n.w. kansas i would exclaim,look there's a deer, a few years later, it would be wow! there's a bunch of them and then about 15 or so years ago, shit, look at em' there everywhere. the same kinda time span was also going to be repeated on turkey, it took years before i actually saw one of them, then a few and the last 5 or so years i can actually, in this the area, see more turkey than pheasants. as i stated in an old post, one flock this winter by actual count had 527 birds in it. if i were to guess the largest number of pheasant i have ever seen in a day would be a little over 300. one blessing though, the dogs have fewer jack rabbits to chase lately, some years there were a problem, don't know why that is either, bust it is a better problem

cheers

 

[morrismike]

There is likely a huntable bird that can become prolific. Frankolin, ptarmigan, chukar, some sort of guinea, etc. It's unfornate the economy is in the crapper or we could find something.

 

[Toad]

There right out side my door too! Passed 30 down the block today, and a few more about a mile away.

I have doubled on Fall turkeys in my driveway, although that was quite a few years ago. They haven't been up in our "neighborhood" in great numbers for probably 5 years. I think severe Spring flooding hurt their nesting success for several years, maybe parasites too, but it's hard to say for sure. I'm sure they'll bounce back. They are everywhere...

I have them at the farm too, but not in crazy numbers like some places.

 

[onpoint]

Point out the obvious and ones told your being negative. La, La, La, La I can't hear you...I can't hear you.

It's kind of like a person who paid for a room on a sailing ship to the new world. Then that person is chopping a hole in the side of his room/ship with a AX. The captain can tell the man, your chopping will sink the ship and kill us all but the man doing the chopping says. It's my room and I paid for it. I will do as I please.

Keep on chopping do as I please....Mistakes of the entire worlds past are before us but we choose to make them over and over again and again unless paid not to.

 

[sneem]

Guinea hen. I lived in Oklahoma and they kept trying to get pheasants to live anywhere but the panhandle. Total failure. I was talking to an old farmer about it and he suggested guinea hens. He said in the wild they are as smart and tought as a pheasant, great eating and would survive anywhere. I was just reading an article on a shotgun hunt in Africa and they shot wild ones. They were very complinentary about their sporting aspects and also as table fare. Don't know but it seems to make more sense than put and take pheasants.

 

[jmac]

Just a decade or so ago it was such a novelty to hunt turkeys in MT and WY.
Now I have a 100 coming into the cattle feeding area daily. They are wild and take off flying over the trees when I drive into the yard. Kinda fun.

No kidding Wayne,

Growing up in wyoming in the 60's and 70's I never saw a turkey. Now the black hills area in full of them. Around Devils tower in the mornings at first light the meadows are full of them. They are fairly thick around the casper area also. Casper was having a problem with turkeys in town around the cemetery, Trapped and removed them. They were causing traffic problem.

They are kind of fun to watch.:thumbsup:

 

[Preston1]

The Oklahoma Dept. of Wildlife efforts were successful in establishing wild reproducing ringneck pheasant populations outside of the Oklahoma panhandle. This was done with stocking of wilder strains of ringneck pheasant over 35 to 40 years ago, it has taken over 40 years in some areas for the wild pheasants to take root.
Check the counties with open seasons they include Grant and Osage. Wild pheasanst are seen as far south as Henessey and Stillwater.
South of the Red river in Texas, wilder strains of ringnecks released by the TP&WD mid 70's, 35 years ago are just now becoming established. Not a lot but small groups of wild pheasants are seen southwest of Fort Worth in Johnson county and a few wild pheasants are seen in Wise county. Years ago the state stocked a ringneck cross (white winged pheasant crossed the a ringneck) to the average person those pheasants looked just like regular ringneck pheasant, but they were predator wary and predator alert.

I believe the our best approach is to obtain new authentic wild and predator wary strains of the common ringneck pheasant, new wild trapped adult birds or wild eggs gathered from wild fields of China.
Look at photos below:
http://blog1.poco.cn/myBlogDetail.php?&id=5459925&user_id=6419191&pri=&n=0&stat_request_channel=

Note how alert those authentic wild pheasants are and notice the yellow iris on both the wild hens and the wild roosters a sign of true wild genes.

I am in favor of pen raised pheasants because thats how our wild birds got started.

Not all but most of our commercially available pen raised pheasants are 60 or 70 generations in the pen, a great deal of inbreeding and after so many years the tame gene take over.

 

[mnmthunting]

No kidding Wayne,

Growing up in wyoming in the 60's and 70's I never saw a turkey. Now the black hills area in full of them. Around Devils tower in the mornings at first light the meadows are full of them. They are fairly thick around the casper area also. Casper was having a problem with turkeys in town around the cemetery, Trapped and removed them. They were causing traffic problem.

They are kind of fun to watch.:thumbsup:

jmac, That's the area in WY where we hunted turkeys. We could see Devils Tower from the high spots on the ranch. Ivan Moore's ranch, down along the Belle Fourche River there were also some pheasants. Sharptail Grouse were plentiful everywhere and no one seemed to hunt them. (except us)
The first year we hunted the ranch for deer was 1967. The next year WY Dept of F&G planted turkeys on the ranch. They got somewhat tame not being hunted. Then about 73 or 74 they opened Fall season. The turkey population exploded after that.

Great Fun!