As the previous post said. I am well versed on the hen-rooster equation. I believe that to be true, as long as their is habitat to support an increasing population of pheasants. This can be demonstrated in a pen raised bird, pheasants can and will be vicarious in mating, a produce a lot of babies. This has been reported so long that we are conditioned, just like the hens. When you heard it so long, it becomes gospel. 50 years ago it worked, we had a lot of habitat. Now we have very limited habitat, we struggle with segmented property, creating populations which have no interaction to other specimens. We are urged to get "wild" genes into our birds with different strains, can wildness be encouraged by hunting hens? will that produce a better wild bird? Well it's sacrilegious! No body does it because we are hide bound to dated philosophy of the dim and getting dimmer past. I have said this before, pheasants and quail are not waterfowl. It's is a space problem. 40 acres can here and there be a key link for waterfowl. 40 acres in the scheme of things with pheasants and quail is woefully inadequate, to have a huntable population. Again, habitat, forget the eurasian marvels, roost in trees, propagate on billiard tables. We have countless dollars, constant study, encompassing all of these theories, remember the lice, weird soil composition arguments? To make this abundantly clear, I am sure that in the Valhalla of habitat, that preserving hens, will have a positive impact. However, in the situation we see now, where wariness, caution, adaptability, are necessary, and desirable, is saving hens valuable? Or is stockpiling a non-premium hen a detriment to the species as a whole. There was a movement among D.U. members which had an agreement where if they shot a hen, they paid a fine to D.U. as compensation, theory is like pheasants, every hen sent north produced an increase of ducklings. It now has been studied and determined that the harvest of hens is inconsequential in the next generation of ducks! Even so, it is debated as heresy, at every duck club over the dinner table. My challenge here is to investigate, do a county research project, rather than be locked into the quiet past. We have new problems we must have new ideas, to overcome trials we face! (Abe Lincoln said that). Some research in the past does support this. In some cases preserve a dwindling resource. Reading this blog, it is the current sportsman who will resist this! I point out that we have devastated Illinois pheasants, Pennsylvania's pheasants, Indiana's birds, as far as I know the hen pheasant harvest did not cause the problem. Maturing forest, land conversion, foreign grass species, along with a lot of early Game Management disinterest, did the job. Producing a population of hens which cannot be supported in substandard habitat, will NOT have the desired result. In fact it may be bad, birds will congregate at areas of premium habitat, also know by predators, avail themselves to what forage is around, equally, until it's gone, and starve equally when it is! Those that survive are stressed, have to take inordinate risks to continue to survive, go into breeding season undernourished. Not the best way have a surplus of eggs, and the ability to breed, and hatch the chicks. The verbatim believe, that what we THINK is the truth, but might not be relevant today. Again, no risk, no ideas, recipe for repeated failure. Waste resources, possibly availing us nothing.
