Pheasant rearing - worth it? research?

Terrier

I have reared and released pheasants for nearly ten years, over the last couple of years releasing more the 150 full grown birds each year. Each year we tag our birds with leg rings (spiral type which are nearly impossible to fall off) in order to identify each year’s birds.



Now I must say the amount of active pheasant shooters within the club is small but even so we have never have more than 8% of birds returned during a season?(28% one year including sightings) This is even including neighbouring clubs who inform us of our birds being shot on their patch.
We release healthly well feed adult birds who get minimum human contact during rearing after all cereal crops and silage has been done in order to minimise loss.
We have tried various release plans from, individual bird releases in order not to encourage grouping thus making easy prey for foxes, group releases (10+) at feeder locations which have undergone vermin control in the weeks prior to give the birds the best chance and are actively monitored.
Clubs all around the country release birds breed in holding pens and it is a serious business (€€€), be it the purchasing of birds, feed and on-going monitoring or be it buying full adult birds from shoots and releasing.

So to my point, should someone like the NARGC commission a study into this? We have all seen the Woodcock & Cuckoo migration projects and why could this not be done on a more local scale.
At least then it would identify the best approach for either breeding, release times, movement patterns and a lot of open questions. I understand there would be a lot of variables from land type, weather, vermin, age etc
But at least it would give some accurate information on the success of pheasant release programs! maybe



would be interested to see how other clubs get on with there returns each year!




(Cuckoo Study - http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking )
(Woodcock Study - http://www.woodcockwatch.com/ )

wildfowler94

It has been done, NARGC have a booklet on it.

Terrier

Got a link? or copy?
Can't believe they have used GPS tags but i'll wait till i see this booklet

wildfowler94

I have a copy here, not sure if they used GPS but they recorded all the losses to different predators how far the birds went and what survived.

heres the link. http://shop.nargc.ie/products/hand-reared-pheasant-releases-by-nargc

landkeeper

you sound a bit despondent !!even the driven shoots with full time keepering, hand feeding ,dogging in, predator control and protected boundaries usually only average around 50% and some alot less

lb1981

At the end of the day these birds are just for your conscience, thats the way we look at it in our club, we let out 150 cocks every year that we reared ourselves and the return on them is tiny and it always has been for the past 20 years i have been in the club.

Birdnuts

http://www.gwct.org.uk/research__surveys/species_research/birds/pheasant/249.asp


Even on large professional shoots the returns are modest enough.


NB: Note the % shot includes birds outside the estates they were released on. And we're talking very large estates, some of which have thousands of acres