Aspen (c91) News

WILD BILL

Preserving Pheasant Hunting

By Bill Schneider, 10-19-06

Will preserves preserve pheasant hunting? Photo courtesy of South Dakota Tourism.

True confession time. I did something bad. Or at least I thought I did. I don't want to get a bunch of "I know what you did last summer" emails, so I'm coming clean right here and now.

I went pheasant hunting on a preserve. It wasn't a big operation with dormitories and hired cooks and a marketing department. It was only a small place purchased by my brother-in-law. Regardless of the size, though, all preserve owners live by the same rules, as do the hunters.

During my preserve hunt, I became keenly interested in the biological and economic impact of having 220 shooting preserves in South Dakota, especially since the trend is likely to continue upward and probably will continue to spread to the New West.

I should also admit my bias up front. I have a deeply rooted dislike for anything related to a commercial shooting operations and aversion to hunting any game animal raised in captivity, so I went into this hunt with a full magazine of skepticism. I grew up hunting wild game only and have never paid a penny to do it. (Not this time either, since I was sponging off my brother-in-law.)

Well, as you can see from the companion article on my hunt, I had a great time. But I left South Dakota with a load of questions about the impact of rural America's new growth industry on hunting and wildlife, so I made some calls.

I talked to three folks at the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks, the agency charged with regulating pheasant shooting preserves and asked: Have preserves hurt or helped hunting?

Steve Thompson, program specialist in charge of preserves, is quite clear about the impact. "Definitely, it has been positive," he says without hesitation. "It spreads the hunting pressure out. All hunters can shoot pen-reared birds. We have more habitat and more birds."

South Dakota law requires preserve owners to release at least one marked, pen-reared pheasant for every bird shot on their land, and they offer hunting for seven months, September 1 to March 31. Thompson told me about one large preserve where hunters shot 10,000 birds in one year, and more notably 4,000 were wild birds.

What does that say? To me, it says the habitat on that preserve must be prime to attract that many wild birds into the line of fire. Also, a lot of wild pheasants benefiting from the preserve's habitat must get shot on nearby land, public and private. Plus, at least 6,000 released pheasants are still out there to supplement the wild population--or fattening up a few raccoons and great horned owls.

True, those pheasants raised on a plethora of rearing operations that have sprung up in South Dakota and neighboring states (another growth industry, no less) have never seen a coyote or feral cat, let along a suburban going 80 mph, so the survival rate is not so good. Thompson estimates that a large majority of pen-reared birds die in the first 30 days after release.

Preserve owners must carefully avoid getting into a "pheasant deficit." They always have to release more birds than their hunters have harvested. And Thompson claims compliance among preserve owners has been excellent, noting that not even one case has gone to court.

Another problem, if not the biggest problem, for pheasant hunters nowadays is finding a place to hunt. The spread of shooting preserves, coupled with private landowners closing their land and reserving it for paying hunters during the regular season, has made it difficult for challenging to find access to good hunting. "There is no doubt that we have lost some access because of preserves," Thompson agrees.

I also talked to Chuck Schlueter, communications manager for the same agency, and he agrees with Thompson. "From a wildlife management standpoint," Schlueter notes, "we don't have a problem with shooting preserves because owners manage the land for habitat, and that's good for all wildlife and all hunters."

He points out the obvious. "You can never have too much habitat, and shooting preserves are a good source of habitat."

Schlueter explains that his department makes annual deals with landowners resulting in a million acres of private land being available for walk-in hunting. In addition, South Dakota has about 175,000 acres of public hunting areas and about 150,000 of federally managed wildfowl production areas. These areas open to all hunters have more birds partly because of the supreme habitat on preserves.

Preserve owners farm for pheasants; that's their crop. But they can't keep those birds from flying over to nearby public and private land and getting shot by a non-paying hunter. You can limit out by simply walking the ditches around these preserves because South Dakota allows "unarmed retrieval" of birds shot from ditches but falling onto private land, including preserves.

My brief hunt supports the positive impact on habitat and number of pheasants, as well as all other wildlife species. Preserve owners plant these incredible food plots and leave them unharvested all winter just for wildlife. A farmer would have been laughed out of the state for doing that in the old days.

One obvious positive aspect is spreading out the hunting. Normally, pheasant season opens about the third week in October in most states, and the bulk of the pressure occurs in the first two weeks. Before the advent of preserves, all those hunters arrived at the same time and temporarily but radically changed the culture of those sleepy little towns all over South Dakota. Opening day is still a big deal, of course, but preserves spread out the pressure and lessen the impact.

Keep in mind that this is business, no different than farming or publishing. And a "tough business," according the Schlueter. Seems like that to me, too. That big preserve that produced 10,000 pheasants, for example, had to spend at least $120,000 on pheasants to release and 60 percent of them were either killed by predators or non-paying hunters or became wild birds to pump up everybody's pheasant population the following year.

Preserves routinely charge $500 to $1,000 per day to hunt, normally in three-day blocks, some as high as $3,700 for three days. Like any other business, you have to go out and market yourself to find and keep those customers. And 219 other South Dakota preserve owners want the same customers, plus hundreds of preserves in other states.

Schlueter assured me that, "There is certainly a huge amount of money to be made off pheasants." But do the numbers before you and your hunting buddies pool your retirement accounts and rush out and start a pheasant shooting preserve.

On the negative side, for me at least, it's impossible to get around the unnaturalness of it all. Not exactly canned hunting, of course, but not natural either. When you're out in that milo field or kosher patch, it seems natural enough, but there's always that little tug on your conscience.

Nonetheless, when you add up the pros and cons, the impact of pheasant shooting preserves on hunting and wildlife seems no worse than neutral and perhaps a net positive.

Footnote: Still interested in the South Dakota situation? Check out this page on the excellent Game, Fish and Parks website.

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