For PA pheasant hunters

[hogpatrol]

Finances force closure of two pheasant farms.

http://www.media.pa.gov/Pages/Game-Commission-Details.aspx?newsid=92

 

[JRS]

That's sad

Hunting and fur-trapping license sales continue to drop.

 

[dkhunt14]

They tried for an increase in license and got shot down. Now they are going to try for a Pheasant stamp. I heard $25.00. Matt

 

[CaptainMal]

Back in the 1960's I literally lived for the first day of pheasant and small game season. Just east of Pittsburgh there were hundreds of locations for pheasant hunting and lot of birds, many provided by the Game Commission. What a great experience lost.

The loss, in my opinion, was caused by population issues. By the 1990's most all of those areas were devoid of pheasants and full of housing and urban sprawl. I stopped hunting pheasant by 1990 and moved south in 1999. Kind of surprised the game farms were still in operation. That one in Armstrong Co. was most prominent as a supplier for the areas I hunted.

Staring at a wall picture with me and two pheasants. Memories never to return and not to be made by many others in Pa. today.

Thanks for the update.

 

[LHSmith]

Back in the 1960's I literally lived for the first day of pheasant and small game season. Just east of Pittsburgh there were hundreds of locations for pheasant hunting and lot of birds, many provided by the Game Commission. What a great experience lost.

The loss, in my opinion, was caused by population issues. By the 1990's most all of those areas were devoid of pheasants and full of housing and urban sprawl. I stopped hunting pheasant by 1990 and moved south in 1999. Kind of surprised the game farms were still in operation. That one in Armstrong Co. was most prominent as a supplier for the areas I hunted.

Staring at a wall picture with me and two pheasants. Memories never to return and not to be made by many others in Pa. today.

Thanks for the update.

Yep. 1960's - early '70's was the heyday for ringnecks in NE PA. When small farms turned into agri-business and land owners eliminated fence rows to yield maximum crops......the pheasant population took a dive. FWIW, they were never native to the US anyway.

 

[hogpatrol]

I used to hunt along U.S. Route 30 outside of Lancaster, PA where now sit hundreds of outlet stores, an amusement park, water park, eateries and motels. The pheasants were thick in those cornfields.

 

[snert]

never forget the first, second, or third pheasant i saw flushed. Not one of them was dropped, but what an impression on a 5 year old! Beaver County PA, on property that is now the Economy Borough municipal building area, now has a set of baseball bleachers and the parking lot for the cops....I can close my eyes and go back 47 years and even feel the thunder of the wing beats and the cackle. My dad never hit the broadside of a barn so the pheasants lived to old age I am sure. My "housing development" was on an old orchard, surrounded by farms only out of production for maybe ten years. I walked 200 feet in any direction and I was in the thick of the brush, the brambles, the grapevines and the cherry trees. I grew up with my hand on a bow or BB gun. God I miss it.

Never saw a deer or a fox squirrel, but saw bobwhite, pheasant, rabbits and grouse. Now there are deer in the backyard and fox squirrel all over, no grouse, pheasants or bobs. Lots of bunnies, and lots of millenials....sadly.

I miss those days.

 

[Charles]

Had some great hunting in the Shrewsbury, Glen Rock area in the 60's and 70's could see the end coming in 1980 and by 82 it was over and will never return. Very sad that this generation and future generations will never be able to experience this type of hunting. Some of the farmers put some of the blame on the treated seed?

 

[dkhunt14]

There was a farm I hunted back in the 70's. It had lots of pheasant and rabbits. It ran for miles in both directions and was never farmed. Lots of cover and nothing but high brown weeds. They disappeared there also, so I don't think it was farming or cover because that never changed there. Matt

 

[savagedasher]

I never hunted PA but I did in Michigan .
In the late 40 -50 And 60 tys Birds was plentiful deer was non existent .
DDT was blamed Larry

 

[Rem06]

last I heard Pa went from over 1 Million hunters to 500,000!

while they run around in new vehicles, buy land and timber, build fences to keep deer out of the cuts.

I also heard when they do timber, the price has to include the fence so it shows lower income?

yeah, they're falling apart!

 

[hogpatrol]

Those were some good times, World War Two vets and their sons walking side by side through the fields in search of pheasants and rabbits. When we hunted an Amish farm on first day of small game, it was like the first day of buck. My dad would bring a grocery bag full of Halloween candy for the kids and then he'd slip back behind the barn with a pint for one of the old timers. There was some kind of bogus excuse for those shenanigans but when you're a kid, you pretty much fall for them. We were invited back every year.

 

[ARshuter]

last I heard Pa went from over 1 Million hunters to 500,000!

while they run around in new vehicles, buy land and timber, build fences to keep deer out of the cuts.

I also heard when they do timber, the price has to include the fence so it shows lower income?

yeah, they're falling apart!

Don't forget to and the income from strip mining, selling the top soil and natural gas wells.

 

[joshb]

Our family had a 20 acre homestead and another 80 acres just up the road near Kennett Square, Pa. We grew Christmas trees from the 60s to the late 80s. I grew up hunting pheasant, rabbit and trapping muskrat. We raised and sold Beagles, too. There's nothing like following 6 or 8 Beagles on a rabbit, when you're a kid. The "adults" would wait for the rabbit to "circle". I'd be on the heels of the pack. Good times. The last time I shot a pheasant was in the 80s. I always thought the decline was from an increase in the fox population. Recently, I had a conversation with my vet. He said it was the Asian bird flu that wiped them out. Sad to see them go. On a rare occasion, I hear one cackle in the bottom land. That call sure takes me back.

 

[grovey]

Half the deer herd is gone, and lots of the old family deer camps bordering state ground went with them. It's pretty tough getting a youngster to sit still to begin with, but make him set all day without seeing a deer and see if he wants to go again. When I was a kid in south central PA I could walk out the front door and go any direction I pleased to hunt small ( or big) game and expect to flush at least one pheasant. Now everything is posted, and I haven't even seen a cock bird in 2 years. PA won't get a penny from me for a pheasant stamp.

 

[LHSmith]

Don't forget to and the income from strip mining, selling the top soil and natural gas wells.

Probably why they have not had a license increase in decades. Lack of $ to pay WCO salaries forcing wardens to monitor multiple counties.....I don't see where they are rolling in the dough.

 

[MrMajestic]

We sure did hunt the heck out of'um in the early and mid 70's. I remember gangs standing in line to take their turn to drive a field. Seems like when I got out of the service they were gone! 1972 was the ban on hawks, tree huggers took fur prices to practilly nuthin', farmers had to get more productive to stay a float and I guess cars got faster cause I only see them squished on the roads now! We do have Pheasant farms for "pay to hunt" but it's just not the same, IMHO.

 

[joshb]

Nope. Wouldn't catch me on one of those "hunts". Like trout fishing in a hatchery pond.

 

[CaptainMal]

Man this turned into memories.

SNERT you got me clearly remembering where I lived in 1949. We lived on a hill outside "Cereal" in Irwin. Mom and dad bought me a Daisy BB gun. I shot myself in the leg by shooting at dog bone on the ground. BB is still in my left leg and I can feel it today. Also shot near everything else that both moved or was still.

The memory of all is a male ringneck behind the house. That guy was one of many I flushed and shot at with the BB gun. Well one day I shot one that flushed and can still "SEE" that little BB hit it in the butt. Must have gone right in as the bird fell and staggered around. Remember running up to it, grabbing it by the neck and twirling it around.

Proudly took it to my mother ( likely out of season as I was probably 6 or 7 years old) and she showed me how to dress, pluck and get it ready. First real thing I ever killed and ate.

Just three years ago I got rid of my beloved Pa. mountain hunting camp I bought in 1966 out of college. In the 1980's we actually recruited hunters to come in and kill bucks. 22 bucks one season.

I last visited and hunted in 2006, killing a nice 10 pt. Since then the camp members hunting there have taken only one nice buck and a few smaller ones. This year nothing and the same nothing multiple years in the near past.

It's just not the same.

 

[jonbearman]

I lived in Rochester,ny when I was a kid and we had phesants in every empty lot around and along the Genesee river where there was some wild land. The phesants along the Genesee were big and fat. Never killed any but were fun to stalk up on them.