Pre-Vice Pheasant Tail Tutorial
- This topic has 9 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated Nov 15, 2011 at 7:07 pm by
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1) Flush the phez
2) Apply bottom barrel, Imp Cyl choke, 1 1/4 oz of #4
3) “Fetch it up!”
4) “Good boy!”
Nice shot Brett.
Love pheasants, shame we’ve lost almost all of ours here in Ontario. Naught but a few left in some very few,scattered pockets.Thank you John. What is the cause of the downturn up there – climate? In my neck of the woods it’s pretty tough to find wild birds on public land too. The season is only 15 days long and ditch banks have given way to pivots over the years so there’s been a lot of habitat loss.
Last season I didn’t get a single rooster so it was nice to put a few in the vest on Friday. How has the whitetail rut been up North?
At one time Brett pheasants were well established and numerous. As a kid I can recall seeing them regularily, pretty much everywhere. These days, I haven’t see a “wild” one in about 4 years and I suspect even most of those are escapees and the odd “released” pheasant.
By far the largest culprit is habitat loss, mostly due agricutlure expansion and then urba sprawl, followed by predation and competition for what little habitat is left.
Don’t know for sure but I’d guess that 98% of any pheasants harvested in Ontario are
a) Game farms where the owner plants 6 birds in their fields and then you and your dog go hunt them.
b) “released birds”. There are a few area’s where clubs/organisations release say 1,000 birds before the season and what ever happens happens.
c) remnants of b that move into bordering regions area’scrying shame but I don’t think anything can be done about it. There have been efforts in the last 10-20 years to restore and preserve what natural habitat is left but all to the best of my knowledge have failed.
/sigh
White tail season has for the most part been a bust this year. I can’t quite nail down why. God knows Ive put probably close to 100 or 200 hours in between pre season scouting, and the last 3 weeks every hour I can in the hardwoods and marshes.
Seeing sign (lots of scrapes and rubs) and trails are beat down hard but “good” bucks have been non existant. Seen some immature bucks and lots of does but “ops” at good bucks have been nil and sighting of anything almost as bad.
Game cam and experience.
Still lots of nocturnals. Gam cam is picking up very few daylight bucks and most sighting Ive had have come just minutes before sunset and upto 30min after by which time its pitch black.Climate?? hard to say. Its definately a lot warmer than normal this year. (14 degrees today, normal should be near zero). Double the avg rain in Oct…resulted in corn fields being left up a lot longer. Most just started being harvested this weekend. So a lot of deer are likely still in the corn and impossible to see and feeding well (no need to browse for food as well).
Rut
should be on as I type this. But hard to say. I didnt see a thing except 2 does this weekend at all despite about 10hrs in the marsh. So am wondering if Bucks and Does alike are already locked down.Interesting John – some of the same has been taking place down here. I guess I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get out to South Dakota to experience pheasant Nirvana one of these days.
We don’t have whitetails down here, so I always enjoy seeing your shots. I hope you get a few nice bucks on the sensor.
Beautiful shot of the rooster btw.
Almost zero wild pheasant here too. Habitat loss is #1. One benefit to this crappy economy is that development has slowed down…unfortunately most of the damage has already been done.
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