[tom tutwiler]

In the late 1970's I had a good friend who lived in Gettysburg and they had tons of pheasants. Good Brits and lots of birds made for a childhood for him. Far back as the early 1990's there were still pockets of wild birds in the same general area. For goodness sakes, you could drive the battlefields and see wild birds everywhere. Flashing forward, they are gone. Part is certainly a loss of habitat. Another large factor is predators. Between feral cats and avian predators, what few brood birds still around got decimated and it's stayed bad. I've heard from several folks that still hunt up there, that deer are King, Turkey's are a close second and grouse are third. Pheasants aren't even a factor. I don't see the trend as being reversed. Habitat is worse, predators are increasing etc. Back in the old days, the three SSS were followed very closely by farmers. Those three SSS's were "Shoot, Shovel and Shut up". No one is really doing that these days (right or wrong I might add). The fines are too much and most think its doesn't matter anyway.

Final note, is I hunt a wonderful piece of property located outside of Winchester Va. The owner has the desire and the equipment and land necessary to raise pheasants. He has the best habitat you could ever find, native grasses, food plots, corn, millet. You name, he has it all. Over the past 10 years he has probably stocked 500 pheasants on his own at his own expense. None have taken. He truly thinks between the Foxes, Coyotes, Raccoons (nest predators), hawks, feral cats etc. he can't win. He now has concentrated soley on getting his numbers of native quail up to a decent level. Probably has 5 covey's on the 200 plus acres. We never kill many, and when we hit a covey we shoot the rise and a couple of singles and move on. Might I also add, the deer and turkey population on this property has exploded in the past 5 years. Bottom line, is while some species can handle things, apparently pheasants can't. All that said, I'd love to take about 100 wild pheasants from from ND and transplant them to this farm just to see if they have the instincts and smarts necessary to survive and thrive. Anyway, one person's opinion.