Dean it's always been put and take pheasant hunting in NH however there was a time there was a lot more put. Up until 1973 New Hampshire Fish & Game raised their own pheasants at a pheasant farm they owned and operated. They stocked birds in the spring as well as in the fall. The birds they stocked in the spring would breed in the wild. As a teen I tried to be careful when mowing hay with a sickle bar mower to not run over a nest but that was not always possible and every now and then I would have to stop the tractor and get off to ring the neck of a legless hen that sat on the nest when the mower passed. There were also stockings done by gun clubs such as Major Waldrons which raised pheasants as well. The pheasant stocking took a very bad turn for the worse when Governor Thompson ordered the NH F&G pheasant farm be burned to the ground due to the fear of it spreading Equine Encephalitis . Since then the NH pheasants have been much smaller birds and far less wild to hunt.

Indian Stream is where we were hiking, up top, along a sled trail, close, very close to the border. And later up Perry Stream, again, a sled trail. Heard about a Chinese national caught smuggling by kayak at 3 am 60 box turtles from NJ across Wallace Pond, VT. Now in detention. Hope they go away for a long, long time.

Spent 35 years hunting and guiding in that area. Shot some nice bucks there. Tracked many bucks up to the the border and had to turn around when they crossed into Canada. Put hundreds and hundreds of miles on my sled there. The whole Connecticut Headwaters Land is in serious jeopardy of being ruined forever due to an absentee new owner of the land. Seems they want to make money by selling carbon credits and not harvesting timber, which is the life blood of our north country. This will be a huge fight between the State and them. They are violating agreements that go with the land and were negotiated 20 years ago. I was a member of the NH Fish and Game Commission and was a part of the negotiations.

[url]https://indepthnh.org/2024/10/21/4325405/[/url.

Pete, were the pheasants then stocked in the spring in the whole state or just in the seacoast area? I do not recall seeing any pheasants in the Lakes Region other than in the fall stocking, but I could have missed them i guess.

I couldn't tell you, I was a teenager at the time and I didn't have to venture very far to hunt and I was still learning, I could walk to places that had pheasants back then. As a boy I can remember one occasion of seeing a hen pheasant with a brood of chicks in a neighbors yard. The number of stocking sites in the seacoast of NH has declined tremendously. I have a childhood memory of sitting in the car while my father was getting some groceries at Dan's Star Market on Central Ave in Dover and watching a man and his dog flush and shoot a pheasant where Dover Bowl and the strip mall next to it stand today. Imagine that or imagine shooting pheasants right behind Wentworth Douglas Hospital, which you could into the mid 1980's.

The carbon credits issue is serious. Our friends belong both to the ATV club and the Snowmobile and the issue came up at a meeting we attended as guests. The new absentee owner could care less about the headwaters area, only the carbon credit market. I hope it works out in the long run for area.

Steve, I grew up in the Greenlodge section of Dedham, Mass. The Neponset meadow was at the end of our street. I could literally walk out the back door and hunt native grouse, flight woodcock and pheasants all day long. Unfortunately, when they put the developments in that ended hunting in our area. God, those were the days tho.

I can’t tell you how familiar—and sad—this story is. I’m sorry for us all.

Same scenario on the North Shore of Massachusetts. In the 50’s and 60’s I could literally walk out my back door and be in prime pheasant habitat with the Rebecca Nurse farm fields of corn and the brooks and marshes bordering my Dad’s blueberry bushes and apple trees. I remember flocks of as many as two dozen pheasants flushing in unison and then walking up the singles for hours.

Gone but not forgotten.





.