Pheasants For Flat Ground

[Wasabi]

I have been in a small shoot for the past 7 years, releasing 2000 pheasants to woodland. We shoot over flat ground and have a lot of good mature woodland and around 8 acres of cover crop.

 

The past few years have seen more low birds. As a result we are thinking of trying a different strain of pheasant. We currently release bog standard ring necks. Would michigan blues or jap greens fly better and would they all wander off the shoot.

 

We currently have no issues with holding birds and have around 3000 acres of land.

[rimfire4969]

I would try a mixture of all three and see how they get on this coming season, how they hold and fly. This would take some of the guess work out of it in the following season.

[kennett]

In my humble experience, as a general rule the better they fly the worse they wander. We had blue back x's last 2 years and the wandering was ridiculous!! Also felt that they were less able to take on really strong winds, especially earlier on in the season before properly fit. Going for a ring neck type of bird this year, so will report back!

[JDog]

Alectoris rufa.

[Scully]

I'm not really sure there is such a thing as a 'high flying' breed. Most pheasants fly only to get away, and do so under power for a relatively short time; the vast remainder of their flight time consisting of a glide.

High bird shoots have deep ravines and gulleys for a reason as terrain plays a vital role in presenting high birds.

It may be worthwhile getting advice on how best to achieve drives which will lift and present birds coming over the woods you have. The NGO are always very good with advice of this sort.

Edit: Gulleys, not galleys!

Edited June 12, 2016 by Scully

[scotslad]

I'm not entirely sure it makes a massive difference.

Ask 10 different keeers u'll get a lot of different answers (not quite 10 thou) and often contridicting the last

 

2/3 seasn ago kanas X's or grey backs were the big fashion and next best thing, most shoots are back to their normal strain now, most found little benefit in flying and harder to hold.

Wot might make a difference no matter wot strain is buying from a closed breeding flock. So birds have been kept as poults for breeding, whereas caught up birds may not all be the best fliers and are birds that skirted out the back/sides of drives. or so the theory goes, a lot of the old shoots used to keep closed flocks as they thought it was better. And the old ways are often not far away

 

U might be getting late for changing ur order? Depends when u get them but u won't have that long if u want a specific strain if ur game farmer has to order the day olds specially

 

Has anything in ur drives changed? Trees getting older tighter canopy or crops ie nothing else that could of affected flying (even weather if u shot a lot of wet days last season).

[ditchman]

best flying pheasants i have ever seen ....were wild ones in the lincolnshire fens................they were so scrawny they were virtually inedible...but flew like hell....

 

i think getting flying pheasants is always something of a trade off...but there are exceptions.....on one estate i know they feed a lot of maize to a predominantly melanistic strain...they were near as big as chickens and covered in a thick yellow fat....but jeez they flew well...so very strong...............on end of season roundups we were told /asked to shoot all the low flying birds..the drives were organised so it was safe to shoot all low stuff..........this was done every year and after 2-3 years the flying ability improved no end....also the previous under-keeper was fired...as he used to talk to the birds and see him wandering about so they got used to humans.....

 

 

dont think you can buy an off the shelf flying good to eat bird.....i think it is half nature and half nurture to get a good shoot..

[Nmb]

I spent quite a number of years breeding various strains with the view of finding the best all rounder.

This is purely my own opinion and respect others may disagree.

 

Black neck- big bird which holds well however need good ground to get them high.

 

Common ring neck - best all rounder in my opinion- holds and fly pretty well and a pretty good sized bird.

 

Melanistic- at first I thought they wondered but I started to think this was more because they are so easily identified away from home unlike the more run of the mill birds. Seemed to be similar to ring necks in many ways however I was told that melanistics are mutants from the common strains? Unsure if this is true.

 

Michigan blue backs. Quite a small bird and probably my favourite to rear as I didn't seem to lose many chicks. Had heard bad reports about these birds however they held well around the pens and even after a couple shoots were there in good numbers. Problem is after a few shoots they seemed to dissapear. Due to their smaller size I feel that they gather height easier and fly hard.

[archi]

We found on our old shoot that bazanty strain held well and flew well and were a biggish strong bird