The recovery of reared pheasants released on an English pheasant shoot.

Abstract

In England breeding densities and reproductive rates of wild pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) are rarely high enough to support the heavy shooting to which they are subjected. To maintain the high autumn pheasant populations poults are reared and released on many shoots during the summer months. These poults are usually released at from six to eight weeks of age during July and August, and although the pheasant shooting season officially opens on 1st October, little serious pheasant shooting occurs before early November. By this time the released pheasants have been living "wild" for four months, are full grown and in many ways indistinguishable from truly wild pheasants. The shoot owner's objects are to hold the maximum number of released pheasants on the estate until the shooting season commences,  and to ensure that on the shooting days the reared birds will behave in the same way as the truly wild ones. Holding the maximum number of reared birds is achieved by a fairly heavy artificial feeding programme combined with a gradual acclimatization to living under "wild" conditions, while at the same time the environment is modified in a number of ways to increase the chances of the pheasant's survival. That the reared pheasants should behave on shooting days as if they were wild birds is achieved by releasing the birds up to four months before shooting begins and by driving and flushing the birds from carefully designed and selected "flushing points" so that the targets the birds present are high and swift flying.

In this country approximately 37% of the pheasants released are shot on the estate on which they were released in the first year. Considerable variation is shown in the returns obtained on different estates, the figures ranging from 5% to 60%, according to the various release methods and subsequent treatment given to the birds as well as to the intensity and efficiency of the shooting. In many other countries the recovery rate of reared pheasants is so low (except when they are released immediately prior to shooting) that rearing pheasants and releasing them as 6-8 week old poults is not an economic proposition. On the Druids Lodge estate in England a relatively high recovery rate from reared pheasants was achieved in the years 1961-1965 and this paper consists of a brief description of the methods adopted and an analysis of the recoveries obtained in the first season following the release of the poults.