Pheasant hunting in New York may become a casualty of Gov. David Paterson’s budget cuts. Paterson last week announced the closure of the state’s Reynolds Game Farm near Ithaca. The state releases 25,000 pheasants every year, just before the fall hunting season, which are (were) raised on  Reynolds farm.

Why?

Because, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, “the wild pheasant population is at an all time low.” So, one would think, no stocked pheasants means fewer and fewer hunting opportunities. A recent DEC survey found that some 60,000 hunters took part in pheasant hunting.

Whether the DEC will stock pheasants next year – ones, I’m assuming, that would be bought from private breeders – remains to be seen. DEC spokesman Yancey Roy this afternoon declined to comment on the matter.

The photos were made by TJN photographer Joe Larese in September 2007, when DEC biologists came to Patterson to release some pheasants. I’ve pasted a story from then after the break.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Publication: The Journal News
State stocks pheasants for hunting

PATTERSON

Peering into an opened box containing seven ring-necked pheasants that have spent their day traveling the state’s highways could have the same result as cartoon character Elmer Fudd looking down the barrel of his jammed shotgun.

“Sometimes they do come blasting out,” said Patricia Vissering, a state wildlife biologist, “so you never put your face over the front of the box.”

Last week, Vissering released about 145 of the farm-raised birds across Putnam County. They were born in the summer on a state game farm in Ithaca. With the approach of pheasant-hunting season, the birds go where they’re needed. That’s just about everywhere, given the dearth of wild pheasants.

“The pheasant-release program statewide is to promote hunting opportunities. These birds are not meant to survive through the winter. They’re going to come back in the hunter’s bag,” said Vissering, of the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

On the east side of the state, youth hunting – for those 12 to 15 years old – began Saturday. Starting today, adults can take to the fields of Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties – depending on local firearms ordinances and available land – in search of the birds. Only Putnam, because of public hunting spaces, receives stocked birds.

“Number one, they’re tasty. They taste better than chicken,” said Ray Merlotto, 66, of Putnam Lake. “It’s just a good day to be outdoors.”

The retired New York City sanitation worker hunts the state’s Cranberry Mountain Wildlife Management Area and its Great Swamp parcel. Any pheasants he brings home end up as grilled breasts or pheasant parmigiana.

The state manages those two Patterson properties for optimal pheasant habitat: once-cultivated land left fallow. At the Great Swamp property off Cornwall Hill Road, Vissering and Bill Rudge, the DEC’s regional natural resources manager, stood amid corn and sorghum sprouting among the goldenrod and ragweed. Waste grains are a major food source for the birds in the fall and winter.

The two would untie each box’s string and open the flaps. Sometimes the birds – males with green heads and orange sides, females with brown spots and stripes – would burst from the box and into the sky like a fireworks display. Other times, they required prodding fingers through the box’s air holes.

“Some of these birds, it’s the first time they’ve flown,” Vissering said, referring to the farm’s large covered pens keeping birds in and predators out. “They can fly low, but flying long is newer for them.”

Lou Fico, 52, of Yonkers has been hunting pheasants for half of his life. They “fly like footballs with wings,” he said, but that “doesn’t mean you’re going to hit one.”

For him, like many pheasant hunters, it’s about watching the dog work. Some, like Labrador retrievers, flush the bird from where it’s hunkering. Others, such as Fico’s Brittany spaniel, Max, silently move in on the bird and stop near it – leaving the hunter to scare it into flight.

“To watch the dog work is one of the most glorious things to being out in the woods,” said Fico, a resident project manager at Lehman College in the Bronx. “If I catch a bird, it’s icing on the cake.”

Ring-necked pheasants hail from China and other parts of Asia. They were introduced in this country in the 1800s and in New York in 1892. Except for a healthy population near the Finger Lakes, wild pheasants are nearly nonexistent in the state.

Stocked pheasants come from the DEC’s Reynolds Game Farm, not far from Cornell University. The state’s only pheasant-propagation facility has been raising birds since 1927 and provides 25,000 adult birds annually for release. Its budget for fiscal 2007-08, according to the DEC, is $811,841.

Disappearing agricultural lands are blamed for the wild population’s demise, Vissering said. That was echoed by Stan Pascoo, president of Rockland’s United Sportsmen Association. The plumbing warehouse supervisor hunts for pheasants “a couple of times a year” in Orange County.

“Land is getting fewer and fewer,” said Pascoo, 55. “That’s the big factor in finding places to hunt.”

After releasing about 40 birds at the Great Swamp, Vissering and Rudge headed to Cranberry Mountain behind the Thunder Ridge ski area. As the sun dropped in the sky, two more stops waited in Kent. Five more random stocking trips will come this month.

When they finally emerge from their boxes, the males explode into the air and cackle their way across the fields. For all their technicolor appearance and eventual exuberance, Vissering said, the males tend to be shy when stepping out of the box.

“You would think the timid ones would be the hens. But it never is. As a woman, do you really want me to (explain) that?” Vissering joked.

Reach Michael Risinit at mrisinit@lohud.com or 845-228-2274.