Two Shots - Two Pheasants

By Adam Johnson

A light wind rustles the tops of the standing corn and gently whips the grasses next to the fenceline. It's a perfect day for a couple of hunters and an eager canine to chase a few roosters from the cover.

Finding good cover for these beautiful birds - that are technically an exotic species - is getting tougher every year. Landowners have drained and planted on even the marginal cover that was available a few years back and a lot of CRP I used to hunt is gone, but one benefit is that the roosters are more concentrated in what is left. A distant cackle generates a feeling of optimism as we step into the field.

The ring-necked pheasant is the species hunters target. Credit for the introduction of this bird that falls into the genus Phasianus is attributed to Judge O.N. Denny who released some 100 pairs of Chinese ring-necks in the Willamette Valley of Oregon in 1881. From that time forward, pheasants have been raised and released by government agencies, clubs and individuals, and these hardy birds have established populations anywhere suitable habitat can be found.

The first bird we flushed was a hen, which excited the dog even more. I hate to make a dog work close, but the season was still young and the birds we were hoping to send some buckshot at were the first-year, uneducated roosters. These birds tend to hold better and flush in decent range. Later in the season I'll let the dog chase those wily old roosters that have been dodging game loads all season, but right now I didn't feel like the workout.

While pheasants were first stocked in Oregon in 1881 the first actual hunt in that state didn't take place until 1892. On that opening day, 50,000 pheasants were killed and many other states began to import pheasants for hunting.

My favorite pheasant introduction story happened in Iowa. Iowa's first ring-necks were introduced accidentally when in the year 1900 a heavy windstorm destroyed the holding pens of game breeder William Benton of Cedar Falls. This released into the wild about 2,000 birds. Those pheasant spread north and west and constitute Iowa's founding stock. Iowa's DNR began stocking birds themselves around 1910.

The next two birds that flushed must have heard us because they were out of range. Two nice roosters that had likely been running ahead of us since when we entered the field. They were smart enough to head for a corn field we didn't have access to. About two minutes later a couple more hens flushed right in front of us.

The ring-necked pheasant has two means of dodging predators. It can run, very fast, and dodge through tiny lanes that zig and zag through the cover. Or, it can fly. Hunters soon discover that roosters will use both of these defense mechanisms to keep from hearing that pop and feeling either a whoosh of shot go whistling by or the sting of a well-placed shot.

After a couple more roosters busted out of the cover too far out for us to get shots at we were thinking we needed to keep our mouths shut and work a little slower. This was going to be a good call because now the dog had settled into a nice distance in front of us and was working the cover perfectly.

Everyone always knows when their dog gets "birdy" and this will surely put a hunter on high alert. The dog looked like it had just locked onto a scent and was going to start chasing a running bird when two roosters busted out of the grass right in front of me.

I leveled the gun at the first bird and pulled the trigger; it dropped. The second bird had picked up the downwind help of that breeze and was just about to start picking up speed so I slid the barrel out past its nose and watched it tumble after I squeezed off a shot.

The dog was working the spot where the first bird went down so I hightailed it over to where the second bird dropped. Fortunately that pheasant had hit the ground dead. The dog quickly found the first bird and I was feeling great. Two pheasants, two shots. A great hunt.

We downed a couple more roosters before the hunt was over, but nothing as exciting as those first two birds that flushed in range. It was a great hunt and one of the prime reasons I find the fields of grass and narrow bands of uncut corn an environment too hard to resist in the fall.