chasing and catching pheasants...

[Silverback]

how do they differentiate between a reared bird and a wild one? Round here we have certain amount of shooting (and the attendant rearing) but we have a lot of birds that clearly live on land where there is no formal shooting.

This is an instance where possession is most certainly nine tenths of the law. If a reared or wild bird wanders onto land it becomes that particular landowners for the taking. A keeper will try and hold the birds by 'feeding in' morning and evening however pheasants have a tendency to roam so will often stray onto adjoining land. Birds will also be 'dogged in' early morning prior to a shoot to push them back into cover involved in the different drives laid out for the day. If (god forbid) we ever see an end to shooting syndicates I think the pheasant will disappear from the UK, they are simply too stupid (with road sense) and too tasty (to predators) to last without serious human intervention to keep their numbers topped up!

 

[British Red]

Of course they aren't natural to the UK anyway - the Normans brought them in with the specific intention of rearing them as hunting prey so its another one of those creatures you wont see much of without shooting sports

Red

 

[wiggles]

hi mate

normally i shoot them but a friend of mine has caught one,he chased it towards a fance where the stupid thing got stuck

they are very fast though.my friend and i have spent many an hour trying to catch them

wiggles

 

[demographic]

Mind you could just go for a walk through the woods on a cloudy night and see them silhouetted against the sky and shoot them with an airgun, they are pretty thick (no I meant to say that they are almost THE most gormless bird ever to actually manage to evolve) and just look down as you do it.

So a mate told me many years ago years ago when he was into that kind of stuff










Not sure about the legality of all this by the way blah blah blah.

 

[mikehill]

I don't think you could guarantee a clean kill with an airgun in the dark Bit cruel unless in a survival situation ...
Mike.

 

[Jackdaw]

I must be lazy as the only way I have taken a Pheasant or two with the landowners permission is with a throwing stick.

 

[Biddlesby]

Almost got a pheasant at the bushmoot! Was walking along the road and a pheasant jumped straight into a barbed wire fence and struggled around for a while. If I'd been quicker I may have got it, but I doubt I would have been able to kill it.

 

[pierre girard]

We don't normally have them in the area where I live - except in the city of Duluth. They apparently ride in by rail - in grain cars. Once, while working a construction job near the port terminal, we had so many of them around we began to catch them and eat them for lunch. We caught a few by hand, but the best method was:

Put a line of corn up to a two foot section of six inch stove pipe. Have an elbow on the end of the stove pipe. Once in the pipe, they couldn't make the 90 degree bend at the end of the stove pipe, and they couldn't back out because of their feathers.

We'd pluck the bird, and put it inside a section of pipe and cook it with an oxy torch. Made for an interesting lunch variety.

PG

 

[Mike B]

The trapping of game birds is usually illegal and only allowed at the end of the season to catch up birds for breeding, though I know that at least some of the methods such as Pheasant cones are highly effective.If you intend to shoot any bird after dusk DO NOT carry any form of illumination with you such as a lamp or a torch etc, cos it would be assumed in court you had used it to aid your shot also illegal (except for proffesional control of feral pigeons).DO make sure you have written permission to take game birds from the land owner and carry it with you,and DO make sure you are in possesion of a licence to kill game get the yearly red one from your post office, lastly make sure you are aware of the season of the game you are hunting .Mike B....