I have cursed and reviled Pheas, calling him a gaudy, foul-mouthed bird who invites a poke in the chops by his in-your-face actions.
So now, having grown older and wiser in the foxtail fields, I come to praise Pheas, not to bury him (well, okay, bury him too if I can hit him).
A wise soul said, "Pheasants are a state of mind." This is wisdom that illuminates and explains in few words. We can view Pheas as our enemy to be stalked and slaughtered...or we can view him as a canny, often smarter-than-we creature to be revered.
Sociologist Thomas Heberlein posed six scenarios to Wisconsin pheasant hunters, asking what factors made the hunt good or bad. The best hunt was on the hunter's own land with a good friend and a good dog, the hunters saw lots of pheasants, the friend killed two birds including one with very long tailfeathers, and the hunter killed a double, the dog made a difficult retrieve, and there were no cripples lost.
The low-end scenario was where the hunter and his dog went to crowded public land that got more crowded, another group of hunters tried to beat the hunter to the best hunting area, there were hot words exchanged, the dog disappeared and was found chasing cows in a pasture, and the hunter got no pheasants.
Sounds more typical.
After all the statistical chaff was sifted, Heberlein concluded that the weight of the game bag is not as important as the potential for game. Those who hunt Pheas are more interested in seeing than in bagging him. Pheas in the air is a spectacle, like watching acrobats at the circus.
Pheasant on the Wing
There is nothing in game bird land as exhilarating as Pheas on the wing. He is cousin to all the gallinaceous game birds--turkey, grouse, quail--but doesn't look like any of them and certainly doesn't act like any of them. He may be of the family, but he's the middle child, the sport, the genetic hiccup.
Anything another game bird does to confuse hunter and dog a pheasant will do in spades. Sure, a quail will fly farther after the flush than you expect...but a sailing pheasant makes flights longer than something launched from Cape Canaveral.
Sure, grouse will walk away from a point, but that is a matter of confusion in what is a tiny, confused brain. A pheasant does it deliberately and does not walk. Pheas runs, like you would if somehow a football had dropped in your arms and you looked up to see the entire kickoff unit of the Los Angeles Raiders bearing down on you.
Pheasants are said, like the bumblebee, to be genetically designed so they shouldn't be able to fly, with wings too small to keep them airborne. Try telling that to the tiny speck vanishing over the horizon that was, seconds ago, Pheas pushed into the air. And woodcock are called the world's slowest game bird because they average about five miles an hour flight speed. But they are so quick off the mark that you literally cannot see them flush even if you're looking at them on the ground.
By contrast, Pheas takes forever to get airborne. He cusses and kicks and thrashes and finally gets going and by then the addled hunter is tighter than a junk bond stockbroker during a market crash. Even though that bird comes up out of the foxtail like a balloon, confusion reigns and the hunter misses a shot that, given silence and contemplation, he could make with a .22 short.
Pheasants really are wild chickens, but calling a pheasant a "chicken" is like calling Mike Tyson "a well-muscled young man." You can beat Pheas, but most hunters don't know how. The secret is not to alarm him. Pheas cracked the egg with a surplus of caution. Silence in pheasant hunting starts at the motel, 80 miles from the field you're hunting. You dress quietly, eat oatmeal which is noiseless, and talk about crops, God, baseball, and the weather with hand signals. Do not slurp your coffee or your fellow hunters will frown at you.
Quiet Hunting
The value of quiet in pheas hunting can't be over-emphasized. I recently hunted a north Missouri Conservation Reserve Program farm with long, narrow terraces of knee-high foxtail, separated by ridges of taller grass. It was a heavenly sight for a pheasant hunter. At the beginning of the first strip, I shouted at an errant dog and a rooster flushed 200 yards away. Old lessons must be relearned. From then on we played charades.
Hunt into the wind. Stop every few yards. It's easier on you...and it unnerves Pheas. He may be spooked into the air, thinking you've discovered him.
If your dog acts birdy, stop and let him work it out. Far too many hunters, me included, get impatient and order the dog to move on when he's trying to sort out a spider web of scent left by sprinting pheasants.
And bird dogs feel pressure from behind. When someone is tailgating you on the highway, you instinctively speed up. Same with Streak who hears you stumbling closer and responds by increasing his pace...and bumps a bird he would have pinned if you'd given him the time to do it.
And what do you do? Why, you shame the dog, that's what. Who ever heard of a hunter making a mistake?
The worse the weather is the better it is for the hunter. Pheas, like most hunters, would rather sit by the fire and watch the Bengals mop up the Chiefs when the snow is flying and it's bitterly cold. Hunt sheltered draws or windbreaks or other thick cover. High weeds or native prairie grass, cattail marshes, all these are good for the late-season rooster.
I don't like to hunt with blockers. A traditional method is to move into an area with, say, a dozen hunters, post half at one end as blockers, the other half as drivers. It works, but it isn't my idea of sport hunting and it can be dangerous. I was a few feet from a fellow who was hit in the face by a flying pellet in South Dakota. Fortunately, it was a superficial wound, but an inch higher and he'd have lost an eye.
The other drawback to block-hunting is that the rooster who jumps in the middle of the shooters turns to rags as at least six hunters center him. Everyone has the right to claim him and no one wants to.
The Pheasant Gun
Some hunters opt for long weapons with barrels like a coastal gun, but I've been shooting Pheas with a 28-gauge for some time and wouldn't trade it for the biggest, meanest gun around.
That's because I not only hit, but kill pheasants with it. It's an American Arms side-by-side, Derby model, bored improved/modified, 26-inch barrels. When Pheas flies, the gun simply appears on my shoulder and there is no memory of lift and placement. Sure, I still miss game birds, frequently, but I almost always know why whereas with most other guns, I have no idea what was wrong, other than I've been possessed by demons and handicapped by ancient Egyptian curses.
In other words, this is a gun that fits me, that I have confidence in, and that kills pheasants deader than a bucket of rocks. I have killed 14 birds in 18 shots, mostly using No. 7 1/2 shot in a high-base load.
But I wouldn't take a 50-yard shot either. Mine have been on birds that were no more than 25-30 yards maximum range. Shots like that come: 1. Early in the season when pheasants are young and dumb; 2. Late in the season when they're in small, thick tufts of cover that they're reluctant to leave.
Shoot at birds a few times in large fields that still have good cover and you'll be lucky to get within 300 yards of the survivors. Pheas has a sixth sense about the meaning of cars, dogs, and orange- clad men.
Pheasant Dogs
The dog is central to pheasant hunting, though many hunters use them only for retrieve and many others go dogless into the eternal fray. I wouldn't be without a dog. McGuffin, the middle-aged French Brittany, lights up like a sparkler when he glimpses foxtail.
If a dog year equals seven human years, as I have read, then Guff and I are exactly the same age; we certainly have the same attitude toward life--there is bird hunting and there is waiting to go bird hunting. He began the study of Pheas some years ago and now qualifies perhaps as a graduate research assistant. He knows a lot, but Pheas sometimes still makes him look like a capuchin posing as a Brittany. For example, Guff never will deliberately circle a sprinting pheasant to pin it between me and him. Great Pheas dogs do that; Guff is just a good Pheas dog.
But sometimes he does it by accident, pointing back toward me with the absolute immobility that guarantees a bird. A neophyte bird hunter asked how I could tell when the dog is really pointing birds. "Well," I said, ready to expound...and then I finished lamely. "I just know."
And I do. There are bird points and there are other points. Pheas brings a special tension to Guff, a throbbing anticipation that lets us both know the air soon will be filled with an eruptive extravaganza, a Mt. St. Helens of bird misbehavior.
Numerically, pheasants probably place third on the game bird list. Doves are the most-taken game bird, followed by bobwhite quail.
Effects of Agriculture
George Burger, in a book on pheasants by the north-central section of the Wildlife Society, says, "Agriculture has increasingly become the enemy, not the friend, of the pheasant. The 'custodian' has become the executioner."
Take away the nesting and roosting cover, clean out the fencerows and hedgerows, fill in the ditches, fall plow, drench the land with pesticides and other chemicals, Pheas goes on permanent vacation. Pheasants have fluctuated drastically since the glory days of the 1950s when hunters took 15 million nationally. The count now may be below 10 million. There may be no more pheasants now nationally than there were in the Dakotas alone 50 years ago.
States, like Minnesota, which used to boast of million-bird seasons now total a fraction of that. Even South Dakota, which features Pheas on nearly everything that doesn't have Mt. Rushmore on it, has had some low bag years.
And an autumn landscape without Pheas is, like the absence of good wine, a day without sunshine. Both the dogs and I would be far poorer for the lack.
I believe a pheasant dog enjoys the battle of wits. A pheasant must be a bewildering and intoxicating bouquet of bird scent. Lay a dead rooster by a puppy and it will spend all day nuzzling out olfactory secrets.
Maybe all dogs don't respond the same, but mine lick at dead pheasants and nose them with respectful care, maybe even a bit of awe. Pheas in hand is a psychedelic creation by an artist who must have been snacking on exotic weeds. The bird must smell equally provocative.
Male birds typically glory in their dating duds, but none comes close to matching Pheas in his. The two sexes of quail, grouse, turkeys, doves all look pretty much alike, but there is no mistaking who's boss in the Pheas household. Male chauvinism is rampant in the foxtail. A hen pheasant is a mousy little thing, baretoed and pregnant in the kitchen while her dandy bossman struts through the harem like Valentino, eyes wild, breathing heavily (kind of like the hunter and the dog who hunt him).
Used to be every time I shot a rooster, I felt a grim vindication, like the winner in a cowtown gunfight. Now I feel like the puppy nosing the bird in wonder. Somewhere along the line, I realized Pheas is not out to spit in my eye; he is what he is, a magnificent renegade, boss of the millet fields.
He is wary, canny, sly, noisy, challenging...and, finally, beautiful, simply beautiful.
He is Pheas and no more need be said.
Copyright (c) 1996 Joel M. Vance. All rights reserved.
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