Tales from the Outdoors: Pheasants in Maine

By Bob Chapin

Maine is famous for its excellent Grouse hunting, or more commonly heard its ‘Pat’ridge’ hunting. Many hunters enjoy a crisp Autumn day walking the woods and fields behind a good dog searching for a ruffed grouse. The areas around Rangely and Azizcohous Lakes, and the Baxter region, and lots of points north and west are excellent habitat for the wiley birds and many an hour can be spent searching for the elusive birds. There is another game bird in Maine that has a small but loyal following of hunters closer to home and that is the ring-necked or Chinese pheasant.

While not native to the United States, the bird has been a steady import since about the 1830s and has caught on through natural propagation in several states who now feature the bird in its wildlife offerings. Many of the mid-western states such as Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois have huntable populations but the state that claims to be the Capital of Pheasant hunting is South Dakota.

I have been fortunate to experience several trips to South Dakota hunting both private farms and commercial hunting lodges and I can attest to its claim as the Capital. Our private landowner hunts were classics over standing corn. The farmer had a contract with the local refinery to process his corn into ethanol. As a courtesy to us, he combined huge fields leaving 15 rows standing and cut the adjoining 15 rows so it looked like a striped field. We would line up standers at the end of the standing rows and drivers would push through the corn. The thinking was that the pheasants, who would prefer to run from danger than to fly, would collect towards the end of the rows and flush wildly giving the standers many opportunities at a lot of flying birds. Somebody forgot to brief the pheasants.

As soon as the drivers started down the rows, birds began squirting out the sides both running and flying and escaped to adjoining corn patches. After we figured that out we posted some of our shooters on the sides and success rates went up. Not being a farm boy, I am fascinated with farm machinery and talked the farmer into letting me ride along with him in the combine when he got to cut the corn we already hunted after dark. Modern day combines are a marvel of engineering. The dashboard was all lit up and looked like it belonged in the space shuttle. There were more lighted dials and gauges than I had ever seen despite my time in jet fighters. These rigs do not take time to unload when the corn hopper is filled. A gauge tells the operator not only the moisture content of the corn but also the load level.  In a carefully choreographed dance, a support truck pulls along side and a boom, controlled by the combine driver, swings over and deposits the kernels into the delivery truck which was soon filled and off to the refinery…very efficient. The hunting was phenomenal and we all went home with a limit of birds.

The State of Maine Pheasant Program is focused in two southern counties, Cumberland and York. Through the purchase of a Pheasant Permit ($19) hunters can harvest two birds a day throughout the season that runs from the beginning of October through the end of December. Nobody, of course, hunts that much. Funds generated through the sale of permits pays for the birds purchased from a breeder the following year. It is the hunters from various rod and gun clubs that make the program possible. The breeder brings a truckload of pheasants to Cabela’s parking lot one day a week for three weeks beginning in October. There they are transloaded to privately owned pickups, sedans and utility trailers where hunters and their family members disperse to anywhere from 21 to 26 private properties located throughout the two counties. These sites can be found on IF&W’s website. They are released, usually on a Sunday, when there is no hunting permitted. The birds disperse and get acquainted with their new surroundings.

Many of the birds survive the hunting season but face a grueling task to get through a Maine winter between the weather and our collection of predators. It seems everyone likes to eat pheasants. The official IF&W position is that the birds do not self-propagate because of the adverse conditions and something in our soil that makes their eggshells particularly fragile. That said, those of us who have been involved with stocking the same sites year after year often arrive at those sites for the first stocking to discover there actually have been several holdover and recently born birds already there!

Pheasants are a wonderful bird for such put and take operations. They are a great bird to start new hunters, children love releasing them, and they are delicious on the table. <