The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is releasing about 7,300 pheasants into the wild this fall and winter. But don’t expect the population to boom anytime soon.
The birds are for the fall pheasant-hunting season, which begins today in the Lower Peninsula and runs through Nov. 14. It began in the Upper Peninsula on Oct. 10 and runs through Oct. 31.
The DNR charges $25 for a pheasant-hunting license and uses the money to purchase the farm-raised birds and release them in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula.
The program, now in its 7th year, emerged in response to “hunters that were missing the good old days when they had lots of pheasants,” said Adam Bump, upland game bird specialist for the Michigan DNR.
Pheasants are native to Asia. But for much of last century, they thrived here in Michigan. According to Bump, “they really loved the old school farming … smaller acreages broken up with little grassy fence rows.”
As small-scale farming declined in Michigan, pheasant populations — and pheasant hunters — declined, too.
The program is designed to recreate Michigan’s pheasant-hunting heyday, Bump said, and to give older hunters who remembered the end of that period a chance to introduce younger people to the sport.
Bump said the DNR issued around 12,000 licenses last year. More information on licensing and release locations can be found on the DNR’s website.
Hunting areas in the Lower Peninsula are open through Nov. 14, with an additional window Dec. 1-Jan. 1 in parts of the Lower Peninsula. Pheasant releases will occur weekly during those periods.
The farm-raised pheasants are unlikely to adapt to their new environment. Even if they make it through hunting season, Bump said, “most of them are not going to make it through the winter.”
