Improve your success by understanding the pheasants daily movement patterns. Pheasants are similar to whitetails in their daily patterns. Deer have bedding areas and pheasants have roosting areas. Deer and Pheasant both have feeding areas and they both utilize escape routes.
A day in the life of a pheasant goes something like this. They wake up and shortly after sunrise they walk or fly out of their roosting area headed towards their breakfast table, which is usually a crop field. They will spend an hour or two eating and then will head to their loafing cover such as a grassy field edge. Pheasants have also been known to spend their loafing time in shelter belts. After several hours of loafing they head back out to their food source for an evening meal, usually an hour before sunset. After filling up they head to their roosting cover which is normally thick grassy areas and sloughs.
Pheasants will also combine their roosting, feeding and loafing areas if the habitat allows. Give a pheasant a corn field with a lot of grass and weeds in between the rows and they may never leave the field until its harvested. Pheasants are not big travelers and will spend the majority of their life within a 1/2 mile area or less.
Weather and hunting pressure changes the pheasants daily patterns. Extreme cold, heavy snow and hunting pressure will cause pheasants to hold tight in the thickest cover available. On warm late season days the pheasants may spend the majority of their day scratching for food rather than loafing and this can be prime time to spot and stalk pheasants.
3 comments:
What a shame you study pheasants as a means to kill them. I have a pheasant of 6 months old now... that I have brought up from a day old. Highly intelligent animal.... they don't stand much a chance shot out from the sky or frisked out from the land so they fly.... barbaric sport...
What I love about about the internet is that it allows everyone to express their point of view. As for me, what is barbaric is the way Mother Nature treats its animals during the harsh winters, years of drought and diseases because of over population. Without proper wildlife management, which includes hunting and killing animals, the animals would suffer a far worse death than by shooting. One other point that I always want to make clear to everyone is that without the money and support of the hunter there would be far less animals roaming the earth for both hunters and non-hunters to enjoy.
I prefer pheasants cut into small strips, then dipped in my favorite batter and deep friend.mmmmm. and 6 months old is about the right age.
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