We got Pheasant stamps here a number of years ago. Ya get to buy 10 a year-was hardly worth keeping a bird dog anymore.  The State said it still cost too much for the birds and had local Clubs do the stocking to further cut costs.
   Since I have raised Labs for years I finally bought tags and went to a Public Hunting State property to hunt a Pheasant with a pup. Had hunted Pheasant before this change for a long time.
    As luck would have it an old guy parked in a lot there said they had stocked a couple of hours before-half dozen birds in a place that used to get a few dozen.
   I saw one walking around in a nearby yard and when I got into the fields some Club guys were just walking out. Said they had 5 birds and were going back to their Private Club property for the rest of the day.
  My Pheasant tags were imediatly cut in half and dropped into a nearby garbage can. That was the end of THAT sport.
   So much for JOHN Q when the hogs chase their buddies in the stocking truck.
Be careful guys -watch those rules and tag things VERY carefully.

Hi Dar,
  As I recall ours went right into the program and the stocking by Clubs was also a cost saving measure.  Game Wardens used to do all the stocking. The Clubs were good enough to step up and do the job.
    When Wardens did it nobody knew when or how many birds or for that matter exactly where the stocking was gonna take place. You went out and HUNTED the birds.
  People being people apparently changed all that with the Clubs doing the job- ya know that 'good ol Ed'  kinda stuff.
   With the greatly diminished number of birds and the obvious getting over that occured  Pheasant Hunting is pretty much a done deal now. Used to know a lot of guys who participated -now- never ever hear of it unless its a Club guy.
    As you can tell I'm not in a Club- nothing really against them but I hunt alone or with my sons or grandkids and am very happy that way. Was in a large Club years ago and it was nice but just not my cupa tea. Had my Boy Scout troop in a local Club and it was a great place for the kids but I never took a membership even though it was offered.
   Sometimes they get a bit overzealous. Know one instance where the State Bow Club lobbied real hard for bow guys to have to take a course in order to buy a tag. The Legislature passed it into Law.  Even if one had bow hunted for over 30 years - had to take to course to get a tag-no 'grandfathering' at all.
    You will never guess who got to teach the course all over the State and get the Pitman funds. Non Clubbers are simply low hanging fruit with NO organized means of being heard-if they even are informed at all about whats up in regard to their sports.
  Dont mean that as a bad thing cause Clubbers are sportsmen too- but its not the same thing, when ya get right down to it I would bet that most are not Club guys and its just human nature to care for yourself first.

Why does it cost them over twice as much to raise a bird than a private company ??

Quit raising their own and buy all from private farms and you could stock double the amount for the same money.

ORIGINAL: bingsbaits

Why does it cost them over twice as much to raise a bird than a private company ??

Quit raising their own and buy all from private farms and you could stock double the amount for the same money.

 
It doesn’t cost the Game Commission more to raise a quality pheasant then it costs a sportsmen club or a private propagator. Where the cost comes from is building and maintaining enough crates, sending enough trucks, burning enough fuel and having enough manpower on hand to deliver pheasants to all of the various counties and stocking locations across the state several times before and during the pheasant season.
 
Raising the birds is not the expensive part, it is getting them from the pheasant pens to the fields where hunters can harvest them that drives the cost up for the Game Commission birds. Propagators only include the cost of what it takes them to raise a bird and don’t have to include the cost of sending trucks from half way across the state to pick them up and then take them back across the state before they stock them.
 
In Elk County we send at truck to Lycoming County to get pheasants before the youth hunt, then the following week that truck takes those crates back and picks up the pre-season load of birds, Then there are two in-season stockings where that return crates and pick up birds is repeated. Then there is a stocking for the late season. Besides the truck running from Elk to Lycoming County and back each stocking day there is another crew that meets the big truck with a smaller truck so they can take part of the birds to the other side of the county while the big truck stocks the main pheasant areas. It takes a couple hours to get the birds all stocked once the truck is back in the county.
 
But, it is great pheasant hunting once the birds are stocked. We have thousands of acres that are managed primarily for small game hunting and I find hunters from all over the state and several surrounding states hunting the area in pheasant season. Most of those that have dogs can find birds pretty much every day of the season and I never go there in the season that I don’t fins some pheasant hunters. It is a great program, partly because the Game Commission gets great partnership support and participation from the local Pheasants Forever Chapter. In fact the local Pheasants Forever Chapter is actively working on planting row crops on about 25 acres of those game lands pheasant hunting sites right now.
 
That is in fact part of what we will be profiling on our Game Lands Deer & Habitat Management Tour tomorrow.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn        

ORIGINAL: S-10

Why does it cost them over twice as much to raise a bird than a private company ??

For one thing the PGC workers get a union wage plus benefits and retirement vs probably a minimum wage for a private outfit. Then you have to compare how they are required to buy feed, building materials,etc, etc, when compared to the individual outfit.
Any state run outfit has to follow a lot of costly requirements in their day to day activities vs the private outfit. They probably have to absorb a portion of the overall administration costs and cost of the PGC management. It's no different than the overhead costs of any large company as compared to you being the boss and worker, your son being the other worker and your wife running the business side.

 
Those too are valid points.
 
We constantly find that we cannot buy something at the place it would be the cheapest and have to go to a state approved vendor, pay more and have it shipped to us even though we could have bought the exact same thing for less money locally and had it a week earlier.
 
It doesn’t make sense and costs more money but that is the only way we can do it because of most things we use already being on a state contract with some company. That all got a lot worse when Rendell became Governor but so far even with a new Governor it hasn’t been changed back to where we can once again buy where it is the most economical and practical.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn

ORIGINAL: RSB

ORIGINAL: bingsbaits

Why does it cost them over twice as much to raise a bird than a private company ??

Quit raising their own and buy all from private farms and you could stock double the amount for the same money.

It doesn’t cost the Game Commission more to raise a quality pheasant then it costs a sportsmen club or a private propagator. Where the cost comes from is building and maintaining enough crates, sending enough trucks, burning enough fuel and having enough manpower on hand to deliver pheasants to all of the various counties and stocking locations across the state several times before and during the pheasant season.
 
Raising the birds is not the expensive part, it is getting them from the pheasant pens to the fields where hunters can harvest them that drives the cost up for the Game Commission birds. Propagators only include the cost of what it takes them to raise a bird and don’t have to include the cost of sending trucks from half way across the state to pick them up and then take them back across the state before they stock them.
 
In Elk County we send at truck to Lycoming County to get pheasants before the youth hunt, then the following week that truck takes those crates back and picks up the pre-season load of birds, Then there are two in-season stockings where that return crates and pick up birds is repeated. Then there is a stocking for the late season. Besides the truck running from Elk to Lycoming County and back each stocking day there is another crew that meets the big truck with a smaller truck so they can take part of the birds to the other side of the county while the big truck stocks the main pheasant areas. It takes a couple hours to get the birds all stocked once the truck is back in the county.
 
But, it is great pheasant hunting once the birds are stocked. We have thousands of acres that are managed primarily for small game hunting and I find hunters from all over the state and several surrounding states hunting the area in pheasant season. Most of those that have dogs can find birds pretty much every day of the season and I never go there in the season that I don’t fins some pheasant hunters. It is a great program, partly because the Game Commission gets great partnership support and participation from the local Pheasants Forever Chapter. In fact the local Pheasants Forever Chapter is actively working on planting row crops on about 25 acres of those game lands pheasant hunting sites right now.
 
That is in fact part of what we will be profiling on our Game Lands Deer & Habitat Management Tour tomorrow.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn        

 
I'll call BS on this one.  One of the clubs in central PA I am associated with buys there birds from Ohio, has them shipped to central PA (in other words take the shipping all over PA element out of your argument), houses and feeds them until they are needed, stocks them, pays a mortgage on the land, pays insurance (quite a large and expensive policy due to guns being involved), plants cover and food plots (with all of the associated farming cost of fuel, machinery, repairs, seeds, fertilizer, etc.), pays workers to stock and clean birds, maintains a kennel of finished bird dogs (unless the guides bring their own), pays guides, advertises, and they still make enough of a profit to provide themselves with a living wage plus be able to put money back into the business and yet they only charge their retail customers about the same amount that it costs the PGC to raise and stock birds in PA on ground that is paid for by hunters, requires no insurance, requires no advertising, requires no farming, requires no dogs, requires no guides, requires minimal labor for stocking (mass 3-4 times per season vs. 3-4 times per day for 3-6 dyas per week for six months), requires no bird cleaning labor, and makes no profit.  And pays no permit fees to the PGC, either.
 
It could be purchasing costs to some degree, but the larger factor is the legacy costs of post retirement benefits of PGC personnel.  While I have no idea what the actual retirement costs are for PGC personnel, my wife works for our local county, so they should be similar.  Our county is cheap  -- they pay, on average, 30% less than counties in the same class.   On her most recent benefits enrollment the stated cost of her health insurance was $14,000 per year.  Is that high compared to the PGC policy, maybe, because it is a pretty good policy and the government is probably getting gouged like government tends to do.  Is that low compared to the PGC policy, maybe, remember our county is cheap and probably would not pay for as good a policy as the state of PA.  So for debate's sake, lets say it is too high and drop it back almost 30% (28.6% for math whizes like Doc) to $10,000 per year.  And let's say that the PGC game farm worker retires when they are 50 (with 30 years of service becuase they started when they were 20).  That leaves 15 years at $10,000 per year or $150,000 to pay just for health care costs and does not include a defined distribution pension plan.  Nor does it include any increases in healthcare insurance premiums over those 15 years.  Nor does it include the albeit reduced healthcare insurance rate because of Medicare kicking in at age 65 for the next 10 years of average life expectancy.
 
Tell me again how its the cost of the stocking?
 
What would the costs be to the PGC if they bought the birds from local producers, within a reasonable geographic area to stocking sites and cut the cost of PGC personnel completely from the picture?

ORIGINAL: RSB

There was a time, back in the 60’s and 70’s when the Game Commission did buy a high percentage of the pheasants that were being stocked. It was not a cost savings then, in fact it cost them more than it was costing them to raise the birds them selves and the birds they were paying top dollar for were not as heavy or as wild and had a lower survival rate. They eventually discontinued the purchase of privately raised pheasants, after a number of years; because they couldn’t get a quality bird for the same price they could raise them.
 
The price of raising a Game Commission pheasant will decline again if they get back to producing and stocking the higher number of birds the facilities are designed to handle. The production has been reduced for a number of years now due to not having adequate funds to raise and stock more birds. The presently scheduled production plan calls for doubling the pheasant production for next year. That will reduce the cost per bird raised and probably even per harvested bird.
 
Anyone who questions the value of the pheasant in the big picture of hunting and in youth recruitment and retention should make a trip to the area being managed for small game hunting on SGL#44 in Elk County next fall. You can go there any day of the season and find hunters that are finding birds and if you go on an evening or Saturday when the kids aren’t in school you will find many kids who are very involved in the future of both hunting and conservation. When we held the volunteer work day on that section of game lands last spring many of those young hunters were there working to make better habitat for the future. That is also part of the value of the pheasant program.
 R.S. Bodenhorn       

 
I agree with most of your post.
 
I attest that the PGC stocked birds of today are better than those stocked back in the 70's and early 80's (couldnt tell you about the 60's).  But just as the PGC techniques of rasing birds has changed, so has the private sector; the birds that are stocked at the preserves I am assoicated with never see a human until captured.  That was not the case back in the day, so it is really unfair to compare the two different times.  We have better cars, planes, farming techniques, etc. than we did during the period that you reference 40 to 50 years ago.  don't compare a 60's car to a 2011 and don't compare a 60's farm raised phesant to a 2011 one, either.
 
I also agree that volume drops cost.  That being written, some private producers raise far more than the state.  Therefore their cost needs to be lower.  One can buy the same birds that preserves use, meaning they are of adequate size, fly well, and are hardy enough to last into spring (care to see photos of birds that were stocked in October, hunted over five days per week by great dogs, and were hanging around in late March/early April) enough for people to pay good money for them for about $10 per bird when as few as 100 are purchased.  Raise that number into the 1,000's and free delivery to the stocking area is probably not out of the question.
 
As for the PGC stocking more pheasants in 2012, I believe that rise in numbers was predicated on additional funding, meaning either a license increase or inclusion of a pheasant stamp (although the initial drop from 200k birds to 100K was to go back to 200K after PGC game farm renovations were completed and I believe they are now done, so why the hinge of increased funding?), so it is not a given that will happen, but I could be wrong.
 
I do not question the value of the stocking program, although not as much for youths as adults trying to cling to the hunting heritage.  With the exception of the youth season, the number of youths I have seen in my area during the pheasant season for the last five years (maybe more) is exactly zero.  I will give that I hunt very few Saturdays, so there may besome afield then.  As for the adults, I try to take as many as possible, whenever possible -- it extends my hunting day by being able to have more birds come to bag and gets the dogs out for longer.  Sometimes I get one guy to go, sometimes the full four extra.  In any case, if it weren't for these couple of pheasant hunting days afield, these guys would have packed it in a few years ago, and they are not bashful about telling you that buying a license just to hunt deer, especially with the way deer hunting is today in our area, is just not worth it to them.  In other words, if it weren't for hunting phesants a few times per season in addition to hunting deer, they would quickly join the ranks of former hunters.

Used to hunt Pheasant years ago when I had a dog. Many birds were left overs and actually flew. Today it seems like you have to kick a bird (newly stocked) to get it up and not much fun. Everyone is concentrating on big game and small game is not as popular among most. I agree, keep supporting programs to keep our farms stocked with birds. The PGC should have plenty of money to do so and must if our hunting heritage is to continue.

Hey Dar-
    Didnt realize what condition you folks were already in over there. One million down to one hundered thousand is HUGE. Askem to raise the price of the darned stamp and get some birds. Would  pay off with increases in gross license sales I'd bet.
   I'd pay an extra hundred a year if it meant getting some birds back here.

ORIGINAL: DarDys

ORIGINAL: Outdoor Adventures

Used to hunt Pheasant years ago when I had a dog. Many birds were left overs and actually flew. Today it seems like you have to kick a bird (newly stocked) to get it up and not much fun. Everyone is concentrating on big game and small game is not as popular among most. I agree, keep supporting programs to keep our farms stocked with birds. The PGC should have plenty of money to do so and must if our hunting heritage is to continue.

Just some questons --

How long has it been since you hunted pheasants in PA?  I keep hearing about the newly stocked birds that wonlt fly, but have yet to see one since the early 80's when they were cage reared vs. flight pen reared.  The birds the PGC has stocked over the last 5-10 years have been excellent fliers and those that make it past a few days of hunters and predators become very smart, very fast.

Again, this goes to when was the last time you hunted pheasants in AP.  Ever since the reduction in stocking numbers, from 1,000,000 to 200,000 to less than 100,000, none have been stocked, at least int he five counties I hunt them in on any farms at all -- they have all been on public ground, state or federal.

It's been a few years as I don't hunt as much small game as I once did. Many friends still hunt small game and seem to always comment about stocked birds not flying. I guess you could compair stocked game to stocked trout if you wanted. Not really like catching or shooting one brought up to mature in the wild. Don't get me wrong stocked fish and stocked birds are great for our sport and give our youth(and adults) the opportunity to harvest such.

Glad to hear that. I have also seen a number of birds along the roads as mentioned. You have to get out of their way as not to kill them. Just not natural for a pheasant to walk along the road edge. Not sure if there is actually any facts as why our pheasant population has declined over the years. Anyone know for sure what caused the decline of wild birds. And don't tell me it was because of FR (flock reduction) or that a tail length restriction needed to be enforced.

I would guess lack of habitat would be one of the reasons right beside to many predators..
The Yotes have really pounded the small game here.

Although I don't remember very many wild pheasants up here in the NW when growing up.

IN MY DAY
1. Coyotes were unheard of.
2. Fox had a bounty on them and were hunted and trapped year around
3. Fishers were unheard of.
4. Hawks and Owls had a bounty on them and were hunted year around
5. Between the PGC and various clubs over one million ringnecks were released every year
6. The PGC fed turkeys during the winter
7. The PGC cut feed for the deer in the winter

There were over a million hunters, game was plentiful and increasing, both deer and small game, and life was good


TODAY
1. Coyotes have taken over Penns woods
2. There is no bounty on fox, a fairly short season and the fur price is rock bottom
3. The PGC introduced the Fisher, one of the most efficient small game predators there is
4. It is against the law to shoot Hawks and Owls
5. Between the PGC and clubs slightly over 100,000 ringnecks are released each year
6. The PGC has stopped feeding turkeys during the winter
7. The PGC has stopped cutting browse for the deer and instead are treating them as a nunsince

The PGC is telling us how good we have it at the same time they are researching why our small game populations have plummeted and are doing research on why hunter numbers are dropping.

And some people wonder why most of us older folks just shake our heads in disbelief

As for Pheasants === this from Pheasanst Forever...

Pheasant Stocking

Stocking with pen-raised pheasants will not effectively increase wild pheasant populations. When habitat conditions improve, wild pheasant populations will increase in response to that habitat. Only by addressing the root problem suppressing populations –habitat - will you have a long term positive impact on pheasant numbers. Habitat is the key to healthy pheasant populations.

Studies have shown that stocked pheasants, no matter when they are released, have great difficulty maintaining self-sustaining populations. Predators take the main toll, accounting for 90 percent of the deaths and at the same time predators become conditioned to the idea that pheasants are an easy target.

Pen-raised birds do provide shooting opportunities, a good way to introduce new hunters to hunting in a controlled situation and a chance to keep your dog in shape. Release birds as close to the time you want to hunt as possible, just keep in mind that these pen-raised birds are not going to produce a wild self-sustaining population in the area.

Predators
As they are for all small game species, predators are the principle decimating factor for pheasant nests and adult birds, a fact that is not unusual or unsolvable. Through sound management, the detrimental effects of predation can be reduced. Removal and exclusion of predators are small-scale remedies that are cost prohibitive on a landscape scale. The effect of predators can however be diluted through the addition and management of proper habitat.

Well-designed habitat projects can reduce predation by up to 80%. In addition to decreasing the overall impact predators have on existing nests, this tactic also increases the number of nests on the ground and subsequently the pheasant population in the area. Through the addition and management of habitat, we not only decrease the impact predators have on existing nests, but also increase the number of nests and population size in an area. And habitat for pheasants and other wildlife comes at a fraction of the cost of other predator reduction methods.

Effects of Weather
Weather is another extremely important factor in determining pheasant numbers! Severe winter storms can literally decimate pheasant populations overnight. Cold wet springs can claim an equally devastating number of newborn chicks who do not develop the ability to regulate their own temperature until they are three weeks old. The direct effects of weather are obvious, less obvious is the indirect role that weather can play on pheasant numbers. Hot dry summers can impede insect production, depriving chicks of the protein they need early in life. Drought like conditions will stunt vegetation growth reducing the amount of cover on the landscape and leaving birds vulnerable to winter storms. Precipitation is essential but too much or the wrong form at the wrong time can be the difference between a great and poor pheasant year

I understand that predators have an effect on the nesting Pheasants. I also understand that the same predators prey on the turkey as well and they seem to be doing fine along with grouse and other birds. I agree that there might be less habitat but there is barely to no difference in some areas I hunt that held Pheasants years ago and now there's none. Has the specie type changed over the years and they will not reproduce naturally? I'm not very educated when it comes to Pheasants is why I ask.