RING-NECKED PHEASANT The ring-necked pheasant, which became the state bird of South Dakota, is commonly found in agriculture farmlands with crops of corn, wheat, oats, barley or hay, or areas with grasslands mixed with small woodlands. Pheasant is a popular midwestern game bird, drawing hunters from across the nation each fall season.

 

Who is smarter, the pheasant hunter or the pheasant? A lot of times it seems to be the latter, especially when the season has been in a few weeks, and the birds have become educated in hunter avoidance.

They hide, they run, they fly out of range, and if a hunter's going to be successful, he has to employ a few tricks of his own. After pheasants have been subjected to a little hunting pressure, they get super-smart in how to evade hunters, especially those who hunt in smaller parties typical of the later season.

This is when you need a dog, any dog, says Jim Ferguson of Kansas. He says even an untrained canine will put up birds you wouldn't see otherwise, including the Labrador retriever that you either rarely hunt or use for waterfowl retrieving.

"Labs are great dogs, they have a great nose," he says. "If they've ever seen a pheasant, it's probably going to startle them at first, but they'll settle in and they'll work out those birds. You're going to walk by a lot of them out there on those fields where the dog is going to take his time. You're going to walk and work with the dog, you're going to get a lot more shots and they're going to be a lot closer."

He continues, "If you've got birds that are running out ahead of the dog and you can see them, take a read-tail hawk call and blow it to force the birds to freeze. You'll be able to catch up with them. They're not going to move because they don't know where that red-tail is. That's a tactic I use whether quail hunting or pheasant hunting."

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