# Supplementing wild birds with pen raised birds



## crna (Nov 7, 2002)

I understand that this is common practice in south dakota's pay for hunt operations. Anyone else have concerns regarding this practice. I have concerns that the pen raised birds will some how dilute the wild population with poor genetics and decrease the natural progression and breeding of the species (pen raised traits seem to include the inability to fly, weird colors, small size and inability to adapt to weather/habitat conditions) I think that we would be concerned if someone was breeding deer (good genes or bad genes) and releasing them into the wild. It seems that when you mess with mother nature, you can really screw up a good thing. Please save the "they aren't native and we transplanted them from china" excuse. just a thought.


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## gonehuntin' (Jul 27, 2006)

They have been required to do that for many, many, years now. I don't think it affects the wild population at all.

Where I now live, we have virtually no pheasant so I buy birds and turn them loose then wait about a week to hunt them. Give a pen raised pheasant a week in the wild and they're as wild as any native bird. You'll see the same thing when you a game farm that allows "scratch" hunting; hunting without a fee a picking up birds missed by other hunters. Some of those birds become as spooky as any wild bird I've seen and as tough to get.

That's been my experience anyhow.


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## slough (Oct 12, 2003)

I doubt too many would make it through ND winters, and if they do they are probably "fit" enough to have in the gene pool.


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## Shorthair.On.Point (Nov 28, 2006)

I think the real concern is that raised birds feed the predators allowing predator populations to grow which makes it harder for the wild birds. This takes releasing a lot of birds for a couple of years to have an impact though.


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## NDhunter08 (Aug 28, 2010)

In our firshery and wildife class in school, they tell us that pen raised birds is not the way to improve your population. They do not recomend the pens at all. They say the way to go is habitat, habitat, and more habitat. One guy came in from pheasants forever and talked to our class and said that the pen raised birds are more acceptable to predidation.


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## crna (Nov 7, 2002)

i guess i wasn't referring to the increase in bird populatioin but rather the influence of pen raised birds and their potential genetic impact on wild birds. we all know what poor genetics can do to dog breeds. i am concerned that some game farms have different looking pheasants including smaller/larger more or less color than wild birds. Just don't like the idea of messing up mother nature


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## The Shovla (Aug 23, 2009)

Funny enough, many of those SD "wild" pheasants come from my home town of Janesville, WI and McFarlaind Pheasant Farm


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