Hoopengarner on Outdoors
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Inmates rear pheasants in state pens
Prison inmates know a thing or two about being cooped up.
Perhaps that's why inmates at Connell's Coyote Ridge Correction Center look forward to the day when their pen-reared ring-necked pheasants are allowed to make a break for freedom.
Whatever the reasons, the prison's two-year-old pheasant rearing program is providing a bounty for hunters, and perhaps a promise for beleaguered pheasant populations in the Mid-Columbia Basin.
In 1997, the state Legislature created the Eastern Washington Pheasant Enhancement Fund. The idea was to develop a dedicated funding source to improve pheasant hunting east of the Cascades.
The fund, based on the number of Eastern Washington pheasant hunters, is used primarily to purchase game-farm pheasants for release on public hunting lands. Twenty percent of the fund also is available for pheasant enhancement grants, such as providing financial assistance to landowners willing to improve habitat, the main culprit in the pheasant's steady decline since the 1980s.
The state also initiated an aggressive habitat enhancement program in 1991 to address this continual loss. However, until these habitat enhancement efforts can be established on a broad scale, the release of pheasants will continue to help supplement harvest and maintain hunter opportunity.
Three years ago, officials at Coyote Ridge - at the urging of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife - decided to participate in the fledgling program, with inmates raising birds that the state then purchases for release, explained Dave Geil, one of the prison program's founders.
This fall marks the second crop of pheasants reared at Coyote Ridge, and state wildlife officials say the birds are among the healthiest and wildest of all the pen-reared gamebirds the state purchases.
One reason is that the birds are raised in conditions that closely mirror the pheasant's natural surroundings in the Basin.
Moreover, from the moment the pheasants hatch to the time they are crated up, their contact with humans is kept to a minimum, Geil said.
When the chicks are old enough to be moved into the five-acre, net-covered flight pen, they are free to feed and roost in tall natural grasses, similar to what they will find on the outside. And, when the roosters are picked up by wildlife officials at about 20 weeks, their feathers are fully colored and they have long, sweeping tails that hunters prize. Coyote Ridge roosters also wear a blue leg band to mark their origin.
Last year, inmates raised about 4,000 pheasants, of which 2,400 were roosters. "We kept 600 for broodstock and we released about 400 hens into the wild," Geil said. This year, Coyote Ridge raised 6,000 pheasants, with 5,400 roosters likely destined for hunter's gamebags.
However, while raising roosters for hunters may be the chief goal at Coyote Ridge, it could be the hens that hold the key to improving overall hunter success.
Jim Tabor, a Fish and Wildlife biologist in Ephrata, hit upon the idea of releasing Coyote Ridge hen pheasants in the spring, hoping they would breed with wild roosters and produce a huntable crop of ring-necks in the fall. He added it might also prove less expensive for the state to release hens to supplement production in the wild than to purchase game farm roosters in the fall.
Tabor also is hopeful that in areas where year-round habitat exists - particularly on lands controlled by Fish and Wildlife - overall pheasant numbers could be improved by releasing hens prior to the spring nesting season.
Last year, 10 hens released by the state were fitted with radio tracking devices about the size of a quarter, which the birds wear like a necklace.
"Of those 10, four were lost and three were killed by predators. But three were successful at nesting and we found evidence they had hatched chicks," Tabor said.
Tabor plans to build on that success by releasing another 100 hens in the spring.
"We hope to outfit as many pheasants as we can afford with transmitters and track their movements. And, considering the quality of the birds coming from Coyote Ridge, this could become a viable method of supplementing pheasant production in the Columbia Basin and perhaps in other areas of the state," he said.
For more information on the state's hen pheasant stocking program, or to offer financial assistance toward the purchase of radio transmitters and other equipment, call the Ephrata office of the Fish and Wildlife Department at 509-754-4624.
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