Pheasant shooting is the activity of shooting the common pheasant. It takes place in the United Kingdom, and is practised in other parts of the world. Shooting of game birds is carried out using a shotgun, often 12 and 20 bore or a .410, sometimes on land managed by a

gamekeeper A gamekeeper (often abbreviated to keeper), or in case of those dealing with deer (deer-)stalker, is a person who manages an area of countryside (e.g. areas of woodland, moorland, waterway or farmland) to make sure there is enough game for s ...

United Kingdom

The common pheasant was first introduced to Great Britain many centuries ago, but was rediscovered as a game bird in the 1830s. It is reared extensively in captivity, and around 47 million pheasants are released each year on shooting estates, mainly in England, although most released birds survive less than a year in the wild. The numbers of captive-reared pheasants released have risen sharply since the 1980s.

Natural England Natural England is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is responsible for ensuring that England's natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, ...

has concluded that the released birds threaten native wildlife by increasing predator numbers and creating competition for food. In October 2020 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that a licensing regime would be introduced in 2021 for releases of pheasants within 500m of protected sites. Pheasants are shot on the traditional formal "driven shoot" principles, whereby guest or paying guns have birds driven over them by beaters, and on smaller "rough shoots" by other methods. The open season in the UK is from 1 October to 1 February, under the

Game Act 1831 The Game Act 1831 (1 & 2 Will 4 c 32) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which was passed to protect game birds by establishing a close season when they could not be legally taken. The Act also established the need for game licenc ...

. Generally they are shot by guns employing

gun dog Gun dogs, or bird dogs, are types of hunting dogs developed to assist hunters in finding and retrieving game, usually quail, dove, or duck. Gun dogs are divided into three primary types: retrievers, flushing dogs, and pointing breeds. Types ...

s to help find, flush, and retrieve shot birds.

Retriever A retriever is a type of gun dog that retrieves game for a hunter. Generally gun dogs are divided into three major classifications: retrievers, flushing spaniels, and pointing breeds. Retrievers were bred primarily to retrieve birds or other ...

spaniels A spaniel is a type of gun dog. Spaniels were especially bred to flush game out of denser brush. By the late 17th century, spaniels had been specialized into water and land breeds. The extinct English Water Spaniel was used to retrieve water ...

, and pointing breeds are used to flush pheasants. The

doggerel Doggerel, or doggrel, is poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Alternatively, it can mean verse which has a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap or trivial meaning. The word is deri ...

"Up gets a guinea, bang goes a penny-halfpenny, and down comes a half a crown" reflects the expensive pastime of 19th century driven shoots in Britain, when pheasants were often shot for pleasure rather than as food. It was a popular royal pastime in Britain to shoot common pheasants.

King George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936. Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...

shot over a thousand pheasants out of a total bag of 3,937 over a six-day period in December 1913 during a competition with a friend, however did not do enough to beat him.

United States

Common pheasants were introduced in North America in 1773 and have become well established throughout much of the

Rocky Mountain The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

states (

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...

, etc.), the Midwest, the

Plains In geography, a plain is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands. In ...

states, as well as Canada and Mexico. In the southwest, they can even be seen south of the Rockies in Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is now most common on the Great Plains. In some states, e.g.

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, captive-reared and released birds make up much of the population. The first planted pheasants in the United States were put in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Pheasant hunting is popular in much of the U.S., especially in the Great Plains states, where a mix of farmland and native grasslands provides ideal habitat. South Dakota alone has an annual harvest of over a million birds by over 200,000 hunters. Much of the American

hunting Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products ( fur/ hide, bone/tusks, horn/antler, ...

is done by groups of hunters, who walk through fields and shoot the birds as they are flushed by dogs such as Labrador Retrievers and

Springer Spaniel Springer Spaniel refers to two different breeds of dogs, both of which are commonly called simply ''Springer Spaniel'': *English Springer Spaniel *Welsh Springer Spaniel The Welsh Springer Spaniel (''Welsh'': ''Llamgi Cymru'') is a breed of ...

s. There are also many hunters who use Pointers such as

English Setter The English Setter is a medium-size breed of dog. It is part of the setter group, which includes the red Irish Setters, Irish Red and White Setters, and black-and-tan Gordon Setters. The mainly white body coat is of medium length with long s ...

s or German Shorthairs to find and hold pheasants for

hunters Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...

to flush and shoot.

References

External links

{{English Game Bird hunting Hunting and shooting in the United Kingdom Pheasants Hunting in the United States