In the fall of the early 1970s, ring-necked pheasants were the reason I first began hunting. It was a time when wild ring-necks were everywhere in Pennsylvania, a time when you could walk through a farm field and expect to flush a few pheasants even without the assistance of a good sporting dog. In fact, I downed my first pheasant with a side-by-side shotgun borrowed from my friend Tim Skiles while hunting with another friend, Ralph Haney.
Although dogless, we still managed to flush a pair of wild long-tailed birds on a brushy ridge just outside of West Chester, a piece of the natural world that long ago became just one more housing development. The mount of that bird, courtesy of taxidermist Harmon Rodgers, still graces the wall of our home above the doorway.
The fields and meadows transformed into housing developments are not all that has changed. Those wild birds are now long gone in our part of the country, victims of predators, modern farming practices, or bird flu – no one seems to know all the reasons why a once vibrant population of ring-necks became virtually extinct within a few years.
So now it’s up to the Pennsylvania Game Commission to dedicate a significant amount of its budget to stock pheasants every fall, a put and take operation that replaces those long-gone wild birds.
This year the Game Commission plans to stock approximately 215,000 birds incrementally through early January, with most releases occurring on public land.
“Pheasant releases will occur weekly from late October through late November,” said Ian Gregg, chief of the Game Commission’s Wildlife Operations Division. “A mid-December release will bolster hunting opportunity prior to the holidays, and many sites are also scheduled to be stocked twice after Christmas for late season hunting.”
Saturday, Oct. 11 marked the start of the junior pheasant season, and the statewide season follows close behind, opening on Saturday, Oct. 25.
Pennsylvania’s pheasant hunters this year also will enjoy more Sunday hunting opportunities than ever before.
About 16,000 pheasants went out for the junior pheasant season which ran from Oct. 11-18. The statewide pheasant season runs from Oct. 25-Nov. 28 and includes all Sundays within that range – Oct. 26, Nov. 2, Nov. 9, Nov. 16, and Nov. 23.
Within state parks that allow pheasant hunting, Sunday pheasant hunting is allowed only on Nov. 16 and Nov. 23.
The statewide pheasant season reopens after the firearms deer season, running Dec. 15-24, then Dec. 26-Feb. 28. No Sundays are open for pheasant hunting during these periods.
Pheasant hunting is open statewide, except in Pennsylvania’s two Wild Pheasant Recovery Areas (WPRAs) – the Central Susquehanna WPRA in Northumberland and Montour counties, and the Franklin WPRA in Franklin County. No pheasant season will occur in either WPRA this year. While the Game Commission in recent years has authorized a youth pheasant season within the Central Susquehanna WPRA, and regulations were amended in 2024 to allow hunters of all ages to participate if a season was established, springtime pheasant crowing surveys in these areas were below the population estimate trend at which hunting would be authorized.
Elsewhere in the state, hunters may harvest either male or female pheasants.
Both are released by the Game Commission, at a ratio of about three males for every female.
Although protecting hens is an important aspect of wild pheasant management, survival of propagated pheasants is too low to support sustainable populations, even without hunting mortality.
Each pheasant hunter needs a general hunting license, and most hunters need a pheasant permit, as well. Pheasant hunters must, at all times, wear at least 250 square inches of fluorescent orange on the head, chest and back combined. A fluorescent orange hat and vest will satisfy this requirement. Hunters must abide by a two-pheasant daily limit and six-pheasant possession limit.
All adult hunters and some senior hunters who pursue pheasants are required to purchase a pheasant permit in addition to a general hunting license. The permit costs $26.97 and is available through HuntFishPA or from any license issuing agent.
As with a general hunting license, hunters can store a digital pheasant permit on a smart device to carry when hunting. Paper licenses and permits must be signed when carried afield.
Senior lifetime resident license holders who acquired their licenses prior to May 13, 2017 are exempt from needing a pheasant permit. Junior hunters and mentored permit holders under 17 need a free permit.
Although pheasant-permit revenue is not earmarked specifically for the propagation program, and does not completely offset the costs of raising and stocking pheasants, it is important in ensuring the financial sustainability of the program. Permit revenue for the 2024-25 license year was nearly $1.5 million.
“Over 75,000 pheasant permits are issued each year,” Gregg said. “This interest level is encouraging for the future of small-game hunting in Pennsylvania and it’s a great time to be a pheasant hunter. Good luck, have fun, and hunt safely!”
Hunters are advised that some of the pheasants they find in the field this year might have leg bands. By reporting those banded birds, hunters can provide important information as part of a Game Commission study to assess harvest rates for pheasants that are raised on the agency’s game farms, then released to provide hunting opportunities in Pennsylvania.
Game Commission wildlife biometrician Josh Johnson said about 8,000 pheasants are being banded. Over the course of the season, they’ll be released on state game lands and other properties alongside more than 200,000 non-banded pheasants.
A similar study on pheasant harvest rates was conducted in the fall of 2015.
That study found about 50 percent of pheasants stocked by the Game Commission were harvested.
Since then, however, many changes to pheasant-stocking schedules and strategies have been implemented with the goals of expanding opportunity and increasing harvest rates. The new study will provide data to evaluate the effects of these changes and assess where additional opportunities might exist to maximize the number of hunter-harvested pheasants through future adjustments in stocking strategies.
Because pheasant hunting in Pennsylvania relies on the release of propagated birds, hunters are wise to focus their efforts on the time periods and locations where the Game Commission stocks birds.
To increase awareness of where and when pheasants will be stocked, the agency publishes an allocation table and interactive stocking locations map online. Both of these are available on the pheasant hunting page at www.pa.gov/pgc.
When using the allocation table, click on a region to see the number of male and female pheasants planned for stocking in each county for each release, as well as the range of dates for each release, and a listing of each property to be stocked.
Tom Tatum is the outdoors columnist for the MediaNews Group. You can reach him at tatumt2@yahoo.com.
