New Jersey Pheasants?

[JD48]

Was looking around on Facebook, ran across a post from Weird NJ, talked about the Rutherford - Stuyvesant Estate in Allamuchy , NJ, was mansion and hunting club, had elk, deer and pheasants (which were raised in house) some of the comments claimed that's why there is / were pheasants in NJ, strange thing is I grew up in Bergen County by the meadowlands a mile from my house was the Stuyvesant Estate ( hunting club) they also raised their own birds, had pens of them, pens would sometimes get cut ( don't know how? ) and birds would be all over the place, is this where N.J.Pheasants came from?

 

you say?

 

.

[hvnj]

I remember back in 2010 we had an October snow storm that released thousands of pheasants from Hudson Farms and I believe the states pens.  We had pheasants showing up all over Andover miles from those places.  They stopped traffic near my business on Newton Sparta Road. It didn’t take long for the hawks, foxes, and coyotes to get the escapees. 

[JD48]

36 minutes ago, hvnj said:

I remember back in 2010 we had an October snow storm that released thousands of pheasants from Hudson Farms and I believe the states pens.  We had pheasants showing up all over Andover miles from those places.  They stopped traffic near my business on Newton Sparta Road. It didn’t take long for the hawks, foxes, and coyotes to get the escapees. 

in the 1970s people would sneak into the Forked River Game Farm and open the pens, birds would be every where

[DoubleLungDevil]

2 hours ago, hvnj said:

I remember back in 2010 we had an October snow storm that released thousands of pheasants from Hudson Farms and I believe the states pens.  We had pheasants showing up all over Andover miles from those places.  They stopped traffic near my business on Newton Sparta Road. It didn’t take long for the hawks, foxes, and coyotes to get the escapees. 

I think the pens got damaged at rockport pheasant farm there was birds everywhere.

[Michael Britt]

6 hours ago, DoubleLungDevil said:

I think the pens got damaged at rockport pheasant farm there was birds everywhere.

All the pens are now gone.

[DoubleLungDevil]

5 hours ago, Michael Britt said:

All the pens are now gone.

Yeah idk what it is now…I would drive past it back in the day sometimes. I know it was an October storm 2010 or 2011 but there was pheasant all over the place they said like 15,000 got out lol

[Bucksnbows]

17 hours ago, JD48 said:

Was looking around on Facebook, ran across a post from Weird NJ, talked about the Rutherford - Stuyvesant Estate in Allamuchy , NJ, was mansion and hunting club, had elk, deer and pheasants (which were raised in house) some of the comments claimed that's why there is / were pheasants in NJ, strange thing is I grew up in Bergen County by the meadowlands a mile from my house was the Stuyvesant Estate ( hunting club) they also raised their own birds, had pens of them, pens would sometimes get cut ( don't know how? ) and birds would be all over the place, is this where N.J.Pheasants came from?

 

you say?

 

.

Like brown and rainbow trout here in the East, pheasants were introduced in the latter half of the 1800s and many became naturalized meaning that they can reproduce even though nonnative species.  It was the early stockings where the stocked fish and wildlife had their best chances to spawn/breed in their newly introduced areas because those animals were closer to fully wild or were fully wild when released locally.  Today's hatchery reared trout and hatchery reared pheasants and quail and chukars don't often survive a year once released, and even more seldom will they successfully reproduce.  Fish and game clubs have been stocking along with states for well over 140 years now....

[archer36]

18 hours ago, JD48 said:

Was looking around on Facebook, ran across a post from Weird NJ, talked about the Rutherford - Stuyvesant Estate in Allamuchy , NJ, was mansion and hunting club, had elk, deer and pheasants (which were raised in house) some of the comments claimed that's why there is / were pheasants in NJ, strange thing is I grew up in Bergen County by the meadowlands a mile from my house was the Stuyvesant Estate ( hunting club) they also raised their own birds, had pens of them, pens would sometimes get cut ( don't know how? ) and birds would be all over the place, is this where N.J.Pheasants came from?

 

you say?

 

.

Remember, Pheasant are not native birds. They were imported many years ago and spread across the country. So, NO Pheasant in NJ started from indiginous birds because no wild bird existed prior to importation. Another way of looking at it is Grouse and Quail were native to the U.S. and were not brough in. Maybe making a distinction between "indiginous" and "wild" is better. Also, you can say as long as a bird is born and raised without human involvement, they are "wild". I guess the transplants, which were "wild" birds, reproduced.

On the flip side, I do not know the reproductive rates of pen raised birds. But if a Pheasant was born and raised in the "wild", it is a wild bird regardless of where it came from. Based on my experiences with Semi-wild clubs, if the released birds reproduced, we would have a renewable supply of "wild" pheasant. My guess is that only about 65% of birds released are harvested. All the unharvested birds would reproduce more and more every year. So, if they reproduced, it would be a constant supply of "wild" birds. But, they may not reproduce for several reasons. Predators being the number 1 reason. Hawks and foxes get almost all of them. 

Edited Friday at 04:19 PM by archer36

[JD48]

19 minutes ago, archer36 said:

Remember, Pheasant are not native birds. They were imported many years ago and spread across the country. So, NO Pheasant in NJ started from 'wild" birds because no wild bird existed prior to importation. Another way of looking at it is Grouse and Quail were native to the U.S. and were not brough in. Maybe making a distinction between "indiginous" and "wild" is better. I guess the transplants, which were "wild" birds, reproduced. I do not know the reproductive rates of pen raised birds. But, based on my experiences with Semi-wild clubs, if the released birds reproduced, we would have a renewable supply of "wild" pheasant. My guess is that only about 65% of birds released are harvested. So, if they reproduced, it would be a constant supply of "wild" birds. But, they may not reproduce for several reasons. Predators being the number 1 reason. Hawks and foxes get almost all of them. 

Never said they were wild birds, but where I grew up, close to the hunting club, they had live pheasant shoots on Saturdays, some birds were missed, sometimes cages were left open or cut open, years after they closed, there was still plenty of birds ( wild?) left in the surrounding areas, my grandfather owned 62 acres that he leased to farmers, always birds in the corn fields, side note, never saw a fox or hawks back then, so question would be, can pen raised birds become wild and survive, under the right conditions I say yes

[archer36]

27 minutes ago, JD48 said:

Never said they were wild birds, but where I grew up, close to the hunting club, they had live pheasant shoots on Saturdays, some birds were missed, sometimes cages were left open or cut open, years after they closed, there was still plenty of birds ( wild?) left in the surrounding areas, my grandfather owned 62 acres that he leased to farmers, always birds in the corn fields, side note, never saw a fox or hawks back then, so question would be, can pen raised birds become wild and survive, under the right conditions I say yes

I guess we disagree on the reproduction of pen raised birds. I have previously stated that hundreds of birds escape hunters in Semi-wild clubs. Couple this with the amount of birds released by the State. Do you think that 100% of them get killed by hunters? No way. So, if all of these 100's or possibly thousands of birds reproduced to any extent, wouldn't we see more "wild" birds. As stated, the main reason for mortality on pen raised/stocked birds is predators. But, I don't believe thay get all of them. Look at Wild Turkey, even they had to be transplanted to renew the presence in many states. The rise or decline of many wild animals is complicated. Many different factors that change over time. 

Edited Friday at 04:43 PM by archer36

[JD48]

14 minutes ago, archer36 said:

I guess we disagree on the reproduction of pen raised birds. I have previously stated that hundreds of birds escape hunters in Semi-wild clubs. Couple this with the amount of birds released by the State. Do you think that 100% of them get killed by hunters? No way. So, if all of these 100's or possibly thousands of birds reproduced to any extent, we would see more "wild" birds. As stated, the main reason for mortality on pen raised/stocked birds is predators. But, I don't believe thay get all of them. Look at Wild Turkey, even they had to be transplanted to renew the presence in many states. The rise or decline of many wild animals is complicated. Many different factors that change over time. 

I'll have to stick with my position, that under the RIGHT conditions they can reproduce. Example: the birds that are or used to be along the turnpike by the airport, nobody stocked them there

[archer36]

8 minutes ago, JD48 said:

I'll have to stick with my position, that under the RIGHT conditions they can reproduce. Example: the birds that are or used to be along the turnpike by the airport, nobody stocked them there

No problem. We can disagree. We have opinions. I don't know of any scientific studies on this that prove or disprove our opinions.. 

Edited Friday at 04:49 PM by archer36

[JD48]

a robust discussion is healthy, keeps the old brain working, I don't know of any studies either, I can just go buy what I experienced, the club I was talking about closed and 20 years latter there was still pheasants around

Edited Friday at 04:57 PM by JD48

[Bucksnbows]

33 minutes ago, JD48 said:

I'll have to stick with my position, that under the RIGHT conditions they can reproduce. Example: the birds that are or used to be along the turnpike by the airport, nobody stocked them there

True, but those would have  come from early stockings in the 1800s when they trapped and released wild birds.  After nearly 150 years of being pen raised where natural selection has no place, the birds raised on farms today are nearly 100% put and take and will not reproduce successfully.  This is a fact anywhere in the country and not just limited to NJ.  Same goes for Pequest rainbow trout which do not reproduce even in streams where we do have wild reproduction of rainbows (which is from the long ago stockings when the fish were just taken from their native streams in places like California).   

[Bucksnbows]

33 minutes ago, archer36 said:

No problem. We can disagree. We have opinions. I don't know of any scientific studies on this that prove or disprove our opinions.. 

There are many.