Hunting Blog

Many experienced hunters have found that the public lands available to them in recent years are increasingly crowded. While it’s fair to say the more the merrier in most cases, hunting is an event best done with a close group of friends or relatives - not hundreds, or even thousands, of strangers. The safety implications alone are staggering.

As such, more and more hunters are investigating their options. Some are fortunate enough to have land-owning friends or neighbors who permit them to hunt on their properties. Others opt to pay the extra money that going on package hunts requires or stump up the cash to buy a piece of property suitable for their hunting needs. But that isn’t for everyone.

For the rest of us, hunt leasing is a viable option. There are a number of online communities geared toward matching property owners interested in offering hunters the opportunity to use their land in the non-crop seasons, with hunters looking for a new patch to call their own. Lease agreements are fairly standard and can run from a few months a year to multi-year arrangements that will benefit future generations of hunters in your family.

Most animals are creatures of habit - and the pheasant is no exception. An easy way to bring home more birds on your next pheasant hunting trip is to learn all you can about the local population. For the most part, pheasants will have similar patterns wherever you go.

Pheasants have roosting areas, feeding areas, resting areas and plenty of paths between the two. On any given day, a pheasant will wake with the sun and head to the closest breakfast spot. Usually, this will be a crop field or a grassy area with plenty of food on offer. They’ll eat for a hour or more and then find a nice spot to have a rest. This will be a relatively sheltered area, usually near the edge of the field the pheasants find their food. After a few hours of lazing about in the field, the pheasants will again head out for a bite to eat. Following this evening meal, the birds retire again to their roosting area.

It’s worth knowing that pheasants will quite happily occupy a compact habitat that includes roosting, feeding and loafing ground when possible - many are known to spend the bulk of their lives within a half-mile circle.