This is the end of my rant Ed, I figure now I must be wrong. "...there is a quantum difference between PA being THE PHEASANT CAPITAL [east of the Mississippi] as originally stated and ONE OF THE TOP TEN ".
How did you turn this around, I originally stated Pa. was the pheasant capital east of the Miss., and later in the top 10 in pheasant harvest, do you have periods of dyslexia? Go back and read the posts this time slowly.
As I said originally, and somewhat tangentially to a post about the ebb and flow of pheasants in Illinois, Pennsylvania is not and never was--as JDW so boldly stated in his original post---"...the pheasant capital east of the Mississippi." Given the lack of wild pheasants in most of the states east of the Mississippi, it should be no surprise that of the five to seven states with huntable populations, Pennsylvania is in the top ten.
But talk about "dyslexia"! Go back and read your original post...and then check a dictionary.
What gets me with this Internet gig is how persons unskilled with the English language so quickly revert to throwing personal jabs. First it was "ridicule" to say that PA was not the pheasant capital...then accused of the evil of being a wordsmith (thus "an expert on everything") and/or long-retired lawyer (since 1981--this I get a lot)...and finally "dyslexia," and chided to go back and "read slowly." My God! A violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act right here on doublegunshop.com!
But, really, I seem to recall parroting-back exactly what you mis-spoke...using quotation marks to highlight your mis-statement...more than once...and even enumerated all the states east of the Mississippi that did or did not have reputations for huntable wild pheasants. Yes you stated that "Pennsylvania was the pheasant capital easy of the Mississippi," and I stated that you were wrong. Now you say that you were right because Pennsylvania had pheasants and was "rated" in the "top ten."
After much adoo about nothing, the thrust of my original post--lamenting the general decline of pheasant populations, first occasioned by observable weather events hereabouts, and since perpetuated by nothing that I could put a finger on other than farming practices (not observable loss of habitat or excessive predators)--has been lost in the morass or who's right or wrong...as I finish this I'll go back and cut and paste your exact "Pheasant Capital" words from your first post and next your "top Ten" equivocation and we shall see who is dyslexic [
sic].
Parting shot: McFarland's is a pheasant farm at Janesville WI, about 20 miles from my farm. I believe they raise at least 1.3 million pheasants each year. Tobul is another pheasant farm about 10 miles from here, and they raise about 65,000 pheasants per year. Thus one plus "six zeros" isn't much when it comes to wild birds dispersed over 44,000 (PA) or 55,000 (IL) square miles. The real problem is getting released birds to take in the fall, winter over in numbers, and propagate the next year. The states, be they IL or PA or anywhere else where pheasants have historically been found in numbers, should devote more resources to boosting pheasant populations.
Illinois pisses away a small fortune in stocking warm streams and rivers with trout that will not reproduce and/or survive. Illinois is now on an expensive rampage of exterminating deer populations under the guise of minimizing "CWD" (chronic wasting disease), as if deer haven't got sick and died (just like people) from the beginning of time. Much of what we see here in "game management" is just job opportunities for pols who would not otherwise be employable. And as I stated above, even such seemingly valid organizations as Pheasants Forever have lost sight of their core objective when they raise money for the stated purpose of perpetuating pheasant populations and then donate the cash to the Forest Preserve Taxing District to bus inner city kids for a day in the country. This was the thrust of my original post, which got submerged in the obscure bickering ... EDM
