Tips on free ranging Pheasants

Painted Calls · Mar 4, 2021

Amazing article. Very informative! I was going to try free ranging my pheasants. I don't want them to fly away though. So glad I saw this first! :thumbsup

Ursuline Chick · Mar 6, 2021

Wow, great article. Thank you for taking the time to explain everything I need to know in order to decide if I should free range my pheasants. I would have made a terrible mistake if I had not read this article. Glad I didn't rely on other threads for my info.

MGG · Mar 15, 2021

So glad I saw this article! I never would have thought that free ranging pheasants would end this way. Very informative, 5 stars from me!!!

SummerTheAnimalGirl · Jun 10, 2022

Wow, what a great article! So well written. I bet the writer really invested a lot of time and effort into making such a informative article. It answered my question very quickly….VERY quickly.

ducklover128 · Nov 4, 2024

Yep ..we uh, found out the hard way....we weren't trying to free range them though....

. The male got loose and we were trying to casually catch him, and that sucker lifted straight up off the ground like a helicopter.

We watched him fly away, and never saw him again. We barely got the 3 hens back up. There were 3 chukars involved in the poop show and we only got 1 put back up. We found the wings

of another one....but that was all. Just the wings. But all the crazy chickening and ducking shenanigans we have been a part of, the helicopter pheasant will always be remembered. We were shocked. We were just left standing there, watching this beautiful creature lift off the ground, and fly away.

He just started flapping his wings, lifted up and up and up and off he went. I swear it was just like a helicopter.

The Moonshiner · Nov 4, 2024

ducklover128 said:
Yep ..we uh, found out the hard way....we weren't trying to free range them though..... The male got loose and we were trying to casually catch him, and that sucker lifted straight up off the ground like a helicopter. We watched him fly away, and never saw him again. We barely got the 3 hens back up. There were 3 chukars involved in the poop show and we only got 1 put back up. We found the wings of another one....but that was all. Just the wings. But all the crazy chickening and ducking shenanigans we have been a part of, the helicopter pheasant will always be remembered. We were shocked. We were just left standing there, watching this beautiful creature lift off the ground, and fly away. He just started flapping his wings, lifted up and up and up and off he went. I swear it was just like a helicopter.

I had a mallard drake like that once.
I'd been wanting some real mallards for a while and picked up some females. Later I decided I needed a male to go with them but I wanted to make sure to get a true mallard not just a mallard patterned duck.
I found a guy that said he had one. I stressed and stressed what I was looking for and he assured me he had exactly that. He called him a "flying" mallard. I guess I was so wrapped up in the whole deal it wasn't registering exactly what he meant. I mean my girls flew around a bit so....
I brought him home and took him to the backyard and showed him the girls. Then as soon as I sat him down he lifted straight up to above my head and off he flew.
There's a big cornfield next door and I watched in disbelief as my newly acquired drake flew all the way across it. Luckily though as he was just about out of sight he made a big loop and returned landing a few feet from where I was standing with a dropped jaw.

ducklover128 · Nov 4, 2024

The Moonshiner said:
I had a mallard drake like that once.
I'd been wanting some real mallards for a while and picked up some females. Later I decided I needed a male to go with them but I wanted to make sure to get a true mallard not just a mallard patterned duck.
I found a guy that said he had one. I stressed and stressed what I was looking for and he assured me he had exactly that. He called him a "flying" mallard. I guess I was so wrapped up in the whole deal it wasn't registering exactly what he meant. I mean my girls flew around a bit so....
I brought him home and took him to the backyard and showed him the girls. Then as soon as I sat him down he lifted straight up to above my head and off he flew.
There's a big cornfield next door and I watched in disbelief as my newly acquired drake flew all the way across it. Luckily though as he was just about out of sight he made a big loop and returned landing a few feet from where I was standing with a dropped jaw.

I'm so glad he came back. He got across the field and thought about it. He said "I don't see any ladies over here, maybe I should go chill with them."

The Moonshiner · Nov 4, 2024

ducklover128 said:
I'm so glad he came back. He got across the field and thought about it. He said "I don't see any ladies over here, maybe I should go chill with them."

I like to think he came back to me but ya probably was for the ladies.

ducklover128 · Nov 4, 2024

Maybe he thought "man that dude is a duck magnet (like a chic magnet

) and I should probably go be his bestie. Plus, he had food and an endless supply of water..... I can't lose. " Do you still have him and the ladies?

The Moonshiner · Nov 5, 2024

ducklover128 said:
Maybe he thought "man that dude is a duck magnet (like a chic magnet) and I should probably go be his bestie. Plus, he had food and an endless supply of water..... I can't lose. " Do you still have him and the ladies?

I was an idiot and got rid of them after a few years.
They were great. Easy keepers. The girls would set once or twice a season and had great hatch rates. I could barely keep up selling them and had the perfect offspring from pairing them with him.
After a while I got back into Call ducks some and had Greys. With them having identical patterns and not a lot of size difference as ducklings I decided to focus on Calls and let the mallards go so I didn't end up confusing the two.
The Calls never did as well for me and I still miss those mallards.
Live and learn.

ducklover128 · Nov 6, 2024

The Moonshiner said:
I was an idiot and got rid of them after a few years.
They were great. Easy keepers. The girls would set once or twice a season and had great hatch rates. I could barely keep up selling them and had the perfect offspring from pairing them with him.
After a while I got back into Call ducks some and had Greys. With them having identical patterns and not a lot of size difference as ducklings I decided to focus on Calls and let the mallards go so I didn't end up confusing the two.
The Calls never did as well for me and I still miss those mallards.
Live and learn.

I have not yet experienced having mallards in the flock, but we had a few khaki Campbell's and a friend put a few eggs in the incubator , and next thing I knew she was knocking on the door with 3 tiny little floofs. When they grew up, they looked almost identical to mallards. One drakes head was darker green than the other, but they were beautiful. Loud, for such small little beings, but still beautiful.

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