Jun 5, 2011 5 min read

For the past 10 years, Uniontown attorney Tom Shaffer and Dr. Gary Brain have been raising pheasants for release into the wild.

For the first eight years they purchased and reared the same type pheasants the Pennsylvania Game Commission raises on its game farms for stocking throughout the commonwealth.

Shaffer explained, “For the first eight years, we bought the same birds the Game Commission raises, and they did not reproduce well. Only rarely did we see a couple of clutches of young pheasants.

“We perfected our knowledge of the process and in the last couple years zeroed in on the Michigan Blueback strain of pheasants.”

The pheasants do not come from Michigan, as the name might suggest. It is merely the name put on the strain.

They feel the Michigan Blueback pheasant is “wilder” by nature than the birds traditionally stocked in the state and offer a better chance for pheasants to come back to this area, where they once thrived and reproduced just about everywhere.

The pheasants stocked by the Game Commission do not fly far when flushed, often flying only 30 yards before landing again. The Michigan Bluebacks will fly 300 yards when flushed before setting down again.

At present there are 1,100 pheasant chicks in the rearing building at the Fayette County Vocational Technical School along Route 857.

When the peeps get a little larger, they will be turned into a holding pen and raised to near adult size, when they will be released around the first week of August.

The holding pen has brush piles for cover, plus roosting limbs, so the birds can get off the ground.

The one-acre-square area has been planted with sorghum, which was donated by Scott Whyel.

A natural spring within the holding area was dug out to make a huge birdbath for the pheasants to bathe and drink in.

Shaffer, who is chairman of the program, has spent almost $4,000 out of his own pocket to purchase birds and netting for the enclosure.

Posts for the enclosure were donated by Joe Hardy, while Gary Petrucci and Gus Rozzi wired the rearing building.

Most of the birds are roaming free in the rearing building, while some are being reared in a surrogator — an enclosed cage, which limits the birds contact with humans in a effort to produce and completely wild bird free of human contact.

Very shortly another shipment of 1,100 one-day old chicks will arrive, boosting the number in the rearing building to 2,200.

Added to 120 birds that will be raised in the surrogator, the total release this year will be about 2,320 pheasants.

Students in the Vet Tech program at the school are involved with the program.

Fayette County Vocational Technical School Executive Director Dr. Edward Jeffreys and adviser Rebecca Shepherd guide the student end of the project.

Shaffer has hopes that these pheasants will have an impact on the local pheasant population in time.

In the one year since they starting releasing the Michigan Blueback pheasants they are aware of some noticeable reproduction and a much better count of carryover birds.

The Michigan Blueback’s body size is a bit smaller than the pheasants raised by the Game Commission, but the head markings are identical.

In an effort to create more ideal habitat, Shaffer’s group of dedicated individuals has obtained switchgrass from the Game Commission and planted a swath of switchgrass 50 feet wide and 1,000 feet long on a piece of property near the school that has never been planted. The strip runs along Route 857 toward the mountain.

Use of the property was donated by Tom Liccardi. The area where the planting was made was described by Shaffer as “an ice and snow desert that holds no game in the winter whatsoever.”

Shaffer recruited help from the Cub Scouts of St. Mary’s Pack 620 last week to give a hand with the project by helping plant trees in the release area near the Tech School.

The Scouts planted Washington Hawthorne and crabapple trees.

The Scouts, many who did not even know what a pheasant was, were introduced to the pheasant by way of a mounted ringneck cock bird.

After examining the mount, the Scouts sat down and listened, as Shaffer detailed the history of the pheasant in North America.

After explaining the difference between the plumage of the male and female pheasants, he detailed where they live, how they live, what they eat and how they reproduce and rear their young, while answering numerous questions posed by inquiring minds.

After Shaffer’s talk, the Scouts visited the rearing building, where they saw how the peeps were cared for, as the many chicks ran about.

Several watermelons were cut into pieces and fed with the peeps, which quickly devoured the fresh fruit to the delight of the youngsters.

Herald-Standard Outdoors Editor Rod Schoener can be reached online at rschoener@heraldstandard.com.