Went cycling the other evening and found a paralysed pheasant by the road. I immediately thought that the best thing would be to kill the poor thing as it couldn’t move it’s legs at all and only weakly flap its wings so I broke its neck before I started feeling too attached to it. However I now feel slightly guilty, could I have done something else? Are there any organisations that could nurse one back to health? Or did I do the right thing?

how do you know it wasn’t drunk?

Arrgghh, good point, feel even worse about it now!

As long as you ate it, you did the right thing

I believe as a general rule of thumb if you can pick a bird up (feathered variety!) then its chances of survival are not good. anyway they are only bred for shooting and are not truly wild so it was very unlikely to last long.

Absolutely the right thing to do.

Well, I did seriously contemplate taking it with me but since it was the start of the ride and by the time I would have got home it would have gone cold and in my experience a lot harder to pluck I didn’t in the end. I also was paranoid that it might have suffered from a rare form of pheasant BSE given the poor control over its extremities it had so in the end I left it for the fox. Kind of regret it now since I love eating pheasants.

it was very unlikely to last long.

quality non-sequiteur there TJ.

Of course you’re fully aware that quite a lot of reared game survive across from season to season dont you? you didnt? oh, well now you do.

eejit.

No, its cute likkle fluffy chicks are now orphans and the big bad fox is looking for them.. 😯 I am horrified,,,

Stoner – nice grammer pedantry, shame its spelt non sequitur and I am not sure that statement is one.

Where I have lived almost no pheasants survive the winter in the open.

Plonker ( as you seem fond of playground insults)

nice grammer pedantry

ahem. put down the stones greenhouse boy.

Bollox 🙂 hoist by my own petard

bred for shooting: unlikely to last long.

is a non sequitur.
One fact does not follow from the other.

you two are a right pair of cocks!

stop talking fancy. Anyway, what have pruning shears got to do with it?

More the case that if you can get close enough to pick it up so could a fox or a werewolf. Therefore it probably wouldn’t last long.

I hope you took it home and it’s currently being hung prior to cooking!

However I now feel slightly guilty, could I have done something else?

Of course you could have:

http://www.gameandfishrecipes.com/pheasant.html

TJ – Where I have lived almost no pheasants survive the winter in the open.

Hmm, strange then that some of the most prestigious shoots built a reputation on entirely wild birds – eg. Sandringham – I wonder why nearly all game estates plant cover crops and continue to feed throughout the winter? regardless, I’m more than happy to bet that your average released pheasant stands a lot better chance of survival than a free range chicken!

Zulu – my parents used to live in a pheasant shooting area. In the spring they all appeared, by winter they virtually all had gone. Perhaps they were being fed elsewhere but in the spring, summer and autumn there were pheasants taking the food my folks put out for the wild birds, in winter there were none or very few.

Perhaps I got it wrong.

Central Scotland BTW

Theres certainly a number of “pheasant farms” around, with regular big bags – and I’ve worked on a few as a student, however as with everything its a complex equation, harsh winters will undoubtably take a toll on the survival ratios and in central scotland the winter conditions would be a significant factor – at the same time there’s a tendency for the birds to be less active, staying in the areas of cover more. However its unlikely that a pure wild bird population would be significantly less effected %age wise than released birds, there’s going to be a heavy toll regardless of their source – its in any good estates interest to keep feeding through the winter and the planting of cover crops like kale and maize, plus supplementary feeding, will clearly be beneficial to both the pheasant and other bird species winter survival – without the game shooting there’s no reason to put down the winter food, so overall I’d argue that the survival would probably be even lower without the influence of shoots.

The real wild shoots are a pretty spectacular place to be, the effort put into creating a wildlife friendly environment is huge – the bags are much, much smaller and the birds often a lot harder to shoot (older/wider/fitter/faster) – it would be nice to see more all wild shoots, but they are bloody difficult to do right, and very expensive to run – unfortunately a lot of the people who go game shooting are there for silly corporate entertainment crap and social climbing rather than a real love of the sport and wildlife, and they are fascinated by big bags and easy birds, ultimately its often these “punters” that pay for the estate and in the grand scheme of things its unfortunately better for the countryside and the other wildlife to have the pheasant farms than sterile agro-environments with bare canopy woodland with no copses, hedges or winter cover crops.

Zulu – I am aware of the need for bird shooting estates to maintain a “nice” countyside( for want of a better way of putting it) Tree planting and so on.

I hate shooting but it is not cruel in the way hunting with dogs is

I fail to see the sport in shooting what is basically a fancy chicken that flies really badly with a shotgun. However the money folk pay to do it is very useful and the birds are not either endangered or native so who cares really. I just wish the gamekeepers would stop killing raptors. Still – a couple have gone to jail for it recently and it cost one estate owner £100 000+ so maybe the message is getting thru.

Anyway – a long way from the OP

right thing for sure. I’ve come across a number of rabbits and pheasants who’ve been hit by cars and are not yet dead. Best thing is to pull the neck on any birds and hold rabbits by their back legs and hit them down hard on the back of their head.

I think you did the right thing, put it out of it’s misery/pain quickly. Now it’s flying around in Pheasant Heaven, with not a gun / fox in sight.

(feel better now? 😀 )

if you killed it properly ( flick of the wrist to the side not up and down ) it wouldnt feel a thing where as if you held it and swung it up and down it would of felt immence pain like bring swung from a tree by your neck i do shooting me…. 😆 hope it dosnt make you feel bad 🙂

you did the right thing, it sounds like it was knackered.

TJ down in Wiltshire Pheasants tend to easily last the winter.

an alternative to wring its neck, slightly quicker method is just to bite its head, crushing its skull. fast and effective if a tad gruesome.

I’ve got over the guilt now. I was surprised actually how quick and easy it was to break its neck. I have pet chickens and a while back one of them needed to be put in heaven due to very old age and motor neuron disease so I killed it by putting it in a bin bag of pure nitrogen gas. Wonderful way to euthanise since it just fell asleep within 10 seconds and died immediately. No panic, nothing. Don’t think I could break the neck (or bite the head!!!) on an animal that I know personally though.

Ohhhhhh, I see. You said “Pheasant”

That makes a lot of difference, that little H.

Missed you on this thread cap’n

Try driving trucks around rural Shropshire, especially now they’re getting frisky.
A couple a week bounce off the front into pheasant heaven.

God knows how much other wildlife i lay to rest.

Stopped feeling guilty after a while.

Felt a bit of a bastard after a tame harris hawk flew to the road after a rabbit carcass…………through the windscreen….. 😥