Pheasant Hunting | Rooster Hunting | Whitetail Hunting | Dunn Deal Hunting Lodge | Iowa Hunting | Turkey Hunting | Pheasants Hunting | Birds Hunting | Quail Hunting

Iowa Hunting

Shoot Rooster Pheasants

Your Hunting Guide for Pheasant Hunting - Rooster Hunting - Turkey Hunting - Quail Hunting and Other Birds Hunting

Pheasant Hunting Breeding and Habitat

ROOSTERS have a dark reddish copper breast with lighter copper-colored sides and back, a powder blue rump patch and a vivid white ring around the neck. The head is iridescent greenish black, with a red wattle around the eye. The brownish tail measures 18 to 26 inches in length and has numerous black bars. The bright colors make roosters attractive to hens and visible to other roosters.

HENS (inset) are dull beige, with brown and cream-colored mottling from head to tail. The mottling fades to a uniform beige toward the underside of the body. The dull colors help to camouflage hens from nest and brood predators. A hen's tail is considerably shorter than that of a rooster, ranging from 8 to 12 inches in length, but it has a similar barring pattern.

Breeding Habits
You've probably heard the raspy "kaw kawk" call of a rooster pheasant on a spring morning or evening. The call, given at about three-minute intervals, serves to claim a territory and attract hens. Ring necks are polygamous, so one rooster may draw a harem of a dozen or more hens. This numerical imbalance explains why roosters-only hunting regulations are effective. Even if 90 percent of all the roosters are harvested, there are enough left to breed with the remaining hens.

Roosters entice hens to breed by strutting with feathers ruffled, ear tufts erect and wattles swollen and bright red. The eggs are laid in a small, oval-shaped depression scratched into the ground by the hen and lined with grasses and possibly some feathers.

Hay mowers destroy many pheasant nests, and predators, particularly skunks, raccoons and snakes, eat a large number of the eggs. House cats, foxes and hawks take many of the chicks. If the nest is destroyed or raided and the hen is not killed, she will usually nest again. If the second nest fails, she may try a third. But the number of eggs decreases each time.

The eggs hatch in early summer, and the hen stays with her brood for 2 to 3 months, until the birds approach full size. By the time hunting season starts, most roosters have fully colored plumage, unless they were hatched very late in the season.

Daily Movements
Hunters can greatly improve their success by understanding the ring neck's daily movement pattern. Cover that typically holds lots of pheasants in morning and evening, for instance, may hold only a straggler or two in midday. Although movement patterns vary in different habitat types, they’re fairly consistent in a given area, barring bad weather or exceptionally heavy hunting pressure. The most common scenario is as follows:

Just after sunrise, pheasants fly or walk out of their roosting cover, stopping to pick up gravel on the way to their morning feeding area, which is usually some type of crop field. After feeding for an hour or two, they move to loafing cover, such as the grassy fringe of a crop field, or they return to their roosting cover. They go out to feed again about an hour before sunset, then settle back into roosting cover for the night.

In most cases, daily movements take place within a surprisingly small area, usually no more than one-half mile in diameter. In some habitats, however, ring necks move even less than that. For instance, they may stay in a "dirty" (weedy) cornfield all day, because there’s plenty of food and ground cover. Similarly, they may stay in their roosting area all day, if there are enough weed seeds to provide adequate food.

A period of extreme cold or a heavy snow may keep the birds holding tight in dense cover for several days. Heavy dew, however, will keep birds out of the grass. On a warm winter day, they often stay out all day long, scratching for food. When hunting pressure is very heavy, they spend more time in thick cover than they otherwise would.

Pheasant Habitat
Ring neck  pheasants are birds of the farm country. Ideal habitat consists of 55 to 70 percent crop fields, preferably corn, soybeans or small grains, with the remainder wetlands, undisturbed grasslands, small woodlots, thickets and brushy or grassy fence lines or ditches. Any of the following habitat types are likely to hold ring necks.

CATTAIL MARSHES provide excellent escape cover and winter cover. Pheasants can easily hear predators moving through the dense cover, and they can burrow under it during a severe blizzard.

WETLAND FRINGES make good nesting and roosting areas. Tall grasses grow there, because the ground is generally too wet to plow.

STREAM CORRIDORS furnish permanent pheasant cover. Because the low-lying ground adjacent to the stream does not make good cropland, it is rarely plowed.

DRAINAGE DITCHES may offer the only grassy cover in intensively farmed areas. Pheasants find loafing or roosting spots that are out of the wind along the slopes of the ditches.

ROADSIDE DITCHES that are not routinely mowed or burned provide loafing and roosting cover. Ditches with standing water often have a growth of cattails that make good winter cover.

RAILROAD RIGHTS-OF-WAY are usually allowed to grow into brushy cover that makes excellent pheasant habitat. Abandoned rights-of-way are best of all.

ABANDONED FARMSTEADS offer good escape cover and winter cover. Groves and buildings break the wind, and grasses and brush that develop in open areas furnish ground cover to protect the birds from predators.

BRUSHY FENCE LINES, especially wide strips with plenty of tall bushes or trees, make prime year-round pheasant cover.

GRASSY TERRACES, intended to reduce erosion of cropland, make good loafing and roosting sites close to feeding areas.

SHELTERBELTS provide tall, dense escape cover and prevent windblown snow from clogging the birds’ nostrils and suffocating them.

RETIRED CROP FIELDS that grow up to grassy cover are prime nesting areas. Unlike hay fields, they will not be mown during the nesting season.

GRASSY FRINGES of crop fields make good midday loafing sites and, if the grass is tall enough, the birds may roost there as well.