Flying in the Face of Ethics

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	Pheasant stocking violates hunters' own ethics.

Many believe pheasant stocking is inherently unethical and inconsistent with sustainable state wildlife management.

State wildlife agencies have become factory farmers of pheasants—rearing hundreds of thousands of non-native birds and churning them out to hunters for easy targets. They consistently favor the interests of a handful of hunters wishing to kill exotic animals over programs protecting native wildlife. Pheasant stocking is simply no "service" a government agency should offer.

Now is the time to question the role pheasant stocking plays in a humane culture—or even a hunting culture. Jim Posewitz, a former Montana wildlife agency biologist, founded Orion: The Hunters Institute to create and promote ethics in hunting. In his book Beyond Fair Chase, he defines fair chase as a balance that "allows hunters to occasionally succeed while animals generally avoid being taken" (Posewitz 1994)—a definition that pheasant stocking clearly violates by supplying birds stripped of natural escape behaviors and without meaningful chance of survival.

Pheasant stocking is also part of an admitted effort to recruit young children into the dying sport of hunting. Children can go out after a safety training course and easily kill a stocked bird with their dad and favorite Labrador. Instead of killing a large deer—which might involve a good deal of bloodshed—children can take aim at a blur of color shooting up into the air, just like in a video game. The birds—stocked shortly before the hunt—are not intended to live, but rather to act as a tool to hook children on hunting.

Related Links

Pheasant Stocking

Rearing Pheasants

Releasing Pheasants

The "Collateral Damages" of Pheasant Stocking

Tower Shoots

States with Pheasant Stocking Programs

Pheasant Preserves: Flushing Fair Chase Out

Pheasant Stocking Report 2007