RE: Let's face reality in PA
"patrkyhntr" your ignorance is showing. New Jersey Wildlife management Areas are not "hunting preserves." they are every bit as wild and sometimes vast as Pennsylvania Game Lands.
Yes, NJ does breed their own Pheasants but purchases Quail from providers.
Your words..."given the fact that Pennsylvania farms have zero habitat for ringnecks and most of our gamelands are forests?" Pennsylvania has over 200,000 + acres in CRP/CREP. Many farms still do have decent habitat, though not all. Perhaps some of the forest could be cut and cleared and conditioned for small game. All of PA's Game Lands need not be pole timber!
Remember, they are GAME Lands and not TIMBER lands, at least not yet. And, even as Timber the forest has not been managed properly. Each year the agency misses it's stated goal of cutting 1 % of it's timber, thus denying itself of some $10 Million Dollars. And that's been going on for several years. (Go ahead, take your shoes of andcount that up.)
Why not stock more pen raised birds? It's a put and take proposition no matter how the PGCobtains Pheasants. Why not shoot pen raised Hens? They don't propagate as itis now. Even the PGC biologists will tell you that.
Now you tell me why the PGC will not support a Wild Pheasant Re-Introduction Program?
Why does the Tri-County Pheasants Forever Chapter in concert with the US Fish & Wildlife Service and the Calif. University of PA have to do it?
It's a program that would only cost the PGC $35,000 each year for 3 years. Put your shoes back on,... the total cost is $105K.
Let me ask you something; is hunting deer from a tree stand (sometimes tree houses) with scent placed in the area, hunting, or is it simply SHOOTING???
Like I said, come to the meeting or don't you want to face the fact that the agency is grossly mismanaged. (And everybody knows it.)