LANSING, Mich. — Bird hunters heading afield in the southern Lower Peninsula this fall will find more ring-necked pheasants than nature alone would supply. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources plans to put close to 7,300 birds onto public hunting ground this fall and winter.
Stocking runs in two windows. The first matches the Lower Peninsula fall season, Oct. 20 through Nov. 14, and the second matches the late management hunt, Dec. 1 through Jan. 1, which is open only in the southern part of the Lower Peninsula.
Thirteen state game areas get birds, spread from the southwest corner of Michigan through the Lansing region and into the Thumb and metro Detroit. Rose Lake in Clinton and Shiawassee counties and Pointe Mouillee in Monroe and Wayne counties are on the list. One swap this year moves releases to the Gagetown State Game Area instead of nearby Cass City.
This is year seven for the program. The DNR runs it with a statewide association of game bird breeders and hunting preserves, whose members raise the birds, and sales of the $25 pheasant license pay for it.
That license is required for hunters 18 and older on Lower Peninsula public land and on property enrolled in the Hunting Access Program. It is not needed on private land, on public land in the Upper Peninsula, on game bird hunting preserves, for hunters 17 and under, or for lifetime license holders.
Upper Peninsula hunters have a separate, earlier window. Fall pheasant hunting there runs Oct. 10 through Oct. 31 in all of Menominee County and portions of Delta, Dickinson, Iron and Marquette counties.
Pheasants were once a mainstay of Michigan hunting in the middle of the last century, but wild numbers fell sharply as grassland gave way to large-scale farming and suburban growth. DNR upland bird specialist Adam Bump said in the announcement that the releases let veteran hunters relive that era and give younger hunters a way to try pheasant hunting on public land.
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