We raise roughly 60,000 pheasants at our Rockport pheasant farm each year these pheasants are used
for our stocking program they're used for our youth hunt and they're also used for stocking
our dog training areas by the time November rolls around the pheasants at Rockport are full-grown
it's time to collect them up out of the range pens and put them in boxes for distribution we
have about 35 acres of range pens on the the Rockport campus when the birds are ready to
be put into boxes it's a multi-step process to get them there we bring in a lot of staff from
throughout the area these are very large range pens and we're trying to move the pheasants
from this very large area into a very small area walking in a you know a human chain across the
back of the range pen to push those birds into the corner and out into the runways so we use
staff full-time staff we use seasonal staff we also are involved in Department of Corrections
inmate labor program where we have inmates come out to the farm on several days throughout the
year to help with that pushing process so the birds are pushed through the range pens through
an opening and into the runways once they're in the runways then staff forms a smaller chain and
pushes them down the runways and into an area where we can catch the birds and box the birds
What's happening here is staff at the Rockport game farm are removing the birds from the runway
into a holding area where there's a number of 12 to 15 employees four different windows handing
five birds at a time out putting into the new plastic boxes 36 to a pallet which equals 180
birds and these will now transfer from the holding area by machine onto the back of the pickup
trucks to be delivered to the different Wildlife Management Area through South Central and North
Jersey. once we have the crates loaded in the boxes on the trucks our bureau of land management
staff stocks the pheasant on 23 different wildlife management areas and the Delaware
Water Gap the stocking takes place after sunset and the philosophy there is that if you stock the
birds at night they'll fly less and they'll stay in place once they're once they're placed into the
fields the birds are placed in fields throughout the stocked wildlife management areas and in the
morning they're there they're available for people at sunrise to hunt for those people that have
pheasant and quail stamps that are available to hunt. now what we find is sometimes people show up
to hunt these birds and they'll call us and say oh you didn't stock pheasant last night and my
reply is when we get those calls is we've stocked them our staff was out there and we do know our
staff is out there stocking and our staff does an excellent job in this area one of the difficulties
is however that sometimes there's predation that takes place during the night after the
birds are placed we know that great horned owls kill a lot of birds and sometimes the birds move
you know despite our best efforts to keep them in place sometimes these birds do move we do try to
assist people that participate in this program to know where we stock through our pheasant stocking
maps that are available on our website and that's one way to help people focus in on where the birds
are being placed. for the past several years our target stocking number for the pheasant program
has been fifty thousand birds in 2015-2016 we greatly exceeded that number upwards of over
55,000 pheasant stocked throughout the state. in 2017 we ran into some difficulties at the
farm and our number was lower our projected number was 45,000 Birds so on average we're
still exceeding that fifty thousand bird mark but it's variable and it fluctuates from year
to year that is one of the challenges of growing your own pheasant for the division is that it's
hard to hit that target number accurately sometimes you have high mortality and that
brings you low sometimes you have low mortality and you overshoot your target which is often a
good thing but that is one of the challenges of raising these pheasants on our own is that it's
hard to hit that target but our target each year is fifty thousand birds for the stocking program.
In an effort to promote youth participation in hunting each year the Division has multiple
opportunities for youth hunters. For pheasant we do an annual Youth pheasant hunt on ten
different wildlife management areas the Saturday before opening day we have our youth pheasant day
you're gonna keep your safeties on until you're ready to shoot keep your finger off the trigger
because believe it or not this is connected to this the trigger doesn't have a brain you guys
do we put this pheasant hunt on every year for the young hunters of the state of New Jersey
and experienced hunters they have a great time we have wonderful dog handlers the state of New
Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife put out 250 Birds here at Assunpink every year for us
and it's a great hunt. we put on a breakfast a lunch for everybody and everyone has a great
time. The name's Dana Hook I've been volunteering as a dog handler for about five years now I run
three boykin spaniels it's such a great program I was part of it when I was a kid my brother used
to take me out here at Assunpink and it's just a wonderful day hopefully more kids get involved
I've been doing this since I started the hunt when I was 13 we came here for our first pheasant hunt
never had pheasant hunted before shot my first well yeah shot my first bird first time single
single shot and then didn't shoot a bird again for like four more years I'm just here because
I love the kids and I love seeing them come out here and hunt the right way and learn how to
do it you know the way that I learned over the course of my my hunting years you know hunting
over dog and hunting safe and shooting the right direction and hearing from all the guys that
have done it and learned the right way so this is like a great opening and the possibility of what
you could be as a hunter in New Jersey you know there's a lot of a lot of fun and camaraderie and
learning experience a lot of life lessons it's a perfect layout it's bird country. you don't get
better bird hunting than this is this is true blue bird hunting in New Jersey it's fantastic