Pheasant hunting coming to two WMAs in North Idaho

North Idaho will receive 1,200 pheasants this year for a couple of its wildlife management areas.

The reason is twofold.

Hunters can chase them in the Coeur d’Alene River WMA and at Boundary-Smith Creek near Bonners Ferry, and the birds that remain will reproduce offspring the following year.

“It will be all wild birds then,” Jim Hagadorn, of the Gamebird Foundation said.

Hagadorn, 90, of Viola, has been pushing for more than 25 years to stock pheasants across the state, wherever there is good bird habitat.

This year, the Legislature passed a bill to allow that to happen.

House Bill 544, which amended existing laws to allow pheasant stocking in wildlife management areas primarily in southern Idaho, passed almost unanimously in February. The new law removes reference to wildlife management areas, and allows birds to be stocked and hunted on lands outside state purview.

It also requires an upland game bird permit.

Hagadorn’s group — it has members throughout central and North Idaho — receives chicks at Fish and Game expense and distributes them to brooders in central and North Idaho. The brooders, outfitted in large part by the Gamebird Foundation and affiliated with the group, raise the birds until they are released from pens that allow them to acclimate to the wild.

After that, they are fair game for hunters.

Kiira Siitari of Fish and Game said the birds — approximately 600 per WMA in North Idaho — will be released before the youth hunting season.

“Birds will be released immediately before the youth season opener then stocked intermittently through the 2020 season,” Siitari said.

The Coeur d’Alene WMA and Boundary-Smith Creek WMA will each receive 639 roosters, Siitari said.

“Individual parcels have not been determined yet,” she said.

The pheasants destined for North Idaho are from Little Canyon, a game bird farm in Peck, with a location near Fairfield, Wash.

As part of the program, any person 18 years old or older must have a valid Upland Game Bird Permit to hunt stocked pheasants, Siitari said.

The Gamebird Foundation is also responsible for stocking pheasants in a Fish and Game Access Yes! Youth hunting area west of Potlatch, and another area southeast of Moscow.

Hagadorn said his group is looking for large landowners in North Idaho willing to have pheasants released on their acreage — more than 400 acres works best — and to allow public hunting.

“If we get new areas we can get more birds out there,” he said.

The bird foundation for several years has been acquiring birds from Fish and Game and raising them for its Access Yes! properties.

“We can raise roosters for less than $4 each and hens for less than $2 each,” he said.

Volunteers from the foundation set up potential game bird farmers with roosting pens and necessary equipment.

In addition to North Idaho WMAs, he said, residents in Benewah County, including in St. Maries and near Plummer have taken advantage of the foundation’s pheasant-raising program.

The foundation also wants to organize a North Idaho chapter, he said.

For more information call 208-883-3423, or email jhag1008@gmail.com.