quote:

---

According to Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPW) records, the first pheasants in the High Plains and Northern Rolling Plains of Texas immigrated from western Oklahoma in 1939 or 1940. Private releases of birds during the 1930s and 1940s by private landowners in the Panhandle of Texas also helped to establish populations of Ring-necked Pheasants in several areas of the region. In 1946, Paul V. Jones of the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission described the pheasant population in the Panhandle as being "extremely spotty in distribution and consisting of a drifting and very intermittent population." He estimated the maximum population size at 1000 birds and remarked "the true figure is in all probability considerably less than that."

In 1950, Ring-necked Pheasants occupied portions of at least 18 counties, occurring primarily along tributaries, rivers, and other riparian habitat corridors of the Texas Panhandle. The face of agriculture changed drastically during the 1950s as ranching on shortgrass prairie and dry land farming were replaced by irrigated cropland throughout much of the High Plains and Northern Rolling Plains. Unlike many of the other upland game birds that need and prefer rangeland, pheasants are dependent on landscapes dominated by cultivation. Pheasant populations grew with the increase in cultivation, furrow irrigation, and moderate farming intensity.

Occurrence of ring-necked pheasants in the region, coupled with recognition that land use changes altered, if not diminished habitat of many native game species, led TPW to initiate a program to release propagated pheasants in unoccupied areas of the Texas Panhandle. During this era, TPW, private individuals, sportsman, and civic groups were releasing birds concurrently. Areas stocked by TPW met minimum criteria of: (1) having at least 10,000 acres with large areas of grain farming; and (2) interspersed with pastures, hay fields and odd areas. Release of both captive raised and wild caught pheasants of several varieties or hybrids were made from 1964 to 1974 in Lubbock, Bailey, Hale, Carson, and Gray counties.

---