(Lewis) Iowa’s 100th anniversary Pheasant hunting season starts on Saturday. John Lorenzen, Fisheries Biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, appearing on his weekly radio show on KSOM, says research shows Pheasants were introduced to the United States in Oregon’s Willamette Valley in 1881.
Lorenzen says in 1901, an Iowa winds storm wrecked the rearing pens of a game breeder named William Benton of Cedar Falls, releasing 2,000 birds into Iowa for the first time.
Lorenzen says the first hunting season opened in 1925. He says the pheasant harvest peaked in the early 1960s when more than 300,000 hunters harvested approximately two million roosters. Last year, approximately 590,000 roosters were harvested by 83,600 hunters.
This year, on the 100th anniversary of Pheasant hunting in Iowa, the DNR expects around 60,000 to 80,000 hunters.
