New York Raises These Pheasants to Be Shot. Is It Hunting or Cruelty?

New York|New York Raises These Pheasants to Be Shot. Is It Hunting or Cruelty?

Dead ring-necked pheasants were flattened into feathered splotches along a Long Island road. Heads, wings and plumage were scattered at regular intervals. Live pheasants darted around nervously.

“Look, there’s one that’s limping,” said John Di Leonardo, a wildlife rehabilitator, as he strode along the grassy shoulder, net in hand. He pointed to a bird with a long, dark tail and coppery plumage that was hobbling across a field, possibly after being hit by a hunter or a car.

The avian carnage, Mr. Di Leonardo said, was courtesy of a state-run pheasant stocking program that leaves thousands of birds at sites like this to die, and usually not at the hands of hunters.

The state program, which began in 1908 and had a $1.4 million budget this year, provides 65,000 birds a year to foster interest in field sports among children and other novice hunters. But critics like Mr. Di Leonardo call it target practice with live animals that results in mass slaughter. Serious hunters call the birds insultingly easy prey. Some New York State legislators hope to end the program through a bill to be introduced next month.

Under the program, the state raises pheasants for hunting season, which runs from Nov. 1 through December on Long Island and from October through February in much of the rest of New York. Every fall across the state, conservation workers release ring-necked pheasants, which are not native to the area.

Being raised and fed in captivity before their abrupt release, the birds lack foraging and other survival skills, like a healthy fear of hunters or natural predators, Mr. Di Leonardo said.