Many readers with experience hunting pheasants in the US are disputing this post. One writes:
Michelle Hutchinson is talking about game farms in Britain – not wild bird hunting in South Dakota, as the video implied. Game farms are businesses where the pheasants are bred or purchased from dealers and kept in pens until they are planted in fields to be shot by hunters who pay a fee, usually around $15-20 a bird. Many sportsmen view game farms as unethical and not fit for a sportsman.
Further, in 25 years of hunting pheasants in South Dakota, I have never seen a child sent out into a field as a "beater", as Hutchinson implies is a "typical" practice. Perhaps that practice is done in Britain, but in the USA, kids are not sent out in front of hunters with guns to flush birds. When kids are present in the field, they uniformly stand next to or behind an adult.
Next, almost all hunters I know eat the game they shoot. It would be great if Hutchinson had, you know, actual facts to back up that implication. She misses another key point – license fees and local economics. First, out of state pheasant hunters in South Dakota pay $110 for a license – most of which goes to support local habitat for these birds and other wild life (coyotes, ducks, dove, etc.). Secondly, tourism in South Dakota is the second largest slice of state income (after agriculture). So, not only do pheasant hunters protect the land and habitat for these animals, we also create jobs.
The Dish 