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 bullet 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.
This makes them easy target practice for hunters, although most wind up dying first from car strikes, predators, starvation or the cold, he said.
Many hunters refuse to hunt pen-raised pheasants for this very reason: They present no real challenge.
Animal-rights activists and hunting groups alike say the vast majority of the birds die within weeks of being released.
“It’s absurd and it makes New York State complicit in the slaughter of animals,” said Linda B. Rosenthal, a Democratic member of the State Assembly from Manhattan and the author of the bill that would end the program. “There’s no reason the state needs to engage in this practice.”
Deriding the program as “state-sponsored cruelty,” she called it especially inappropriate for an agency that is responsible for protecting wildlife and the environment.
But for Rob Jagodzinski, a freelance writer who hunts pheasants and other game in the Catskills with the help of his Brittany bird dog, Chloe, the program is not unlike stocking ponds for fishing.
“For some people, it seems indefensible, but there is a sporting aspect to this,” Mr. Jagodzinski said, although he added that he would rather hunt native grouse and woodcock, which requires more skill.
Still, he said, even these pheasants are no sitting ducks.
“Pheasants do fly well, and you have to be a decent wingshot to get one,” Mr. Jagodzinski said. “And I do eat them, so it’s not as if I’m tossing them in the dumpster. It’s reasonable. I have a lot of friends who hunt, and we eat the pheasants.”
Ms. Rosenthal’s bill would close the Reynolds Game Farm, near Ithaca, N.Y., the state-owned property where the birds are raised for release at dozens of sites in time for hunting season.
The program is funded by a federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition and fees collected by the state for hunting licenses as part of its conservation fund, state officials said.
There are 25,000 pheasants bought as adults, 25,000 more bought at six to eight weeks old and raised to adulthood, and 15,000 raised to adulthood through a related program that gives day-old chicks to private citizens, 4-H groups and other educational groups.
A spokeswoman for the Environmental Conservation Department said the agency had no comment on the program because of the pending legislation.
Agency officials said that as many as half of the pheasants wind up being taken by hunters and that hunting overall is one of the most popular forms of outdoor wildlife recreation in the state. More than 565,000 licensed hunters generate approximately $1.5 billion in economic activity each year, officials said.
Casey Sill, a spokesman for Pheasants Forever, a national conservation and advocacy group, said that less than 5 percent of the birds survive the winter. He said the program was not a viable way of repopulating New York without the necessary habitat and conservation improvements.
But, Mr. Sill said, it was an effective way to “bring new hunters into the fold and help develop their passion for wildlife habitat conservation.”
“That’s always a good thing,” he added
Environmental conservation officials have said the program is not meant to restore wild pheasant populations, but to introduce hunting to children as young as 12.
Historically, the program has had some hiccups. Last year, the entire breeder flock of 6,600 pheasants at Reynolds Farm had to be killed because of an outbreak of avian flu. The state bought new birds from a commercial hatchery.
And Gov. David Paterson almost curtailed the program during a budget crisis in 2008 but he reconsidered after an outcry and legal filings from hunting groups.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Paterson called the furor “an upstate thing.”
“We thought we were doing the right environmental thing, but the hunters who chase pheasants saw it differently, so we capitulated,” he said.
Ring-necked pheasants were originally imported from East Asia in the late 1800s as game birds, but as their native grasslands have dwindled, so have their populations in New York.
Now, the birds are released near state hunting areas, but many wander into neighborhoods. Local spottings posted on social media include rambles through a fast- food drive-through and various backyards. Crossing the street seems particularly perilous, to judge by the many accident sites on roadways around release points.
Mr. Di Leonardo spends the late fall rescuing pheasants, bringing them first to his rescue and advocacy nonprofit, Humane Long Island, in Riverhead, then for adoption at wildlife sanctuaries.
He said he had caught dozens of pheasants in a year, some wounded by buckshot, others with broken wings or limbs.
“They pump them full of lead and let the birds crawl away to die — it’s a very cruel death,” Mr. Di Leonardo said as shotgun blasts rang out in the distance. Nearby, hunters in bright orange vests walked by, holding their guns.
The pheasants raised by children in hatching programs are the tamest, he said, with many walking right up to hunters because “they’ve imprinted on humans and some even want to be picked up.”
For Mr. Di Leonardo, the work is not without challenges. There are nasty comments on the group’s Facebook page, confrontations at events and run-ins with hunters. Last month, on a roadway near a hunt club, he said, a man lunged at him and accused him of trespassing.
“I think people would be horrified if they knew that almost a million dollars of New York Conservation Fund money was going toward a program letting hunters shoot fish in a barrel,” he said.
Mr. Jagodzinski, the hunter, said the animals can adapt to their surroundings if they are wily enough.
“They’re given a chance,” he said. “Some survive several weeks and some manage to survive through the winter and get wilder and smarter.”
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