CORNISH — With a cackle and a frenzied rustling of feathers, a cock pheasant scrambles up into the air, discovered by the keen nose of a spaniel, and with a resounding shot becomes a prize catch.

Such is the scene of a pheasant hunt, in a season that began this month and runs through the end of December.

“It’s a cultural thing, if you’re brought up in it,” said Barry Hadlock, president of Kezar Falls Fish and Game Club.

Hadlock and others from the club took several young teenagers out on Columbus Day to experience the thrill of the hunt, though for most of them it was nothing new.

“Ever since I was 4, I’ve been shooting guns and hunting,” said Bryant McCubrey, 13, who said he took up pheasant hunting four years ago. This is his first season with the club.

McCubrey took a woodcock and a pheasant home after the holiday hunt, which was held on private land in Cornish that the club was granted permission to use.

The club purchases and raises its own pheasant chicks beginning in June. Throughout the hunting season, members release about 30 pheasants on a private site a day or two before the hunt.

The Kezar Falls club raised about 150 of their own pheasants this year, said club member Mike Motherspaugh, which they purchased from Connecticut and Western Massachusetts.

“We just feed and water them and get out. We don’t stand around and let them eat out of your hand,” said Hadlock. “They’re not tame birds ”“ they avoid you. The kids have quite a time trying to catch them with nets.”

Once the birds are caught, they’re “put them to sleep” by tucking their heads under a wing and moving the birds around in a circular motion.

“Then you can put them in one place for a while,” said Hadlock. “We try to do some of them so that all of them won’t fly off.”

The club also helps to raise and release pheasants provided by the state, which relies on the clubs to distribute the birds three times during the season, at about two dozen public hunting sites throughout Cumberland and York counties. The final release of the season was Thursday.

In previous years, the state has provided sporting clubs with 6-week-old chicks each season, according to State Wildlife Biologist Scott Lindsay. Last year, however, nearly half of the birds died due to disease, so adult birds were purchased for this season.

“We lost almost 200 birds due to Triple E (eastern equine encephalitis),” said Motherspaugh.

The program is self-sustaining, said Lindsay, with the fees from pheasant permits paying for the purchase of the birds. An average of 1,200 to 1,400 pheasant hunters buy permits each year and the state releases between 2,200 and 3,200 birds for the season.

“It’s a very attractive hunt for many people,” said Lindsay. “We try to give hunters the most bang for their buck.”

The state program began in the 1930s, said Lindsay, and the Legislature limited it to the two southernmost counties because it was thought that the more northern climate would be inhospitable to the birds.

At the time, it was believed that the pheasants might be able to establish their own reproducing populations in Maine, but that has not been the case. The snow pack, multiple predators and lack of standing grain crops for winter forage make it so that the birds must be stocked each year, said Lindsay. The birds have been raised and stocked for hunting in Maine since the late 1800s, he said.

“It’s a challenge and it seems to be very attractive for youth to get involved because they often get rewarded very quickly and reliably ”“ and get hooked,” said Lindsay.

John Bernard, a retired science teacher from Portland and a member of the Windham-Gorham Rod and Gun Club, said that some people decry the “raise and place” hunt as cruel, but he stressed that the birds are still wild.

“As you can see, they’re still giving them plenty of trouble,” he said as he joined the Kezar Falls youth, traipsing through the high grass on Columbus Day. “You’ve gotta be quick, you can’t be dreaming of a white Christmas.”

Trained dogs can sniff out a bird that has hunkered down, either flushing it out or simply revealing its location, depending on how they are trained, said Hadlock. You can hunt without a dog, he said, but it’s a lot more difficult.

On the Columbus Day hunt, Motherspaugh was particularly proud of the successes of his 4-month-old English setter, Ruby, which he’s been training since she was only 8 weeks old, using a fishing pole and a feather.

“Every dog is different,” said Hadlock, who said he has had five hunting dogs over the years, which are also lap dogs at home.

Hadlock said he got into the sport fairly late. He found an interest in bow hunting when he was out west to visit his wife’s family, but when he talked to a friend about pursuing it, he was told, “Come out with me and my bird dog before you get a bow” ”“ “and that was it,” he said.

After each hunt, some club members collect the feathers for fly-tying or other crafts, said Ellen Dimond of Porter, who is club secretary. But most are focused on the meat.

“When I grew up, hunting was for food,” she said. “We needed it, it wasn’t just for trophies on the wall.”

Some members make chowders with the pheasant meat, while Hadlock is known for his bean doodle, a chowder and bean/onion mixture with pheasant.

“They’re delicious,” said Hadlock, who said he sometimes marinates the meat in orange liqueur.

“It’s like the food you’d eat in heaven,” said Bernard.

— City Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski can be contacted at 282-1535, Ext. 322 or kristenm@journaltribune.com.