THE PLEASANT PHEASANT Traditional Cache
IthacaDoodle: Came up today and picked up the cache. It was the first I ever placed and so that was nostalgic but it had outlived its time and both the container and hide location needed to be changed. Opening up space and cleaning up our game board with encouragement from Groundspeak's 'Year of the Hide.'
15 years, 2 months, 11 days. 279 finds. 2 favorite points.
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This cache at the foot of Mount Pleasant will bring you to a unique
place in NY - the Richard E. Reynolds Game Farm in the Ellis Hollow
area of Ithaca.
The game farm is a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation facility at Stevenson and Game Farm Roads in Ithaca, NY whose purpose is to hatch and raise Ring-necked Pheasants for release for hunting. Once one of seven, today it is the only pheasant propagation facility run by the state. It raises 25,000 adult pheasants annually which are released for the fall pheasant hunting season. An additional 60,000 chicks and 15,000 young chicks are distributed from here, all destined to be shot in the fall.
The cache is not located on the Game Farm property itself, but in a lovely stand of mature maple, beech, and oak woods across the street called McGowan Woods, which is especially beautiful in the spring with the carpet of trilliums and mayapples. This is a regular-sized traditional cache loaded with nice trade items all related to birds, which is especially fitting as both the Cornell raptor recovery and poultry research centers are nearby. Please keep to the theme if you can (birds or winged critters more generally); signature or trackable items welcome too.
This is the first cache in our Ellis Hollow series which provides a cluster of interesting finds in our little valley of the Finger Lakes region of NY.
With its striking multicolored plumage and long tail, the Ring-necked Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) is an Asian immigrant that was first introduced to NY in 1892. Although populations thrived in the late 1960s, a decrease in fallow grasslands caused numbers to decrease so that artificial placement is necessary to allow continued hunting of this popular game species in the state. Given the expense of this facility (can you say “pork barrel” project?) we can’t help but wonder whether the era for this initiative is over. Take a look at the condition of the roads that you traveled on to get here (all those potholes!) and consider whether the district has better uses of funds than investing in raising non-native birds.
In any case, there is no doubt that pheasants are spectacular birds and it is fascinating to see them here. The pheasants are best viewed by walking or driving along Stevenson Road (from the cache, head south on Game Farm Road, turn left/east directly onto Stevenson, and they will be in the pens on your left). About once a year we also find an escaped bird on our nearby property still wearing its protective mask which prevents it from seeing and pecking the other birds directly in front of it. Besides being an excellent place to get up-close looks at captive pheasants, the Game Farm area at times plays host to an amazing concentration of raptors, especially Red-tailed Hawks. During recent winters, as many as 65 Red-tails have been reported from the immediate vicinity of the Game Farm at one time. The following additional raptor species have been seen at this spot: Northern Harrier, Rough-legged Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, and Merlin.
CONGRATS to FOXPRO on the FTF for this cache!
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Treasures
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