Pheasant Fact Friday!💡 The energy available to a pheasant from its diet is dependent: 1) on the digestive ability of the bird, 2) the amount of food eaten, and 3) the digestibility of the food. Let’s consider #1. Swallowed food is first kept in the crop (lower neck) which holds and meters food to the gizzard for grinding. The ground food then passes through the small intestine to become “chyme” (a mixture of roughage and paste). The paste is directed to the ceca for further breakdown and energy absorption. In the bird kingdom, the ability of the pheasant’s ceca to breakdown food and absorb energy is second only to the grouse family.The ceca are finger like pouches at the junction of the small and the large intestines. They are particularly important in winter when the hen wants to eat as much as possible to stay warm. The ceca further digests the paste for more energy while the roughage goes to the large intestine to be rapidly expelled from the body. This rapid expulsion allows the hen to eat more. #pheasantsforever #pheasantfactfriday #pheasants

Check out PF & QF’s 2024 Prairie Grouse Primer, presented by @sportsmansguide at the link in our bio. When August’s sunlight starts raking in lower and nights cool down, an uplander’s thoughts turn toward September and prairie grouse hunting. Take a tour through sharptail, prairie chicken and sage grouse country with PF & QF’S annual Prairie Grouse Primer. State-by-state forecasts get your planning started. The low-down? It should be a good prairie grouse season. But every year is a good year to hunt prairie grouse. Go again. Go back. Go for the first time. There is nothing like the shortgrass and plum brush and snowberries and sage in autumn, and a horizon that stretches to the rim of the world. Tom Carpenter, Prairie Grouse Primer Editor #pheasantsforever #quailforever #grouse #prairiegrouse

We just had to share the cover for our upcoming Fall Edition of PF & QF’S youth magazine, Forever Outdoors. Yes, the rooster pheasant and bobwhite donning their PF & QF lids are pretty cool! (Thanks to Tyler Kimes, one of our Farm Bill biologists in Illinois, for the great artwork.) The stories inside are great too – youth hunting season tips, a western upland adventure, a picture gallery of puppies in the field, a kid-friendly explanation of how public lands happen with PF & QF doing the heavy lifting, and more! Sign up a kid from your life at the link in our bio by August 21 for a youth membership in PF or QF, and they’ll be on the mailing list Fall’s Issue of Forever Outdoors. Get ‘em outdoors and involved! - Tom Carpenter, Editor of Forever Outdoors