John Booth of Moran isn’t afraid to take a gamble.
He’s done it before, when more than 13 years ago he served as a boat captain and lead fishing excursions in Alaska. He came home to find local work when his wife, Susan, was diagnosed with an illness.
Then four years ago, he hurt his back. As part of rehabilitation, he started to walk and hunt.
That led him to a pheasant hunting trip in Pittsburg, which would start him down the path of a new adventure.
“There’s not very many birds in our area. The guy leading the hunt said there’s such a shortage, you can’t hunt after February or March even though the season runs through April,” Booth said.
It gave him an idea.
He asked a friend, Jacob I. Schwartz, an Amish man who had done contracting work at Booth’s house, if he wanted to help him raise pheasants.
“We jumped in with no equipment and no birds. I had no clue what I was doing,” Booth said.
“Four years later, we’re raising 50,000 pheasants.”
THE PHEASANT farming business is more supportive than competitive, Booth soon discovered.
“The hatcheries want you to succeed, because the bigger you get, the more birds you buy,” he said. “And they’re just really good people that would help, anyway.”
Booth did his research, and found numerous hatcheries and organizations that gave him advice.
Thunder Country Outdoors, a pheasant hatchery in Richmond, gave him a tour of its facility and told him how to get started. They recommended he contact Prairie Land Game Birds, a hatchery in Hunter, where Booth now buy chicks.
He also attended a conference with one of the country’s largest producers, and started working with the North American Gamebird Association (NAGA). The organization featured Booth’s operation in an article in its May/June magazine.
Not everyone was so confident of the endeavor.
His banker said he was crazy when he asked for a $50,000 loan to raise pheasants.
“This is a very volatile business. It’s high risk, high reward,” Booth said. “One storm, one disease, you could be out of business. And there’s no insurance available.”
