Hunting take figures, given by Austin and Kuroda (4), indicate 
about 400,000 green pheasant per year were taken up to 1928; approxi- 
mately 300,000 in the late 1930's; in 1946 a harvest of 486,000; in 
1947 it was down to 319,000. The Wildlife Section reported an increased 
kill of about 479,000 green pheasants in 1962. 
Competition with Other Game Species 
Two other upland game birds overlap the range of the green pheasant 
in Japan. At lower elevations the Chinese bamboo partridge is found 
while the copper pheasant occurs at the upper elevations of the green 
pheasant range. Little competition between these game birds for food or 
territory has been reported. 
Introduced from China about 1919, the Chinese bamboo partridge 
(Bambusicola thoracica thoracica) overlaps the range of the green pheasant 
at the lower elevations. It thrives best in the warm areas of high rain- 
fall where sparse forest and brush growth or bamboo thickets offer food 
and shelter adjacent to cultivated plains or mountain valleys. 
A second game bird, the copper pheasant (Syrmaticus soemmerringii), 
according to Austin and Kuroda (4), is limited to Honshu, Shikoku and 
Kyushu ranges in mountain forests and canyons up to 4,500 feet. It 
occurs down to near sea level in rugged hilly country and usually shies 
away from human habitations or cultivated fields, It prefers the dark 
Japanese redwood or cypress forests with a mixture of shrubby woods and 
grassy: hillsides. It is in the lower elevations from about 1,000 to 
3,500 feet that the green pheasant may overlap it in habitat. 
There should be no greater competition between Japanese green 
pheasants and bobwhite in the United States than there is betwen ring- 
neck and quail, or ringneck and ruffed grouse. Northern green pheasants 
in our eastern States have sometimes been liberated where coverts are 
partially occupied by bobwhite., Little serious competition has been 
reported to date between these two game birds. 
Breeding and Raising 
After a slow start, State game farms have found that the Japanese 
green pheasant is almost as easy to propagate in captivity as is the 
common ringneck, As is normal with wild-trapped stock, special attention 
was required to secure good egg production until a few generations had 
been produced in captivity. Thereafter the same techniques, successfully 
employed in producing ringnecks in captivity, were found to be applicable 
also to green pheasants. Normally 1 male to 4 or 5 females are penned 
together at breeding time. An average of 40.6 eggs per hen was secured 
on the Virginia State game farm in 1962 from breeders that were only two 
generations removed from the wild. Fertility has been high. The in- 
cubation period for these eggs is 23 to 24 days in captivity. Incubator 
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