Royal Hunt Club set to release 2,000 pheasants this year

If you think you work hard, long hours to make a living, just imagine putting in about the same amount of time working on a project that brings you no recompense.

That is what Royal Hunt Club volunteer Sam Worsham has done this year. He has been raising 2,500 pheasants for the Hunt Club's private hunting program, which supports athletic endeavors for Royal City youngsters.

The raise-your-own concept is new, but the Royal Youth Boosters, which evolved into the Hunt Club, is not. It was launched by Andrew Perkins, Jerry Allred and Mike Meseberg back in 1987.

“We wanted to provide adequate sports fields for our kids,” Meseberg said. “We wanted to give kids the best way to enjoy sports in high school.”

Royal Sports Boosters did more than that. For a while, it staged a yearly all-sports banquet with headline speakers.

The first was original Seahawks quarterback Jim Zorn, who is still a celebrity in the Northwest. That banquet had an attendance of 648.

Others headliners included Clint Didier of Connell and the Washington Redskins and Bob “The Voice of the Cougars” Robertson.

Ted Christensen built the original Royal High football field, Meseberg said. The boosters were involved in building the field on which the Knights play now.

To support these costly endeavors, the boosters developed a fall hunting program that brought in mostly western Washington hunters for pheasant, geese and ducks. Part of the deal for the hunters was that they would hunt farm fields planted with pheasants by the Boosters.

The number of hunters was limited to 250, Meseberg said. They purchased a hunt pass that made them members of the Boosters for the season. They could hunt the planted fields as often as they wanted through the end of goose season.

At the same time, nobody else could.

Making it all work were the farmers who donated their lands for hunting use. The Boosters planted as many as 15,000 acres.

Meseberg didn't remember the original price of the pass, but it was comparable to the $300 hunters pay today.

“The beauty of this fund-raiser is that it's out of town money,” Meseberg said. “And there is an economic impact in gas sales, restaurant sales and overnight stays.”

Worsham noted Meseberg's Mardon Resort staff sells the passes and generally handles the business of the program.

For years, the Boosters bought 500 full grown pheasants to plant, Worsham noted. Then Worsham started thinking the deal would be more attractive to hunters if there were more birds. This year he acted.

In the spring, Worhsam started the process of raising 2,500 pheasants. The Hunt Club paid $1.95 each for that many day-old chicks. They have lost or will lose about 20 percent by planting time.

“The biggest part of the loss is that they kill each other,” Worsham said.

Worsham started growing the chicks at the high school's greenhouse. They needed to be in a 100-degree environment for their early lives.

There Worsham counted on the help of Dirk Dunn and his son Randy and daughter Sam, both of whom attend the high school. They put countless hours into the project.

“Without them, it probably would have failed,” Worsham said.

After the weather warmed and the chicks had grown, they were moved a large pen near the Worsham home north of the schools on road 11. Worsham took over from there.

Recently, the birds were moved to an even larger pen, made of wire mesh fencing and overhead netting, next to the canal, high on the hill. They walk around mostly but, there, they can fly. It's 100 yards long

The final task for Worsham, just before pheasant season, will be to plant the birds in the thousands of acres of farm fields donated for this use.

Now Worsham is thinking about how to improve on this year. He plans to do the hatching himself and raise pheasants from hatchlings to huntable birds.

“About 100 hens will be kept,” he said. “A friend of mine has an incubator he'll loan me.”

From his own research, Worsham has learned that each hen will produce three batches of chicks a year with perhaps more than 10 chicks per batch.

“This pen (at the house) would end up being like a sick pen,” he said.

Meseberg, who deals with the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife on a regular basis, says that agency “loves” the existence of the Hunt Club and its major fund-raiser.

“It sells licenses,” he said.

Meseberg noted Mattawa and Quincy have similar programs, patterned after and inspired by the Royal Hunt Club.