As Gamebirds
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Common Pheasants are bred to be hunted and are shot in great numbers in Europe, especially the UK, where they are shot on the traditional formal "driven shoot" principles, whereby paying guns have birds driven over them by beaters, and on smaller "rough shoots". The open season in the UK is 1 October - 1 February, under the Game Act 1831. Generally they are shot by hunters employing gun dog to help find, flush, and retrieve shot birds. Retrievers, spaniels, and pointing breeds are used to hunt pheasants.
The doggerel "Up gets a guinea, bang goes a penny-halfpenny, and down comes a half a crown" reflects the expensive sport of nineteenth century driven shoots in Britain, when pheasants were often shot for sport rather than as food. It was a popular royal pastime in Britain to shoot Common Pheasants. King George V shot over a thousand pheasants out of a total bag of 3937 over a six day period in December 1913 during a competition with a friend, however did not do enough to beat him.
Common Pheasants are traditionally a target of small game poachers in the UK, but due to low value of pheasants in the modern day some have resorted to stealing chicks or poults from pens. The Roald Dahl novel Danny the Champion of the World dealt with a poacher (and his son) who lived in the United Kingdom and illegally hunted Common Pheasants.
Pheasant farming is a common practice, and is sometimes done intensively. Birds are supplied both to hunting preserves/estates and restaurants, with smaller numbers being available for home cooks. Pheasant farms have some 10 million birds in the U.S. and 35 million in the United Kingdom.
The carcasses were often hung for a time to improve the meat by slight decomposition, as with most other game. Modern cookery generally uses moist roasting and farm-raised female birds. In the U.K. and U.S., game is making somewhat of a comeback in popular cooking, and more pheasants than ever are being sold in supermarkets there. A major reason for this is consumer attitude shift from consumption of red meat to white.
Read more about this topic: Common Pheasant