Birdmen Of Connell State Hopes Prison Program Will Give Inmates, Pheasants A Better Chance On The Outside
Inside the state prison here, convicted escapee Kenneth Crary glances over his shoulder, eases the stainless steel bolt up and slips through the gate. He walks softly, quickly along the fence, eyes darting. Suddenly, he freezes.
Too late.
The birds know he’s inside and they’re airborne.
It’s winged madness, flight frenzy, avian chaos. It’s the pheasant farm at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center where Crary is just trying to change the water for flap-happy pheasants, 10 weeks old.
In this version of “All Captives Great and Small,” the state is hoping that inmates raising game birds will improve the chances of both outside.
The Legislature established the pheasant enhancement program in 1997 to try to boost pheasant hunting after years of drought and the unintended consequences of improved farming drastically had cut bird numbers.
Last year, the state purchased birds to release. This year, the minimum-security prison 90 miles southwest of Spokane is the only public entity raising birds for Eastern Washington.
The birds cost the state $6 apiece, about half what they cost from private vendors. Coyote Ridge hopes to raise more than 3,000 of the 20,000 roosters to be released in September. Next year: twice that.
“Our angle is not productivity - it’s quality and health,” said Dave Geil, construction manager at Coyote Ridge. In other words, tail feathers. Birds raised in captivity often lose their tail feathers from fighting or lack of space.
The program is the Legislature’s attempt to revive bird hunting in Eastern Washington. For the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, it’s a way for the cash-strapped agency to increase awareness and habitat for pheasants. For the Coyote Ridge staff, it’s one more way to work the hardscrabble land at Connell.
Since the 410-man prison opened in 1992, inmates have done all the cooking, new construction and maintenance. They cut the grass three times a week, paint the place every three years, weed extensive gardens and cultivate all their own plants. They raise onions, beans, lettuce, asparagus, apples, pears, cantaloupes, watermelons and enough potatoes to last from September to May and provide surplus to Airway Heights and Pine Lodge prisons and local food banks.
“We expect everyone to get out of bed and work here, it’s a buns-out-of-bed program,” said Jim Lobach, prison plant manager. “We don’t sit around and watch TV.”
Inmates maintain all public parks for 50 miles, work on migrant housing and maintain the grounds of Columbia Basin Community College and Grant County Fairgrounds. They’ve installed sewers in Mattawa, rebuilt Connell’s fire truck and turned old Connell City Hall into a public library.
Behind all the work are Lobach and Dave Geil. Lobach is a veteran prison plant manager, a Connell councilman who eschews air conditioning and walks a mile down the hill every day to get home.
There wasn’t a blade of grass on the uneven, sandy ground when he arrived at the new prison in 1992. Dust storms whipped the campus into darkness.
Lobach went into town and bought every hose he could find. He hired Geil, a Connell-area mechanic, to be construction manager. With inmates, they created a 40-acre oasis of trees, shrubs, grass and sidewalks. Geil asked for 2 acres to start a vegetable garden. Today, it stretches 10-1/2 acres around the perimeter on every available scrap of ground.
The men have almost never gone outside the prison for help. Lobach does all the architecture and engineering; Geil does all the physical work, and talented inmates fill in the gaps. Typical was a duplex for family visits that they designed on a restaurant napkin. Those same plans became the blueprints for similar duplexes at Airway Heights.
Much of what they use to operate was salvaged from state salvage yards or local farms.
“He knows where the junk is buried in the farmers’ weeds,” Lobach said of Geil.
Geil would approach farmers and ask for donations. The potato planter, for instance, was a 1942 John Deere, rusting for years when Geil retrieved it and inmates refurbished it. The truck he drives at the prison is a reconditioned 1964 Dodge. Both Ford tractors came in pieces on pallets.
“I’d just say to Jim, `Well, what do you want done and we’ll go get her,”’ Geil said. But almost since he arrived, Geil had hoped to raise pheasants.
Eight years of drought and 25 years of modern farming practices pitched Eastern Washington pheasant numbers to an all-time low in the mid1990s. The Legislature hoped prison inmates would be involved in pen-rearing the birds - most likely those serving time at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla.
“Hell,” Lobach remembered saying, “we’re better than the Pen.”
He pestered headquarters for permission, while Geil wrote to dozens of game farms and vendors across the country. They collected blueprints, customized them, and then last year started building.
A new brooder and hatchery barn is flanked by 50-by-100-foot pens, draped with an ingenious system of cables and circus tentlike netting.
The incubators are 50 years old, salvaged when the state began a $2 million upgrade of the Centralia hatchery that raises pheasants for the West Side. Their redwood fronts gleam after being restored by inmate Robert Duvall.
“I’m amazed at what they’ve done,” said Ron Antill, game farm superintendent in Centralia. “I gave them old stuff - junk really - and now it looks like that.”
“We salvaged the incubators, we salvaged the brooder hoods and maybe we salvage them, too,” Geil said, looking at inmates carefully turning eggs.
Only a handful of Geil’s 35-inmate staff work daily with the birds. All must read the Game Bird Propagation book, the bible of raising birds.
“We’re helping the community and the environment,” Crary, 32, said. “It’s always been me, me, me. Now I’m giving back.”
Curt Stump, who is serving a drug sentence out of Spokane County, said he requested a pheasant job just to work with Geil.
“Dave treats you like any other employee and treats this like a regular job. It’s just like getting up and going to work every day. And he’s always got something more for you to do.” “Anyhoo,” Geil said impatiently, “let’s get going.”
Eventually, six of the prison’s 40 acres will be devoted to birds. As they prepared the ground, Geil sent inmates in to hunt for wild nests that might be disturbed.
They found a small number of eggs, and they were taken inside the hatchery along with carefully packed trays of blue, brown, tan and green eggs. The eggs come from Idaho and Montana vendors and the state’s only remaining pheasant hatchery in Centralia. When the first batch hatched, Lobach rushed into a meeting to announce that “Dave is a mom.”
Today at 10 a.m., they’ll have an official ribbon-cutting with Coyote Ridge Superintendent Thomas Donahue and state Sen. Bob Oke, sponsor of the pheasant-enhancement bill.
But Geil and Lobach know they are as threatened as the birds they raise.
In August, Corrections will begin a series of public meetings in Connell, a town of 2,500, to discuss building a medium-security prison on neighboring acreage.
Coyote Ridge, named for the marauders that prowl the area, is likely to go from a small, unusually creative operation to a large, full-blown prison, like Airway Heights.
Until then, the two men say they’ll enjoy the ability to act as they see fit.
“I just think this is a neat opportunity to help, not just hunters but the birds themselves,” Geil said. “In my book, if it takes pressure off the native birds by hunters, or coyotes, for a day or a winter, then it’s worth it.”