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Feasting on Pheasants: The Fuzzy Pheasant Group Donates More than 600 Birds to the Open Door Mission
It always starts as a calm morning. The birds are in their place up on the hill; the hunters below in the valley. Then the rush starts. As the birds fly off the cliff, the hunters fire off their guns. The pheasant hunt begins. But for these Fuzzy Pheasant hunters, it is not all about the hunt. Theses birds get donated to a good cause, the Open Door Mission.
For the Open Door Mission pheasants are a feast, not just a delicacy. That’s because with around 600 pheasants donated yearly to the Mission by The Fuzzy Pheasant Group, pheasants are a cause for celebration.
The Hunt
The Fuzzy Pheasant Group, named after the New Mexico farm where Alan Craft purchases the pheasants, is an eight-year-old club dedicated to the sport of European pheasant hunting. It all started when the group of Open Door Mission volunteers and friends all used to shoot together overseas. Craft decided to bring the sport back home to his Craft Alaca Ranch. The hills on his property provide the perfect landscape to execute a hunt.
The Fuzzy Pheasant Group consists of Open Door Mission Chairman, Alan Craft and his wife, Trustee Ann Craft, Vice Chairman, Bob Beamon, and his wife, Gay, Trustee Mike Dawson, and wife, Babette, Vice President, Dale Cheesman, and his wife Shirley, Pete and Mary Faye Way, and guest shooters, David Fine, CEO of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System, and his wife Susan.
The group does two shoots a year and always donates the pheasants to the Open Door Mission. It allows them to combine two of their passions, pheasant hunting and the Open Door Mission. “I have worked with the Open Door Mission for several years and so have the majority of the hunters. We are happy that we can do this for them every year. How many missions in the U.S. get the chance to dine on a delicacy?” Chairman of Open Door Mission and Leader of The Fuzzy Pheasant Group Alan Craft said.
Feasting at Open Door Mission
Open Door Mission plans to divide the donated pheasants in several dinners including one to honor their Doorkeepers. Craft cleans, freezes and stores the birds until it is time for the pheasant feasts.
On any given day, it is estimated that 34,000 people go hungry. Open Door Mission strives to lower this number by serving 175,000 free meals each year to hungry Houstonians. With nearly half a million Houstonians needing food assistance a year, Open Door Mission serves hot meals seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Open Door Mission has come a long way since Bob and Emilia Finnegan opened it as a downtown soup kitchen on Franklin Street in 1954. There were no donated pheasants, just 30 chairs, a coffee pot and a hot plate.
In the past, Open Door Mission served the birds at their Wild Game Thanksgiving Dinner. The Wild Game Dinner combined the pheasants with other wild game donated to the Mission for an exotic meal feeding around 300 people every year.
For more information contact Hope Kurz at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or 713-590-3773.
About Open Door Mission
Established in 1954 by “Brother Bob” and Emilia Finnegan, Open Door Mission serves as a faith-based recovery and rehabilitation shelter dedicated to transforming the lives of homeless, addicted, destitute or disabled people in the Greater Houston Area. The Mission was originally located on Franklin Street only later to be moved to its present location at the former site of Fullerton Elementary School at 5803 Harrisburg. |
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