The method a hunter chooses to take game is up to them, as long as it's legal and I wouldn't criticize them for their choice.
When I was a boy on the farm 70 some years ago, Ringneck Pheasants were as thick as fleas on a hound. I remember hunting them with my dad using our little Cocker Spaniel dogs to flush them from the wheat stubble and hay fields.
In the recesses of my memory I can still hear the cackle of the roosters as they rose straight up in the air and I can see their long tail feathers waving as they leveled off to fly straight away...until the boom of my dads single barrel 12 gauge stopped them in a puff of feathers and sent them plummeting to the ground.
We had pheasants here in the farm country of lower Michigan until the 1960's and then they slowly disappeared and now are only a memory of days gone by.
I don't recall my dad or I ever shooting a pheasant on the ground, it was just too much fun watching them fly and the challenge of taking them on the wing was so satisfying. That was how it was then but it may be different for others now. :v