Pheasant Hunting

[Guest]

I'm going out by Holloway on Sat. Will post results upon my return.

Paul
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[French Spaniel]

The advice one poster made on being quiet as you get out of your car is very important. Also another tip on public hunting is to go to the farthest corners that might get overlooked. Quite often those corners will hold birds.
I don't hunt public land very often but I have permission on land adjacent to the public. I noticed most of the shooting was coming from the bogs. The birds were being driven down there . The hunters that were willing to get wet were getting the birds.
My French Spaniels have been pointing a lot of birds this fall. Must be old shells or something....too many roosters have been flying away . Good luck to all you hunters.

[Guest]

French Spaniel, I was down by Waseca today and my dog and I flushed 3 roosters, with one going in the bag. I too, must have old shells.

Paul
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[French Spaniel]

How have all you pheasant hunters been doing? I just got back from hunting and I told my wife I hadn't lost my touch...I'm still a lady's man at 45.
Unfortunately, that means all I saw this morning was hen pheasants. My eight year old son, two French Spaniels (not French Brits), and myself pointed and flushed 10 singles...all hens. We only hunted 1 1/2 hours. That is my eight year old son's limit. I want to keep him excited about hunting so I stop as soon as he gets tired.
On Sat. the public land was a Zoo. There were guys all over the place. There was constantly trucks circling the public hunting looking for a place to hunt. I was hunting private next to the public. This morning (Sun)there wasn't a hunter in sight. They either had enough with the zoo or they were all in church.

[French Spaniel]

This is a message to all those who hunt without asking permission. STOP AND ASK!!!!

I have worked very hard to get good land to hunt. I have good relationships with the land owners. I help do things for them whenever I can.

I know only a couple hunters that have permission to hunt the land I hunt. However, quite often over the last couple of years hunters simply go in and hunt even though they didn't have permission. The land is well posted "NO HUNTING WITHOUT PERMISSION." It means what it says. The land owner wants to know who is on his land. When asked if they had permission they simply say "No one else was hunting it at the time" or "they didn't think anyone would care if th

[kooba]

Just got back from the Slayton area with somewhat good hunting. Lots of corn up yet made hunting really tough. We ended up with 7 birds for the four of us. The $250,000 dogs did the trick down there. The birds are in the corn, once the corn is our it could be good.

[skinnylee]

kooba where were you hunting at in the slayton area maybe able to help to let you know when more corn is out I leave in the area would be glad to let you know

[Guest]

Going out tommorrow in the Benson area. Anyone been flushing any birds? Is the area getting a lot of pressure?

Paul
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[Benny]

I don't know about the Benson area, but 5 of us shot 32 birds up by Cold Springs today.All with in 80 ackers and 2 hours of hunting,had a super guide by the name of Julie and two dogs Milo and Couger.
Thanks Gold Meadows for another great hunt!

Benny

P.S. Appologies to the purest, but I don't have the time to hunt wild birds with a young familly and own buisness.

[Guest]

Benny, Were you hunting on a game farm? If so, which one? We hunted one up there a couple of years ago and it was fantastic.

Never mind, was distracted doing something else and didn't read post close enought. That's the same place that We hunted out of. IMHO hunting out of there can't be beat, unless you're in S.D.

Paul
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[This message has been edited by Pwaldow123 (edited 10-28-2001).]

[Rick]

Keep those pheasant reports going.

How are things going in Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska?

[Fish Landers]

Things in Iowa are a little better than most people thought it was going to be. There is still a ton of corn in down here. Opening day the weather was hot and we had a lot of wind, it was hard on the dogs. We did shoot some birds on Sat. and Sun. A bad day of bird hunting is better than a good day of anything else. Fish

[The Crumpler]

I was in SD for the operner, near Huron. Lots of hunters and lots of birds -- including a limit for our group of 8. We were also pleasantly surprised to find birds in some Walk-Ins on Monday and Tuesday. Usually by then, they are long gone or extremely educated.

Later in the week I made it up to the Grand Rapids area and shot a bunch of nice northern mallards and a few honkers before the storm blew in and shut us down.

I have been hearing good things about both ducks and ringnecks in Nebraska, and I will be down to check them out over Thanksgiving. This weekend is for catching that wall-hanger up on Gull!

Enjoy the Full Moon Halloween!

[Rick]

Keep us posted guys. This may become a forum in it's own right if we get enough guys to help out and contribute.

If you have questions, fire away, there are some pretty knowledgeable hunters from Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska that visit here and they can be a lot of help.

Maybe get some bird hunting fishing swaps going.

[Guest]

Rick, I really like the idea about the Pheasant Forum.

Here's my report. Spent 7 hours on Monday and 3 hours on Tuesday hunting a ten mile square area around Benson. I spent the whole time hunting on public land. There was still a lot of standing corn and that made for some tough hunting. Myself and the dog flushed many hens but no roosters. Talk about fustrating, the last three hens that we flushed the dog just sat down and barked at them

I talked with a couple of farmers that had just started to pick there corn and they said that they were seeing quite a few birds.

I would say that in about a week things will really start picking up out there.

How's everyone else doing?? Does anyone else hunt out in that area? Maybe we can compare notes.

Forgot to add. If anyone goes make sure that you bring some steel shells with you. Many of the public areas out there are Waterfowl Management Areas and require non-toxic shot for hunting small game and upland birds.

Paul
[email protected]

[This message has been edited by Pwaldow123 (edited 10-31-2001).]

[Guest]

We went up just west of Park Rapids last weekend and did very well on Grouse. I have a 1 1/2 year old yellow lab and she got about 14-16 birds up. I have not seen much on how the numbers were up in the area but we saw a lot of birds and we didn't work as hard as we should have with getting stands up and other things.

[slabberknocker]

I went back and hunted SD on opening weekend. Was not as good as last year. There was eight of us and shot only about 30 birds the first 2 days. I am lucky though that all my family and my wives family all lives back there so we dont have to get to the public ground at sunrise if we want to hunt. We have about 3000 acres to hunt on, but there was still way too much corn out and the weather was too nice. Once we get some snow and colder temps the hunting will only get better. Then the birds will start bunching up and we will have 10-15 bird flushes instead of the 1 or 2 we had opening weekend. I will be back out there again this weekend, Thanksgiving and then the final weekend. I will post my results. Good Luck

[French Spaniel]

I just got back from South Dakota a few days ago. Except for the wind we had a real good hunt. We had two days of 35 to 50 mph winds. We still got our birds but it took us a while to get used to shooting birds flying that fast.

I hunt only on private land because I used to live there and have a lot of relatives (wife's relatives). It always sounds different to Minnesota hunters when you talk about the big flocks of pheasants you see. The biggest bunch that got out on the end of the field was roughly 250 birds. We hunt with a small group so it wasn't a big drive type hunt either. Enough stayed behind that we got our limit. I'm going out one more time at Thanksgiving. Good hunting to all.

[Guest]

Myslef and 2 buddies were out hunting around the Appleton / Holloway area. A lot more of the corn has been harvested. We had 6 birds in the bag by 1:00. A lot of walking, but a whole lot of fun. We saw a lot of birds in the WMA around Artichoke lake.

Paul

[BLACKJACK]

Pheasant hunting has been better than I expected, there's birds out there if you follow the corn harvest. Took the last week off and bowhunted morning and evening and hit the pheasant hunting by 10. Hunting the Sunburg, Willmar area I rounded up 8 in the last week, should have gotten a couple more - I still get too excited when they flush and start flinging shells out there... Kind of warm for my labs but there has been some water in the sloughs. Wish I had another week off, with no rain the last of the corn will be gone in the next 10 days, been watching a few cornfields and taking the time to drive around and scout has paid off. Still Minnesota pheasant hunting, walk two miles per bird. This morning I walked for two hours and shot the only pheasant I saw - luckily it was rooster

Missed a nice buck this morning with my bow. Right over his back at 20 yards - arrghhhhhhh. Too **** excited. Even after shooting a lot of deer I still get the shakes... He was what I had been working for. Back to the practice butt.

South Dakota - was out there for the opener. Fields that the guys said last flushed 200 birds flushed 10. We still had good shooting, ended up with 59 fo 4 days. Could have been better with more guys with dogs that wanted to walk. All some of the guys wanted to do was post. I don't care, with my lab I got lots of shooting and she got lots of birds in mouth. Going back the 13th, already looking forward to it. Will be a smaller group, more real pheasant hunting rather than post and shoot.

Love that pheasant hunting!!!!

[Guest]

BlackJack, Are you hunting public land? I'm wondering if there is a big difference in the bird population between public and private land?

Paul

[French Spaniel]

We hunt north and south of Miller, SD. The area is just like here...places that had well established habitat will have a lot of birds.
It is fun to see the big flocks of pheasants but it is hard to hunt them because when they get grouped up like that they are spooky. Usually you can't get close to most of them but a few will stay behind to shoot.
Where we were hunting all the crops were gone and the birds were already congregated in a couple fields like they would be in late season.
I hunt on relative's land and there is some public land in the area. The public is hunted very hard. There are some big time pay for hunting operations out there and many other farmers charge to hunt as well. It is hard for a new comer to the area to find land to hunt.

[French Spaniel]

I have a question for pheasant hunters. I a lot in Minnesota and South Dakota. I have seen a covey of Hungarian Partridge in 4 years. Maybe they don't like the CRP or river bottom lands I hunt. Has anyone else seen any?

[Guest]

I used to see quite a few coveys of huns. I haven't seen a one in 2 years. Wonder what's going on. I'm still hunting the same areas that I used to see them so I don't think it's a habitat problem.

Paul

[BLACKJACK]

Pwaldo, are you wondering about Minnesota or SD?

[fishfearme]

There are still some huns around in MN. Deer hunted in Lyon co. kicked up a covey of eight yesterday. Man the pheasants were thick! Saturday morning while on deer stand I counted over 100 pheasants (mostly roosters) go into a corn field. I haven't seen that many pheasants in one place since my last trip to SD.
ffm

[Guest]

Blackjack, sorry about the confusion. Was wondering about Mn.

Paul

[BLACKJACK]

Fishfearme, where did you say in Lyon county that you saw all those pheasants??

Pwaldow123, I hunt mostly public land early in the season. I think that there is probably more pheasants on public land because it has the winter and nesting cover that pheasants need. Its just that the public land gets so much pressure that the birds are thinned out and wised up so fast. By now even the hens run like banshees. On private land, you may be able to run across roosters that act like they've never been shot at.

[French Spaniel]

Lyon Co. ? is that by Slayton? I grew up in Nobles Co. We used to hunt picked corn fields for Huns. When I was 16 (almost 30 years ago) a friend and I got up 9 different coveys up in one mornings. We didn't do a lot of damage to the population. Our legs were strong but our aim was weak. I think those were peak years for Huns. I don't think we will see those days again.

[fishfearme]

I didn't say where, but I will say it is on private land. The thing is that there is more public land within one mile than 4 people could hunt all day. I know these pheasants make it onto the public land. If you get up at the crack of dawn and look and listen you will find them. Stay off the private land, the owner has already called his buddy the warden to ticket people for tresspass. 3 got tickets last week.
ffm