Hunting pheasants in the cold?

[Sko]

I was hoping to go out pheasant hunting on Thursday, but the weatherman says it is going to be -5 for a high? How cold does it have to be, for it to be too cold to go hunting? I am sure I can dress warm enough, but I worry about the dog and how she will handle it, as well as what will the birds do? There are all sorts of problems that I can think of, but want to weigh the pros and cons before changing my mind and going ice fishing instead...at least there I have a heater!

[Dano2]

From what I understand is you need to be just as careful with your dogs in these very cold conditions as you do in the early season if its very warm out. the dog is working much harder than we are, and breathing in all that freezing air couldn't be the best for them in my opinion, but I have also read this somewhere too, but I'm not really sure how cold is too cold, but it also makes me wonder about these sled dogs,do they have special lungs, heh, heh, or maybe they are just conditioned for it

[setterguy]

I have hunted in -10 before, and as cold as it was the dogs seemed to do just fine. Besides the ice collecting on thier feet, they seemed to handle it fine. I don't know what kind of dogs you have but I would just use common sense. If you dog starts to look distressed, then take it back to the truck and call it a day. I like hunting in the cold, less orange in the woods.

[RATHER BE HUNTING]

I was out on this past Sunday it was -10 when we started

walking. Your dog will be fine they can take the cold cause they are running and keeping plenty warm. Birds are easy to find in the extreme cold. Go to the cattails.

Unfortunatly we ended up with zero only flushed 2 roosters

wild but did flush 8 hens. I would mainly hunt small cattail swamps. Or edges of ponds that have cattails.

[kentuck_ike]

Hey wild willie how's the hunting

[BLACKJACK]

The biggest problem you're going to have hunting in the cold is keeping your hands warm. You can layer up the rest of your body, but too thick of gloves and you can't shoot. Combine that with carrying a cold gun and you get cold hands, especially the first half hour. Consider a pack of the chemical hand warmers inside your gloves, they're not too thick and it gves you something to wrap your hands around. And as others have said, watch your dog. I think alot depends upon their conditioning and exposure to cold. Good luck.

[Wild Willie]

Ike - glad to see you made it to the site! Was out Saturday and found some birds. Went yesterday and found some more! Buddy is doing just great...the birds we found were deep in the cattails. Tough going for Buddy, he locks up solid and the birds sneak off through the heavy cover. It's hard to get to his points fast enough through the tails to flush the bird. We either need to move faster, get more guys, or more dogs to drive the cover to keep the birds from doing the old end-around!

I've been waiting to hear from you regarding the mid December S.D. trip...guess it ain't going to happen? How's the baby and the family? Finding any birds in your neck of the woods? Maybe we could meet halfway for a hunt sometime between Christmas and New Years. Not much of a season left so we are trying to make as much hay as we can while the sun is still shining!

[kentuck_ike]

Willie-

My wife & kids are doing good. We've been finding a few birds the last two week ends. Two weeks ago we got 4 on Saturday we saw 10 roosters that day. Some of the guys had a rough day shooting. I got 3 & a coyote that day. Last week end it was my turn to miss I shot at 5 and only got 2. The birds have been big, the last 5 I have shot had tails between 21 & 23 inches & spurs ranging from 5/8 to 3/4. I have sometime off next week so it might work to get together. Where are those cattails located?

Give me call so we can see if we can make it work.

How is your family doing, Luke been getting any birds or are you shooting them all?

Ike

[Wild Willie]

Ike - We found about 100 acres of private land about 20 minutes north of where we live and have been hitting it pretty hard the last week. The farm has lots of great cover and had very little pressure...until we showed up about a week ago. Sounds like you are finding more birds down where you are than we are finding up here. The boys are out of school all next week. Luke will hunt with us but I will need to find a place for Willie to stay while we are out in the field in search of long tails. Looks like the weather is going to warm-up starting next week...so this would be a great opportunity for us to get together. I don't mind driving down there if you don't mind sharing some of your secret spots with us. Heck...we might even entertain the idea of finding a cheap motel near by and make this a two day event (I'm pretty sure Cathy wouldn't mind getting rid of me, the boys and the dog for a day or so.) I will give you a call tomorrow so we can discuss and devise a plan of attack and hopefully Diane will give us her blessings to proceed!

[BDR]

Talk about cold! Yesterday was the coldest I have ever hunted in. The wind did not help any. We made short jaunts then back to the truck to warm up. The longest we were out at a time was about 1:45. Dogs did great.

[LuciandTim]

Post deleted by LuciandTim

[BDR]

We were down near Iowa. Saw lots of birds but they were very skittish. Flushed 40-50 at once from one spot.

[LuciandTim]

That sound just like what we encountered. At one spot there were birds everywhere! Flying from field to field. I saw a couple roosters fly into some cattails so we pushed it around and one of them flushed out the end. Never saw the other and flushed about 5 hens. After we hunted it we watched more birds fly into it again. It was wild that morning. I'll be back out next Tuesday, wed, and Thursday. The weather should be lots better.