Bleak where I was. Hunted maybe 2.5 hrs each day, late afternoons, up until sunset. Typically not hard to get limits, even if there's standing corn all over the place. Ace & I got 1 shot & 1 bird each day. Only saw a couple handfuls of other birds. Total.
Hunted public land & walk-ins, which are prime, grade-A habitat. If any place is going to have good winter survival & a good hatch....it's where I hunt.
This year, in this general area, there's almost NO corn or beans planted. The fields are either barren, w/ a tiny amount of last year's stalks poking up here & there. Or maybe some weeds & crap have popped up scattered around. Or they've been planted with some sort of cover plant, which in most cases is a short-ish (12" maybe) grass like plant that my agronomy & botany skills don't allow me to identify. So you hunt the edges next to this stuff. Nothing. You hunt around the edge of real wet cattails. Nothing. You meander around the middle of the field you're hunting. Nothing. You wait until sunset & hope to see birds fly in from somewhere (???) or at least move around the area. Nothing. No "cawk, cawk, cawk". No nothing.
I can't believe there weren't quite a few birds around earlier this summer. Did they migrate? How far? Are they in trees? Doubtful. Not at sunset. Are they standing around in the middle of an unplanted field pecking around for last year's waste grain? Doubtful, at least not for very long. There are hawks all over the place.
The 2 birds I shot this weekend each had beans in them. So they either found last year's beans lying around, or they traveled quite a distance to get them.
If there are still quite a few birds in the area that I'm just not seeing, I'm pretty concerned for their well-being over winter. With no corn & beans, I'm not sure what they'd eat.
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