ust returned from a 5 day trip to South Central ND, I would say at least 50% of the crop is still up, maybe a little more. We had an extremely hard time finding bird and this area is not the least bit new to us, as we have been going here for 4-5 years. For me, a large part of knowing there are birds around are the drive out to the spots in the morning and the last hour of hunting. These are times when the birds are out and moving around, crossing the road, flying to spots to roost for the night, etc..In 5 days of hunting we saw 2 birds in the morning and 1 group of birds flying into a large field at night. It was unbelievable. There is a property we get permission to hunt on that has 3 very nice tree groves, each time we would walk them down in previous years we would see a minimum of 25-50 birds (no matter which month or weather conditions), and even hunting them 2-3 times a day. This year we not only did not shoot a bird, we did not even get ONE bird up. The corn was even down in this specific spot too. It was very discouraging to see the drop in bird numbers firsthand (rather than just reading posts of other people who had similar results in different areas). Some decent PLOTS in the area, although many did have cattle on them or were mowed. Did see an unusual amount of hens on the trip though, many groups of 5-10.
We talked with a few farmers in the area and all of them said how they just weren't seeing the birds this year...bummer. We did have some luck here and there, but definately a steep drop from previous years. Nonetheless, it was still a good trip and I was happy to get my year old Springer Spaniel out to get some work in.
A bad day of hunting is always better than a good day at the office :thumbsup:
So the birds are more unpredictable than usual. Beat them out of the corn, then find them in the thick scraps and fencerows. Good luck.
