Recent content by Jawilor

Same. I have insulated dog houses for my lab and springer, and put straw in their dog houses in the winter and they're perfectly fine. I do put them in my heated garage overnight when it's below 0, or during blizzard-like conditions, but otherwise they've never had any issues. With a heated...

Easter morning bird. 23#

Central Iowa here, Northern Polk County to be more specific. I'm not too worried about hot spotting as I rarely hunt the public ground close to me. I do have some local private ground, but if I'm hunting public I travel North and maybe West :)

We hunted private ground in Taylor county a week ago and never saw a single quail. It was prime habitat, but there just weren't any birds. The farmer said he hadn't seen many quail this Fall and he owns/farms over 1000 acres. We saw plenty of deer, and flushed 2 turkeys.

If she's solid with whistle commands, why not make her sit until you catch up? If you do this enough times she'll learn to stay close. A solid whistle sit is the first step to making her steady to wing and shot.

The dogs flushed one out of the cattails about 30 yards ahead of me that I didn't see right away due to the height of the cattails. The bird flew right towards me about 25' in the air and I never scratched a feather. It all happened in an instant and it was by far the toughest shot I've had in...

Mine is a 2008 I bought new and it currently has 251K miles and still going strong. Rust is my only issue. If I could get a new aluminum body F150 with the old 5.4 Triton v8 I’d be a happy man. We just got my wife a new car so I’ll be driving mine for another year or so.

That was out by Carroll. We didn’t have that much in northern Polk County.

My younger son and I made it out this morning for our final hunt of this season. We hit some private ground that we hunted a couple of weeks ago and had a pretty good day ending with 4 birds and a couple of misses. We had some birds flushing wild but the majority held super tight and the dogs...

Just talked to a buddy that hunted the Western part of the state for a week with a few of his friends. They limited on pheasants every day without ever firing a shot. He said there were cripples all over the place and the dogs found and retrieved them all. His only complaint was the amount of...

23 hunts, 140ish miles walked, and 19 birds of which 2 were lost. Four of the birds were shot on private ground and the rest were on public in Central/N. Central Iowa. I've had 2 private spots for a few years and recently gained a 3rd which is the 40 acres of CRP in Carroll County. Three of...

Agree, and I also keep the dog(s) at heel

I'm curious why you think bird hunting is less cruel than trapping. Have you ever shot and injured a bird that you didn't recover? Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I'd just like to understand where you draw the line.

I am always really quiet when getting out of the truck, letting the dogs out, etc. On Sunday I parked, got ready, quietly closed the door, opened the tailgate, let the dog out, and quietly closed the tailgate. When I lowered the topper window it squeaked a little and a bird flushed from some...

Congrats on the great hunts! I went out this weekend on public and it was chilly for sure. On Saturday the roosters let us get close enough, but I wouldn't say they were sitting tight, but the hens were. I shot one rooster and missed one. Sunday I hunted a different public area for about 5...