Recent content by Makintrax73

My great grandfather died in the 1940s, but my dad knew him. My dad passed along to me a hunting story from great grandpa: When he first emigrated to IL in the 1880s there were no pheasants in IL, but there were prairie chickens. So many prairie chickens that they had a horse drawn wagon...

When I was a kid, and I told my dad I want to hunt pheasants, my old man did just what you are doing. He put a bb gun in my hands so he could watch my maturity level, and gun handling. I think it's a great idea, and my hat is off to you for raising your son well.

We also saw good numbers on the opener. Hunted a state PHA (lottery) that we have hunted in the past. Saw 3 small coveys of quail, and probably 10 pheasants. Not astounding, but we did not see close to those numbers when we last got in there.

I see more birds per mile on good private land (in IL mind you, not SD) than on the state put and take areas. And it's not even close. Like 5x more birds. The issue is getting access to good private land, and the fact that 90% of the pheasant range here is farmed road to road, sprayed with...

One of the very few things the IL DNR seems to get consistently right is their pheasant farm. The birds might be a step down from wild, but it isn't a huge step down. The biggest issue is the way they concentrate hunters into small areas so they don't have to drive the release trucks all over...

Good luck with the recovery @wingnfins Have a friend up north this week for our annual grouse camp. Tough, tough sledding for us. I spoke too soon on my 5 birds in one spot report. Every walk since then has been pretty poor. Seeing lots more hunters than usual too. Anyway we are seeing way...

Yes if your dog trusts you. Variable speed cordless HF with whatever they call the sandpaper wheels that go on the rubber doughnut. Way better than the sharp corners traditional nail cutters leave.

Did some public land hunting in the northern tier of counties today. Flushed 5 and shot 1 on county land. Not terrible and not outstanding for 3.5 hours. I noticed all 5 were within spitting distance of the edge of fresh clear cuts. The shot bird had only a few bits of green leaf in the...

I have seen a reasonable number while driving on the atv trails around Black River Falls. I believe some of those trails run through state forest. Never hunted it as I stick pretty far north, and I think even for a 2 day trip I'd make the extra drive. But I do think you'd find some in that...

If you don't mind a wine sauce braised pheasant legs/thighs are quite good. I believe this is the recipe I tried although I didn't copy it word for word. Some tasting and adjusting goes a ways towards making it suit your taste. I believe I added a corn starch slurry to thicken it for gravy at...

No thankfully.......but an emergency vet run was in the cards anyway. We just put fresh dogs down at a gate. Trying to navigate the gate my female setter ran under the fence and right up to a beehive. Got a few stings but didn't think much of it. Honestly never knew dogs were prone to bee...

First day of trip. Hunters already parked at the 1st two spots we picked. Never had that last I was here. Talked to another hunter between spots. Said he was seeing no birds in his marked spots from prior years. We struck out spot 1. Spot 2 was a mile hike in with no idea what the grass...

I've gotten permission to hunt some private CRP in IL a few times that I've seen incredible numbers. I think we stopped counting at 80 birds flushed from a quarter section in the best year I've seen there. The problem is those areas are pretty limited in scope, and good luck getting permission...

Western IL. Converted an old cool season filter strip from cool season (redtop and timothy totally overtaken by brome) to NWG. Unfortunately the property is not close to home. Went out for a visit mid-summer and there were areas that were nothing but giant ragweed. (n) Kind of a bummer. I...

Sharpies have a reputation for getting extremely hard to hunt as you get later in the season. They group up into bigger groups and get very jumpy. I have only ever hunted them in Montana in Sept. There were pheasants around too, and I guess I would just say they don't call them ditch parrots...