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That 20 got its first rooster today, happened to be my limit filler, first 2 fell to my cz bobwhite. If remington made a wood stocked 6lb 20 ga that reliably cycles heavy loads I'd buy two, but they don't. Hard pass on an old A5.

I've been eyeballing the 20 gauge tristar viper/mossberg gas semi-auto for a few years now and my dad unknowingly pushed me over the edge. With pheasant season coming up, he told me his old 1100 12ga might finally be too heavy to lug around. He bought it at age 18 in '74 and has been...

Broke out my dads camp stove from when he was in boy scouts 55 years ago, still works great. I cooked the sharptail as simply as possible, oil and light seasoning salt, to see what it tastes like. The bird was delicious, better than pheasant in my book. I got snowed out of Wyoming, I'll be...

My Wyoming trip got cut short due to the severe snowstorm in the mountains, so I head East in the morning to Valentine. If anybody has any tips on which od the three national forest/refuges to go to I'd appreciate it.

The birds seem to have mastered flushing just out of range. I got one more today and found at least one bird in all 5 spots I tried. Hard to get close to a bird that like short grass and wheat stubble but thats the challenge I guess.

They do exist!

I'll be going solo with the dog in SE WY October 11th-18th chasing sharptail and blue grouse. Coming from Eastern Iowa (and never having been west of Iowa), the wide open spaces and seemingly unlimited public land is very daunting. The regional upland biologist gave me enough info on the...

I put out 1200lbs in the last 2 weekends, I got a heck of a deal by going to a local grain elevator where I know the owner. Even paying market price of $5/bushel is a lot cheaper than buying bags at farm and fleet. There was a country block I drove that had 150 pheasants that were hanging out...

In eastern iowa the fields are burried in deep snow and ice, most cover is drifted over and the pheasants are struggling. We are in a deep cold weather pattern and pheasants can only take so much, they carry little body fat in a good year. I've been putting out corn where i know birds are. I...

Brooms and vacuums are my dogs only known fears. The tone on my collar is far too quiet, its useless for locating dog on point beyond 40 yards.

My dog has gotten pretty good at keeping pace with running birds on a hot scent. I had to be pretty forceful with the e-collar when he was younger but now I can speed walk behind him(saying 'easy') until the chase ends. More often than not, a bird running like this flushes(usually in range) but...

Here in the east-central part of the state we got 10 inches of snow followed up by 8 hours of light rain. The ice crust is up to 2 inches thick, with most places around an inch and I've seen very few birds digging in the fields. We've finally got the bird numbers back up to where I actually...

I shot a rooster today that wasn't flying great, still accelerating and climbing, but he looked a bit off. This happens a few times a year with birds that are recovering from being shot, but this one was a first. Upon skinning I noticed several scarred areas with a tough white surface and no...

East central is the only place I have ever hunted, sadly. The Iowa Hunting Atlas on the Iowa DNR website is a good resource to check out. I hunt the triangular area between Davenport, Cedar Rapids, and Dubuque but stay as far away from them as possible.

Hearts are good, just don't over cook them. The liver, gizzard, neck, and shoulder meat goes to to the dog, he seems to love it.

I've been taking the drumsticks with the thigh bone still attached and cooking them down in chicken stock with veggies. The ultimate product is pheasant noodle soup and its great! Pulling all the tendons out of the leg meat kinda sucks, good beer helps.

I've been wanting to do this for the last few years but I'm too cheap to buy a grinder. Luckily my parents just moved back and their grinder happened to bump into my freezer full of pheasant. 8lbs of mostly thigh meat(a couple breasts leftover from last year), 2lbs of smoked bacon, fresh...

On a whim I grabbed my grandpa's old winchester model 25 12ga from my brother's house last week thinking I might take it on an afternoon squirrel hunt and give the dog a break. I've been off work since Thanksgiving due to getting covid and he's pretty worn out, as are the pheasants. While I...

The birds are getting a little thin but sometimes they all move onto the public ground you're going to hunt. The solo pictured bird got up 40 yards behind me when my dog was 40 yards ahead of me, I dropped him but his head was up for the crash landing. Rusty pointed him about 70 yards from...

I can still vividly remember the rooster my dad and I got about 15 years ago that had 27-7/8" tail feathers. When the bird flushed its feathers were whipping back and forth like a loose rope. We fired simultaneously, looked at eachother and said 'did you see those tail feathers?' Ironically...