2015-16 Hunting Reports & Pictures

ynneb9 said:
We were just a little west and south of Sauk Centre and we did one small hunt south of Alexandria.
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Myself and my dad were in this area last Saturday and found it to be very tough going as well. 4 flushes all day, all out of range except for the one hen.

I think at this point it is best to wait until first snowfall as the public land birds are pretty wiley now. At least in this area.

Will this dumb rain just turn to snow soon? :(
 
I'm not one to travel 100 miles (or double that) to hunt in the rain, but if these spots were in my backyard, I would have no problem hunting pheasants today.

They would be holding tighter than on those warm and windy days.

Sometimes I wish I lived 40 minutes from good pheasant cover rather than grouse woodlots ... oh well.
 
Flushedup said:
Myself and my dad were in this area last Saturday and found it to be very tough going as well. 4 flushes all day, all out of range except for the one hen.

I think at this point it is best to wait until first snowfall as the public land birds are pretty wiley now. At least in this area.

Will this dumb rain just turn to snow soon? :(
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Flushedup, looks like we're in the same area. I've been have decent luck finding birds. In fact I found two roosters on a half hour walk this morning (it was wet). One was out of range and the other I passed up because my younger pointer came from the wrong side of the wind and didn't point it.

PM me if you want to hunt together.
 
Just got back from a 3 day trip down SW MN. Hunted 2 days in the rain and that sucked! 3rd day was 30-50mph winds.
We put up and saw plenty of birds. Lots of hens! Roosters seamed like they have been thinned out. We flushed over 60 hens one day.

All the slews and low areas were full of water so that made tough going. Wet for 2 days and all the little creeks that you can normally jump across are full and you cant get across them. If you are headed out make sure to bring extra boots and an extra pair of clothes to change into in case you get wet.

We could definitely use a good freeze and some snow at this point. Four of us managed 10 birds in 3 days we had plenty of opportunity to shoot our 8 per day. Had a great trip with some good people. Ideal weather would have helped us out but its November so you get what you get. I was definitely happy with bird numbers.
 
Tbear said:
Ideal weather would have helped us out but its November so you get what you get. I was definitely happy with bird numbers.
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I am not so sure that the weather you worked through was not to your advantage. You were likely the first to walk any cover, the birds act different in rain and wind (wet = holding in most of my experiences). Again, the birds are pursued all the time on those perfect autumn days - much less so when you were out.

I have the luxury of picking what days I go - so usually they are nice (also easier with young hunters along). If I lived closer to MN's top pheasant country I would hunt those crappy days more often. It is more the drive there and back that deters those trips when weather is poor.
 
BRITTMAN said:
I am not so sure that the weather you worked through was not to your advantage. You were likely the first to walk any cover, the birds act different in rain and wind (wet = holding in most of my experiences). Again, the birds are pursued all the time on those perfect autumn days - much less so when you were out.

I have the luxury of picking what days I go - so usually they are nice (also easier with young hunters along). If I lived closer to MN's top pheasant country I would hunt those crappy days more often. It is more the drive there and back that deters those trips when weather is poor.
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The 2" of rain flooded everything low. Most of the roosters were in the cattail slews and I did not bring my waders to go waist deep in water nor was I going to. 10 ft was about as close as you could get before the water was over your boots. Birds did not hold tight for the most part and a lot of birds just stood out in the middle of crop fields. The ones that we did see got shot or at least shot at:mad:. I would have liked to see the slews either dry or frozen over. It pored on us most of the days and made for a down right miserable time. Cold and wind I can deal with. Being wet and cold and getting rained on all day is a different story.
 
Nice Tbear. Dark colored birds too. Nice job. Great pic.

Nick
 
:coolpics::10sign:

Well made it out yesterday. Put up 10 roosters and 2 hens, killed 5, lost one which always bothers me. He landed in cattails that were froze over but I would break through trying to get the bird. I about killed myself trying and after an hr, had to give up. I fell through up to my knees and was so cold from the water I had to rush home and change LOL. I had to be within feet of the dam thing, and the dogs just could not stay up on it either. Need another week of cold. We thought about a run for grouse afterward, but just scouted some spots in the afternoon.

There has been a lot of grazing on public land, and I am now convinced it is a stupid practice. There is 0 cover, maybe a little along some slough edges. But the birds seem to have vanished in those areas. And from what I see out my window, all they do is eat everything but thistle. And the thistle has gotten much worse. So Look for publics that were not grazed. WIA's seem to be holding some birds. And I have only seen one other group of guys so far.

Lots of sign around and plenty of birds. MN is back on the up swing:thumbsup:


 
Nicely done FSC.

We may not see eye-to-eye on many things, but we do share a passion for chasing pheasants in Minnesota. :thumbsup:
 
I was out last Saturday around Milan, MN and hunted near the lake. We hunted one very large area with 9 guys and only managed to flush a dozen hens in 3 hours. Went to another spot later that day about a half mile away and between myself and my friend we flushed 6 roosters and and about 20 hens. We managed to get two of the roosters, missing one that surprised us.
 
Tuma I think that area really gets hunted hard. Straight shot on 212 is a really easy drive for a lot of people. I was amazed at how many people I saw out Saturday. Glad we left early. Seamed like most hunters didn't plan for bad roads and did not show up intil 10:30-11.
 
Get out yesterday afternoon for 1.5 hours, for the first time in about a week. Flushed a few hens, a few wild rooster flushes too far away, and managed one rooster. However, I'm not sure that the rooster I came home with was the one I shot.

With sunset at 4:40, I pulled out my phone to get a glance of the time, it was 4:00. About a minute later, my lab got really birdy, then I could tell he pretty much had the bird locked down and pinpointed, I knew a flush was coming at any moment. With the wind blowing about 15-20 mph from the SE, the bird got up about 20 yards to the north of me, flying to the NW, I missed the first shot, connected on the 2nd. Immediately my lab overshot the area where I saw the bird go down continued further north, so I assumed the bird went down running right away heading north with the wind. The dog worked really hard circling the area into the wind trying to find it, but we never did. I was pretty bummed, in 4 seasons of hunting with this lab, this was the 1st lost bird that we had while hunting solo.

At 4:30, with 10 minutes of shooting time left, we left that area and made the roughly 1/2 - 2/3 mile trek South to the vehicle. In about 300 yards, he got birdy again and went on a straight ahead sprint out way too far, obviously chasing one that was running right ahead, so I called him off before he pushed the bird too far. We crossed over a dike and up a hill, and he got scent of the bird again in about another 200 yards. He worked it a lot closer this time, and I could tell it was right around us. Then up flushes the bird in front of his nose, and he snags it out of the air and brings it to me.

Basically, the backhalf of the bird had no feathers on it, just bare skin on its legs and no tail feathers. I know it's legs were in good shape though, because we pushed this bird for a long ways. There was a couple pellets in its legs, so it had previously been shot. It didn't appear to have any problem flapping it's wings while I was holding it, but I'm sure they were injured or else it would have flown sooner and not been such an easy catch for the dog out of the air.

I honestly don't know if it was the same bird I shot or not. If it is, the bird circled back around us and ran for a long ways before we got to it. But the back end of the bird looked to be in too rough of shape for just being shot within the last 30 minutes. Since the meat on the backlegs were exposed (but it still had no problem running), I ended up just breasting out the bird and keeping that meat just in case something had happened to the leg/thigh meat from it being exposed for who knows how long.
 
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The two of us managed a couple roosters. Finding birds was poor at best ... roosters exploded and were gone in a split second with the sustained 20+ mph wind - gusts to 30. Most birds were running ...

Keeping track of the dogs was tough too ... thankful for the Astro !

Saw more birds on the roads or out eating in the fields than in the cattails and grass - strange in that regard, but that is what turkeys do. Not too many high wind covers on the MN public land spots that I go to ...

Disappointed in mother nature for handing my college age son that crap :(, but he has had so many great hunts with me as a high schooler and very few not to good. He had zero issue and takes it all in stride ... me on the other hand ... :mad::nutz:

He loves to hunt with our Brittanys and watch good dog work and good points. Our brief October grouse hunt could not have went much better.
 
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Lots of birds right now R in cattails safe and sound from man or dog. There is that thin layer of ice they can use that we can not. Hunting will be much harder for a while until it freezes them up so we can go in after them. The dumb ones are getting less and less every week LOL.
 
FCSpringer said:
Lots of birds right now R in cattails safe and sound from man or dog. There is that thin layer of ice they can use that we can not. Hunting will be much harder for a while until it freezes them up so we can go in after them. The dumb ones are getting less and less every week LOL.
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I will take 3 inches of fluffy snow after that deep freeze is complete. Thank You.

We noticed a lot of sloughs opening back up or at least turning to black ice (like spring time) yesterday. Was careful to even keep the dogs away from that.
 
Forgot to add in the trip to the local vet for staples the evening before. Five year old Britt had her first run in (well at least one that cut her) with a barb wire fence.

Cut was not through the skin, but it tore on her chest right above her front leg. Vet cleaned it and stapled it and said she should be fine to hunt tomorrow. She was.
 
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