A couple firsts, a couple questions

B

Bob Peters

Well-known member
A quick sum up, I posted a few different times last year I was struggling to get my first pheasant. My shooting was poor, the pheasant jumped at an inopportune moment, etc. I picked up shotgunning/hunting as a middle aged guy, and definitely had to work through the learning curve. I shoot a lot of clays in the offseason, and did some warm up days duck hunting which went well. I got out last Thursday in west Minnesota which was the 6th day of our season. I drove to public ground I'd never seen before in my life, jumped out with the dog and went to work. Soon I saw the dog hit a quick sprint and my slow brain realized she was on hot scent and I started high stepping through the grass after her. That beautiful red golden retriever put up a rooster right in front of me and I missed 3 times🤬. I followed the rooster over the hill and hoped to jump him again. It didn't take long and a rooster jumped out of the grass on my right, I let loose twice and away he flew, but another cock jumped out of the same spot!!! I pulled the trigger and I saw his left wing blow up, and feathers flying off his back as his body was rocked by the shell. He fell instantly like a ton of bricks. Simultaneously hens had been flapping out directly behind me. I marked the rooster I hit and then looked around for puppy and she was gone, chasing a fleeing hen! I called her back and 60 seconds later she returned. We ran right over to where the rooster dropped and long story short we never found him. Looked for half an hour, and I even came back a while later and searched a second time and didn't find anything. Please don't bust me up too bad because trust me, I wanted to find my first rooster more than anyone. I threw my orange hat on a sapling in the prairie near where he fell and walked concentric circles looking for him. I found a few feathers, but not much else. The dog is 4.5 years old. If he had been a single and she saw him dropped it would have been game over. In this case half a dozen birds flushing in a 5 second window confused things. I felt terrible about losing a bird that was hit so hard. I was so bummed I almost didn't want to hunt anymore. A good buddy asked me to go on saturday and I went with him. A totally different county and area of the state, and we also added a 10 year old brittany that me buddy was babysitting. Mid day the brittany pointed a bird, he then flew out of the willows and my buddy got a first shot and missed, I brought my gun down and managed to get a solid hit, and the brittany put the chomp on my first ever wild rooster pheasant:). He has a 22 inch tail and 3/4" spurs. A couple people asked if I'm gonna mount him. The memory will be with me for life. I already had an 8 x 10 framed with me and the bird and the dogs.
 
Congratulations!!! From what I remember you hunted all last year with out a rooster . The first bird often comes the hardest , hats off to you for sticking with it , practicing and shooting clays.

We would love to see the picture if you had a chance to share it !!!
 
Congrats on your first bird! I see nothing to criticize you on, it takes time, practice, and a lot of trial & error to become a consistently successful rooster buster. Of all the birds I hunt I consider roosters to be the easies to hit, at the same time they are the bird I'm most likely to miss. I can say that when I miss it's usually because I hurry the first shot. Had one of those Friday afternoon. Missed a relatively simple 20 yards crossing shot, then practically blew him up in flames with a much more difficult quartering 50 yard second shot. Go figure...

To my mind, roosters are the assholes of the upland bird world. They don't play fair and take advantage of every mistake you and/or your dogs make. I have no problem imagining cackling at the flush is really a string of vile obscenities being directed at the Wrecking Crew and I. For example, unless badly shot up, you can count on a crippled rooster literally hitting the ground running. They may run a couple hundred yards or hole up in the first patch of thick stuff they find. Here are couple of crippled rooster anecdotes for you...

On Saturday we were hunting cattails and I knocked one down that fell about 30 yards in front of me on a bare mud flat, maybe 15 feet out from the cattails. Two of my three labs were within 20 yards of it and running full speed for the retrieve. It looked dead as it came down but the moment that bird hit the ground it righted itself & rocketed toward the cattails, I mean so fast it hitting the ground until it was gone was nearly instantaneous. Had I glanced away for a moment it would have been as if it disappeared into thin air. It got in maybe 30 feet ahead of the dogs. They hunted for him a good 15 minutes and never found him.

Sunday we were hunting the same place. Harley (my YLM upland machine) had already recovered one my nephew wing tipped (only broke the first joint of one wing) on Saturday that the dogs didn't find, within 25 yards of where it went down. When we got to within 20 yards of where my cripple had run into the cattails, Harley got birdy. Although we couldn't see him in the cattails, clearly he was on a bird and working the trail. In a few minutes, he popped out with that crippled rooster.

Two years ago my nephew wing tipped one at a place we call Rooster Heaven. I got all three dogs in the area quickly but they came up empty. We continued to walk the cover and my best pure retriever Jetta kept acting birdy and wanted to follow scent straight line down the side of the food plot, which I figured was the crippled rooster. I held her back for safety and so as not to bust any birds ahead out of range. When we were almost to the end, about 30 yards ahead I saw a rooster break cover and sprint across the prairie trail at the end in the blink of an eye. Jetta saw him too and I sent her. She rocketed in pursuit and in short order delivered the bird to hand. She had scent trailed that bird 1/4 mile. It had moved ahead of three hunters & three dogs in essentially a straight line as it felt trapped and only broke cover when it had no choice.
 
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First congrats on your first bird! I recall your posts from last year and glad you stayed with it. Couple of thoughts from your post. Any wild bird that isn’t stone cold dead is likely to run. What I have learned to do it first let the dog work the are where it dropped before I go in and start looking. If it holds up close by feel like the dog has a better chance of finding it with its nose then I do walking around. If the dog has no luck then I start searching with my eyes like you described. Reality is that some birds are gonna not get found if not dead when they hit the ground. On your shooting one thing I see new hunters make mistakes on is getting too anxious on the flush and shooting too close. Take that extra split second to make sure you are on the bird before pulling the trigger and it also allows you some room for your pattern to open up and be more likely for the kill.

Again good job and will get easier with time as you gain experience.
 
Congrats!! Nothing to "bust you up" about there! Pheasants are just plain bastards. Stick w/ it. You & the dog will both improve, the more you hunt & figure out how to get shots. And with experience will eventually come the ability to relax & really see the bird. One of us probably told you this already, but try to focus on its head. It's not easy. Takes practice. Birds will become deader (on average) & retrieves will be even more second-nature. Also, make sure you're shooting the shotgun you're most comfortable with - physically & mechanically. If you're not. Practice! You want it to fit you like an old, favorite, well-conditioned, most awesome glove in the world. Keep pounding away at them!!
 
Awesome story and congrats!! I'd say don't beat yourself up over losing that bird, but I know how much it eats at me and am sure you feel the same. I remember some of the losses as much as the banner days. Sadly, it is part of the nature of hunting. The only thing you can do is give it an honest, hard search. In time, both you and the pup will refine that aspect of your hunt, just as your shooting and savvy improve. Pheasants have only have two items on the honey dew list - survive and procreate. They are prolific at both. Congrats again and let's see that photo!!
 
You are officially hooked for life. A memory you will never forget. I get so mad when I lose a bird but not sure why. It is going to happen more frequently than we may want to admit especially in an area with lots of fresh scent.

I recently saw someone post this thought but I don't remember if it was on this site or not. I did not fact check but it made sense to me. The human brain automatically goes to the middle of an object and focuses. From head to tip of a tail we tend to settle in on the butt of the pheasant. I know this is what happened with a gimme yesterday. The post/article suggested focusing on the white ring of the neck. If nothing else, it slows me down just a bit and also allows the shot to pattern out a little more. Congrats and way to stick with it.
 
Fantastic! Lots going on there when the flushing started. Hard to figure out what to concentrate on when the action gets hot like that. BTW, in my experience, once you've flushed a pheasant, even if you see where it lands, say good bye to it. It would be very unusual if you could get within range of it.

But with quail, chase them. They hold. In fact, if you love fireworks you can pop off M-80s while you're quail hunting and the quality of the hunting will be unaffected.
 
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BritChaser said:
Fantastic! Lots going on there when the flushing started. Hard to figure out what to concentrate on when the action gets hot like that. BTW, in my experience, once you've flushed a pheasant, even if you see where it lands, say good bye to it. It would be very unusual if you could get within range of it.
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Agreed. A bird flushed isn't likely to be seen again...at least not in the near future. It's tough enough to see one glide in 200 yards away, NOT notice you, and think it'll be roughly in the same place when you get there. But a flushed one??? It would be awefully rare. They don't just forget they very recently had a wet nose under their tailfeathers.
 
I was so happy to finally get a bird, its still been on my mind all the time. Brandy the brittany is getting on in years but she is as nuts for hunting as any dog I've ever seen. On this bird I was looking through a willow thicket and noticed she was paused. My sight picture of her was partially obscured by the cover but I could see parts of her fur and orange vest. Sometimes she was just paused to sniff, but I continued to watch her and realized she was locked up solid. What little I could see of her crept forward 2 feet and then I heard the burst of wingbeats and a bird zooming out of the cover. At this point I turned, and saw my buddy finishing his mount, the rooster hightailing it straight away towards thick cane grass, and then a boom as my buddy launched a shell. I spun and moved my muzzle in an arc to the bird, saw his dark head and let loose and got a solid hit. When the bird dropped I looked at my buddy with my eyes as wide as they'd go because I couldn't believe it. The other dog is a field bred golden and she is my regular hunting buddy. I gave my friend a hug and we took the pic right where Rudy the rooster fell. I really love pheasant hunting, and I really love these dogs.
first pheasant.jpg
 
Great story & pic. One of my cardinal rules is "Always trust your dogs"...
 
NDPheasant said:
It is going to happen more frequently than we may want to admit especially in an area with lots of fresh scent.
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Your comment reminds me of a guy on a pheasant hunting page from the UK. I tried to explain how difficult it is for a dog to differentiate in an area with lots of scent and being unsure of the exact place the cripple landed. To which he said his dogs could do a 200 yard blind retrieve in cattails (he's never hunted in the US, never hunted wild birds and never hunted cattails) with hundreds of birds in that area and his dog would find the cripple. :)
 
Golden Hour said:
Your comment reminds me of a guy on a pheasant hunting page from the UK. I tried to explain how difficult it is for a dog to differentiate in an area with lots of scent and being unsure of the exact place the cripple landed. To which he said his dogs could do a 200 yard blind retrieve in cattails (he's never hunted in the US, never hunted wild birds and never hunted cattails) with hundreds of birds in that area and his dog would find the cripple. :)
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I've never been to the UK but I am guessing over there they too have the phrase "shooting your mouth off." lol
 
Golden Hour said:
Your comment reminds me of a guy on a pheasant hunting page from the UK. I tried to explain how difficult it is for a dog to differentiate in an area with lots of scent and being unsure of the exact place the cripple landed. To which he said his dogs could do a 200 yard blind retrieve in cattails (he's never hunted in the US, never hunted wild birds and never hunted cattails) with hundreds of birds in that area and his dog would find the cripple. :)
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Oh, no problem. Ace, PPP, could do that. :LOL: It's especially ridiculous when you consider that a pheasant that falls 200 yds away is in 1 of 2 conditions. The first being very much alive, except for a clipped wingtip (broken legs mean nothing to a rooster). By the time he gets his dog over there (guiding him blind), the bird will be 2 miles away & fox food. Or the second condition...deader than a doornail. I've found plenty of those (not blind however), but we're assuming THIS particular dead bird fell into an area with lots of scent. Running birds are way easier to find than dead ones. Unless they fall on some sort of relatively hard surface clear of cover, they end up leaving scent all over on weeds & stuff. This one's dead, NOT spreading scent all over, & fell into an area w/ lots of other scent. Wouldn't bet the farm on recovering that one either.
 
No two downed birds or retrieves are the same.

I would consider my lab a pretty good retriever. Last year I hunted a small 50 yard x 50 yard slough in the middle of a picked cornfield. Rooster went down dead about 10 yards outside of the slough, downwind of the dog, laying on the bare ground, very easy to see. The dog just kept searching into the wind through the entire slough for that bird, never even looking in the bare ground just outside of it.

On another occasion, the bird went down in a big cattail slough and buried itself in the muck/ice/slush. I found my dog literally digging for it, I got down and started digging as well. Had to take my coat and sweatshirt off to not get wet, and I finally find the bird nearly completely alive buried a full arm length, so about 2.5' into the muck/ice/slush.

Over the years I've accumulated story after story of remarkable retrieves, long retrieves, and even some failed retrieves.
 
Great photo and experience and makes all of last years frustrations pay off. Every year you hunt pheasants they teach you things and I still struggle the first bird of the year, or the first of the day, getting excited and not properly mounting my gun. Cost me my first bird chance this past weekend in SD. Easy shot but a poor gun mount and he flew away laughing. Keep at it and enjoy each and every bird you harvest and by the end of this season you will have more birds added to your memory banks.
 
Congrats Bob! You'll never forget your first. And I agree with everyone on here about cripples. I get the most worked up about not finding a downed bird than anything in the hunting world.

My most irritating cripple story comes from last year. I hunted my ass off all day long on opener and hadn't even gotten a flush on a rooster. About 15 minutes before sunset, my dog pointed a bird that (to me) was dropped dead as a door nail 20 yards away in not very thick cover. Me and my dog never found that bird after looking until it was dark. To make matters worse, on my way out of my spot I hit a deer haha sometimes you just have them days.

Also some friendly shooting advice from someone who has missed his fair share of birds I'll admit, but I try and pause and count to 1 in my head before pulling the trigger. I've been doing that the last 2 years and have been dropping more birds than I ever have and nothing else I've done has changed. I just shoulder my gun, get on the bird and pause for a second, it forces me to keep my gun moving if I want to stay with the bird.

My problem with shooting has always been stopping my gun when I pull the trigger (which I think is a very common problem for most upland hunters). I've known that for years and finally I've seen my shooting increase that (without giving myself too much bad luck here) I've rarely missed a bird in the last 2 years.
 
Labs said:
To my mind, roosters are the assholes of the upland bird world. They don't play fair and take advantage of every mistake you and/or your dogs make. I have no problem imaging cackling at the flush is really a string of vile obscenities being directed at the Wrecking Crew and I.
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I don't know Labs, hunting sharpies and their damn chuckle as they fly away sure seems like an outright asshole thing to me. But it feels good when I can make one of the bastards stop laughing 😂
 
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