sjohn
Active member
4 of us with 4 labs spent 6 days hunting douglas and hutchinson counties. We hunted a little private, a little public, and a good amount of min maintenance roads. The private places were flat out slammed with birds. Never saw so many and we have been hunting the same private ground for 5-10 years. We managed to do well on public even with boot tracks in the snow from earlier in the morning. You have to walk all of the public to the very backs, which a lot of people avoid. Also the fence rows near the public. We walked one piece of crep with only about 30% of habitat uncut. Pushed about half dozen birds out of about 50 acreas and my one buddy left the cover and walked up the fence row with only about 10 feet wide of grass trip along the fence and jumped about 3 dozen. It's the small overlooked areas the pheasant find by accident or by design. Minimum maintenance road hunting was about as good as it ever has been. If it had corn/beans on two sides and not mowed, it had birds. Birds were where you would not expect them. It was good. We picked up 62 roosters and 3 quail. We did well on our cripples and only lost two birds which was pretty amazing. Fortunately we had plenty of dog power. Saw partridge for the first time ever and jumped the same covey two times. We were in the truck both times they flushed. They were in the middle of a min maint road. We gave away about 20lbs of shelled pecans to our friends, hosts and private land owners. A successful year for sure. Wish the best for all you that are still waiting to go or waiting to go back. john