Back with my son Erick after a very enjoyable five day hunt. Our buddy had a work conflict, so just the two of us and our Yellow lab Pop. She fully recovered from her sprained right front leg, and stitches from the fall hunt, and did not disappoint. She made a number of fabulous- crippled bird retrieves, birds we would have never recovered without snow. Nothing more rewarding than that! It's been a number of years since we did this trip without snow already on the ground, although we did get about 1" of snow Tuesday, which really did help. It sure was nice to hunt in regular - not Muck type boots on this trip. No boot drying at night, as our feet sweat in those Mucks. My feet weren't sore at the end of 5 days! We really noticed more birds of prey than normal - we always see bald eagles and hawks, with the occasional falcon and owl. This trip we really saw a lot of owls; one great horned, and we assumed the rest were snowy, although they were not the normal white we are used to - assumed the lack of snow impacted the color phase - not sure. We are pretty sure we saw two Golden eagles, a number of bald eagles, a few falcons, several hawks (as always), and three rough legged buzzards eating on a deer carcass. We also saw a orange headed variant of the yellow headed blackbird, which was very cool. We did shoot our limit each day, and really worked for it. We hunted a combination of CREP, WPA, WIA and min maint roads. Our shooting the second day was sub par - we both missed a couple of plums............fortunately we had enough flushes to finish the day with 6 birds. We had 6 multiple bird flushes; twice four roosters flushed and we bagged all of them! That was incredible; two of Pop's cripple retrieves occurred, or we would have lost two. One multi bird was a plum ticket flush on a real windy day, and we were able to flank both sides; we dropped 5 and recovered 4. Erick had a 3 rooster flush and dropped 2 - had his chance for the triple, but still some fine shooting. On the last day we had a five rooster flush - it was our only calm day, and they flushed wild; ! winged one which we recovered; we had no other shots at them; Erick also had a large hen/rooster flush on the last day, and dropped one, and another nice cripple retrieve by Pop. We had cold and windy weather the first four days. Strong winds swing the advantage to us bird hunters, so I'm a fan of wind - although when it's around or below zero not so much
These six flushes accounted for 16 of our 30 birds. Without the wind I doubt we would have had all those opportunities. The last day was 0. but sunny and calm; we saw more birds out during our early morning scouting trip, than the rest of the trip combined. Very encouraging to see. You do see some interesting things driving around! Hope to get out again once or twice during January. Erick bagged a very nice rooster on the plum thicket flush. I wish all of you good health and prosperity in the New Year, and great hunting!
These six flushes accounted for 16 of our 30 birds. Without the wind I doubt we would have had all those opportunities. The last day was 0. but sunny and calm; we saw more birds out during our early morning scouting trip, than the rest of the trip combined. Very encouraging to see. You do see some interesting things driving around! Hope to get out again once or twice during January. Erick bagged a very nice rooster on the plum thicket flush. I wish all of you good health and prosperity in the New Year, and great hunting!
