Bird sightings

Wolfchief,
Glad to hear there are still a few birds in Livingston County. That is where I shot my first wild bird. Dwight, IL in1976 to be exact. Hunting was terrific! We had a few farms and always shot a few. Man I miss those days with Dad. Stopped hunting there around 2000.
 
Wolfchief said:
My son and I finished out the season by hunting on private land in Livingston County, Illinois. Over there (I'm from Indiana) there is little cover in CRP. Most of the land is flat to undulating and the cover, such as it is, usually amounts to ditchbanks and continuous filter strips, with occasional small, lost pockets of waste ground that is non-tillable. We hunted just such cover today and saw 5 roosters and about the same number of hens. We got two roosters--my son made a fringe hit on the first one and I must say my 3 year old yellow Lab Newt did a fine job in tracking the bird at least 150 yards before pulling it out of a weedy cattail ditch. The dog flushed bird #2 and I shot it at about 15 yards. Worked hard for these wild birds and that's ok. After two weeks of terrible weather, we were fortunate to see as many birds as we did. Ended the season on a positive note.
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That sounds just like Iroquois Co. It's all ditches and small patches of cover. The ditches that have some good cover along them can hold lots of birds.

My buddies went out last week Mon 1/2 and in the place we kicked up 20 birds they said they saw 70 and most were cocks.

The best spot I ever hunted was a 10-15 acre patch of thin stuff. Didn't think it would hold birds but it did. Probably 300 and also had probably 50 rabbits. Incredible. That was near Cissna Park may 7 years ago.
 
I got out for opener and was pleasantly surprised. Bird numbers where I hunted were as good as I've seen in 20 years or more.

Small patch we hunted with a pond, probably 5 acres we kicked up 20 pheasants.

The good ditch I had a 10 bird flush, then a 4 bird flush and saw close to 50 maybe more. I was on the upwind side trying to flush birds towards the younger guys but 80% of them came my way for some reason.

Saw two bald eagles sitting in the field to the north of that familiar place from above. Sort of interesting.
 
Met a friend in Milford on Sunday. We killed our 4 birds in just under 2 hours. Stuck to some small crp patches that I like and the pheasant gods were smiling on us yesterday. Didn't see a ton of birds, but probably really only hunted for 45 minutes. Had 8 great points. We shot 4 times and killed four roosters. Had one multi bird flush of 12-15 birds. Shot our last rooster out of that group. Called it quits at 9:30 am. Overall a great day, and my young dog is finally figuring out the birds are in the bottom of the ditches. That was nice to see. Where the habitat is right there are good bird numbers.
 
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