randywatson
Member
Hunted last week public ground south of Brookings. Wow! The WPA's there have some amazing habitat and the size of these are big. 2 of us shot 2 in 3 hours of hunting. Flushed about 12 hens on the 3 places we hunted.
I then met some buddies up near Doland and hunted with a guide. My buddy wanted to get a hunt in as he had some extra days on his license and and so I was invited along. I've been hunting pheasants for 20+ years and with my own dog for the past 13. Never have I ever purposefully hunted with the wind to my back to keep birds on a property. the only time I've done this was to push the birds to our final slaughter spot. ie hunt shelter belts to push them into some standing milo and then approach the milo from downwind with blockers. I can count on 1 hand the number of times we hunted with the wind to our face in the 2 days of hunting with this guide. we had 6 hunters a guide and 4-6 dogs at a time depending on the size of property we were pushing. Was frustrating and we kept making little suggestions to the guide to allow our dogs to hunt better. we walked past many birds that got up behind us because of the wind to our back.
We were in a tough situation that we had never hunted his stuff so we knew nothing of where the birds would be at. But after he said "Im trying to keep the birds on my land" a few times it was evident he didn't care if we shot our birds or not. He also mention he had a group of 16 hunters coming in over the wknd. So after the hunt and on our drive home we decided he wasn't dedicated too terribly hard to getting us our birds as he was with the next group coming in. he was saving the best for them.
Has anyone had experience like this and how did you handle it?
Fyi,
Was a lesson to all of us.
I then met some buddies up near Doland and hunted with a guide. My buddy wanted to get a hunt in as he had some extra days on his license and and so I was invited along. I've been hunting pheasants for 20+ years and with my own dog for the past 13. Never have I ever purposefully hunted with the wind to my back to keep birds on a property. the only time I've done this was to push the birds to our final slaughter spot. ie hunt shelter belts to push them into some standing milo and then approach the milo from downwind with blockers. I can count on 1 hand the number of times we hunted with the wind to our face in the 2 days of hunting with this guide. we had 6 hunters a guide and 4-6 dogs at a time depending on the size of property we were pushing. Was frustrating and we kept making little suggestions to the guide to allow our dogs to hunt better. we walked past many birds that got up behind us because of the wind to our back.
We were in a tough situation that we had never hunted his stuff so we knew nothing of where the birds would be at. But after he said "Im trying to keep the birds on my land" a few times it was evident he didn't care if we shot our birds or not. He also mention he had a group of 16 hunters coming in over the wknd. So after the hunt and on our drive home we decided he wasn't dedicated too terribly hard to getting us our birds as he was with the next group coming in. he was saving the best for them.
Has anyone had experience like this and how did you handle it?
Fyi,
Was a lesson to all of us.
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