hill city area

C

copheasanthunter

Member
Just got back from the Hill City area with no real luck. One bird between two guys. We saw several birds but they flew outof the opposite end of the field as we started hunting. Tried to block them by having my partner go to the opposite end of the field and me and my GSPs worked the field, the buggers were smart as they were honed in on us, as I started working the field with the pups they would flush out of range of either of us and fly out of the sides of the fiels. Some farmers were cutting the corn but not many. To big of fields for two hunters, guess I will try later on in December or January. :(
 
Not what I wanted to hear. I'm heading that way this weekend with my son and the dog and we are hoping the cooler temps will help us out. Thanks for the report.
 
if they get some corn out it will definately help, but there is a lot still in the fields. Really hard to hunt especially with two guys, but I do wish you luck.
 
I heard that the pheasant populations are not real strong there but that was from people hunting public. Did you see many quail in that area?
 
Kansaslabman,
we did see plenty of pheasants,they were just out of range and skitish to say the least. We did not see any quail but I did talk to a guy who said that he got into one covey but I only know it was in the area between Hill City and Waukeene and it was from a creek bottom.
 
It's interesting to me as an out-of-stater what constitutes good pheasant hunting to different people. I have been grouse hunting in Virginia for 35 years and for the last few years 5 flushes in a day of hard hunting would be considered a good day. I have visited the midwest from Montana to North Dakota to Kansas on several occasions pursuing ringnecks with mixed results from easy killing to having to really hunt them. I have never had what I would call a bad trip. Two years ago my buddy and I went to Kansas in January and hunted WIHA's. In four days of hunting we never got a limit but we put up a lot of birds and our dogs got a lot of work. I considered it our best trip because we had to learn how to HUNT the birds instead of just shoot them. We were outsmarted by those pea-brained birds many times but we had our moments,too. There is nothing like seeing 100 or so pheasants boiling out of a field in my humble opinion. I am looking forward to my next trip to the wonderful, friendly state of Kansas.
Oh, and if any of you want to come to Va and hunt the hills all day to hear a couple of grouse flush, let me know.
 
Hill City

My buddy and I hunted in Graham County last week, Nov 24, 25 and 26. We hunted for a couple hours on the 24th, all day on the 25th and only a few hours on the 26th. We killed five roosters and one quail and if we could have shot I would have had another 5 quail and 4 roosters and my buddy missed eight easily killable roosters. Some birds were spooky and some sat tight. We could never find any rhythm or reason to it. There was still a lot of milo and corn in the fields and the rain made the roads a mess but all in all I thought we did great. Most important, we saw dozens of wild roosters and a couple covey of quail. We did work hard for what we got though, I bet we walked 15 miles on Wednesday and my GSP's and Welsh were tired when we finally got home.:)
We are going back in a couple of weeks. I hope it's cooler, they have some moisture and if the crops were harvested it would help as well.
 
Any combines moving

Did you see any harvesting activity or was everything too wet again? I imagine some of these guys will be combining closer to Christmas if the weather doesn't cooperate. I believe when the milo and corn is all in the bin we are all going to start seeing birds we didn't think were there.

Thanks for the report!
 
It had rained on Monday the 23rd I was told and as wet as it was I can believe it. There was no harvesting while we were there, way to wet.
 
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