How long do you wait between hunts?

B

brown dog

Member
We have 6-8 farms that we can hunt here in Iowa, more than we can hunt in one weekend for sure....so we try and alternate between them. Some times it can be 3+ weeks before we will visit it again. Is this too soon? We have noticed in the past that there may be one week we will not see a bird, and then 3 weeks later see a dozen or more.

My question is how many times will you hunt the same piece in a season without worrying about blowing it out?
 
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That depends partially on how many places you have that you can hunt to begin with. I wish we had 6-8 farms to hunt; used to have, but now only 3 for sure. We hit those 3, or at least 2 of the 3, once a week; aside from a local Fish & Wildlife area about 13 miles away that gets the crap pounded out if it, we have no choice if we want to hunt pheasants. We have a bit more leeway with ducks.
 
This would probably depend on many factors. Is there a lot of birds in the area? Is there better food/ cover/ water on adjoining properties? Is the property being hunted by others? Three weeks is more than ample time between hunts. If you are not seeing birds in that amount of time it has little to do with the pressure you are putting on them.
 
I am in a similar position. Some places I think we could hunt every other day, others we hunt every 2 weeks, depends a lot on the size of the parcel and population of birds... population is the biggest factor for me. I might not be the sole hunter in some of these places, but I treat them as such. If the bird numbers are low more than once, it will likley go out of our rotation. Once the weather turns with a lot of snow cover and sub zero temps, we only hunt large parcels and limit that. I just don't need to stir the birds up when the conditions are burtal for them.

Much of the public ground could likely be hunted at least once a day, but that is just how it will be. If you are the only hunters, once a week should be fine, but just give attension to the populations you are witnessing.
 
Seems like I rest my spots a little more than most of you. The stuff we own I'll typically hunt 3x per year, unless the population is really high. The other private stuff I can hunt, I normally only hunt once. Maybe the producer is letting others hunt it, maybe not. I'm never sure. BUt that self-imposed limit is less about pressuring the birds than it is pressuring the landowner. I'm just trying to strike the right balance between "Oh, I remember you" and "again?"

Kansas WIHA gets pounded pretty hard. We picked a spot for opening morning and showed up about an hour before shooting light to find trucks already there. We moved on, but came back later in the day. I would guess it had been hunted 2x if not 3x before we got there in the afternoon. It was our most productive field of the day. As we were loading up to leave, another bunch of trucks pulled up and started hunting.
 
We hunt one group a week and we only hunt 3 days a week so there is four days off. In a normal year the first two days is on fresh land and maybe on the third they go back and hunt the best spots from day one.
 
I like to wait at least two weeks. As others mentioned, there are a lot of variables, available land to hunt being the biggest. When I say two weeks, those are spots that I don't hunt until after deer season, then the season is winding down and there are lots of birds out there.

I've hunted just a few days apart and witnessed similar results each time. Just depends on what you're comfortable with and can do. The longer the better, but sometimes that is shorter than we'd like it to be.

I would also mention that some of the private land spots I hunt are large, meaning I can hunt the slough and ravine on the west side of the property and hit the east side the next day without much of an issue. If there are many acres of cattails and a food plot, with not much else available in the surrounding area, the birds will come back as soon as they can. My top spot, I could circle the property and push birds around all day without them leaving the property. I don't, but there isn't anywhere else for them to go that provides what a gigantic cattail slough and a food plot can.
 
Pheasants are wary, but their downfall is short memories. If you hunt your spots once a week, they'll have forgotten their last bad experience. Of course, there are other variables in play (weather, time of day, status of nearby crops, etc...). If you have a ton of pheasants none of this will really matter.
 
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