Just got back from a 5 day hunt

[TerryB]

Well boys I'm going to tell a slightly different story from my trip. We hunted East Central SD. We hunted South of Watertown, we hunted Watertown as well as Clark and just west of there. I'm not a bean counter but I think we saw more birds this year than last year. We hunted all public property that was well scouted in advance of my arrival. Two days we hunted 5 people, 1 day we hunted 3 and 2 days we only hunted two of us. We had 3 dogs and hit only the sloughs with standing or JUST cut corn. Our evenings we hunted tall grass surrounded by standing corn. We didn't limit every day but we also didn't hunt from 9-6:30......mornings were 9 till 1 and the afternoons were 4:30 till end of shoot time. Birds were NOT holding at all. My GSP had a total of 15 points in 5 days. The labs did a good amount of flushing but we saw WAY TOO MANY birds flushing out ahead of us. You can see in my previous posts that I was not expecting much in the way of birds due to all the gloom and doom I was reading. It was a much better trip than I anticipated. I believe that the hunters going later will benefit from some snow cover that will hold birds tighter but all in all I wasd VERY happy this year. I gained 4 pounds, I lost my fair share of brain cells and I brought home a cooler of birds. Thanks again SD for a great hunt.