MN Pheasant Opener

Birddog23

Member
3 of us went to Western MN for opener this past weekend.
It was warm, but we took plenty of breaks for our dogs, lots of water, and made it through Saturday just fine.
We ended up with 4 birds, but should have had our limit as we hit 3 birds, not good enough shots, that we could not find. That sucked!
But, I typically go out to Western MN every year, and even with all the corn basically in the fields, I saw more birds than I ever have in MN.

Sunday morning we went out for about 2 hours, it was very windy. Should of had one nice rooster, but I was in the middle of the cattails, so wasn't a super easy shot but still should of had him.

Walked so much on Saturday my right leg started to not function correctly towards the end of the day, I was absolutely exhausted.
 
Went out Saturday morning, made one walk and went home. Too many people! Did see a few birds on that walk, so that was promising. I will be out more this week and weekend.
 
I went out close to home and was only planning on hunting from about 9-10:00, 1 field. I got a rooster at 9:01. That was only the bird that we saw. LOTS of hunters out in our area. Every corner of public land had a vehicle in it, and the gravel roads and even highways all had a lot of vehicles going up and down them all day with dog kennels in the back.
 
Went out Sunday as plans change ;) and, with my 70 yr old dad and my 13 yr old boy. We hit 4 spots, went further west than I thought.... First spot was small and we put up 2 roosters and 7-8 hens - I cracked one. We spent the next 6 hours overheating and waiting, finally putting a quick hunt together just before sunset where my kid saw a mature rooster land, but it moved about 30 yards by the time we got him over for a shot. Never pulled the trigger, he was kind of bummed. Long day for him without much to show. Too damn windy and dry.

Hopefully in a couple weeks I can get him into an area with more birds, there were alot of hunters out so maybe those couple fields had been pushed already. Oh well, hes got all year for his first one.
 
4 of us hunted Saturday morning for about 3 hours. We flushed 10 birds. Only one was a rooster. A friend shot it.

2 of us hunted the last 1.5 hr before sunset on Sunday. Flushed 13 birds and bagged 3.

Great to be out again.
 
Hunted Saturday and shot 2 birds and buddy shot 1. Flushed about a dozen birds but many were young with only partial coloration. Took multiple breaks to let the dogs swim. The corn was all standing around the area we hunted, so plan to get back out as the crops come out.
 
There appear to be a lot of late hatch birds. Sunday, my dog caught a young rooster that had it flushed would have been identified as a hen.

Today she flushed several very small hens.
 
Hunting has bee pretty good lately. It looks more like October out there. I can remember last year by this time there was over a foot of snow on the ground and it made for some very tough walking. I've flushed about 70 total the last couple outings.
 

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