My wife and I rolled into to town on the 10th and got settled into our cabin, the snow was still coming down and blowing. We got all our gear ready for Sunday and off we went, we have a spot we call ?The Honey Hole? and we soon found this to be renamed ?The Death March?. What should have taken us half an hour to get to and another half to go through took us close to two hours to get to and another hour to attempt to go through before I had enough. I was struggling too much and the snow was so hard packed at waist deep it didn?t make sense in trying to kill myself or our dog.
Off we go to a few more spots we know of and am finding the same thing, cat tails are full of snow and the only birds we are seeing are along tree/brush areas or out feeding in corn fields. We do manage to hit one nice spot and before we can get to it they are flushing 50 yards ahead of us, the whole day was this. We tried setting one person up as a poster and using the dog flush the birds towards the other with zero results.
Monday and Tuesday we are off west of the river to our friends spread, same situation both days. We can only get shots off at birds close to the road ( I refuse to be a road hunter ) and the largest amount that we see are eating in the corn and we are learning futility trying to get to the heavy cover. The only thing that we had success with is the sharp tail, while taking a break eating a sandwich they were flying from stack of hay bales to hay bales and flying over our truck, I was able to get a few while having lunch and then we put the stalk on a few and got them.
Anyone that is headed this way I?d suggest getting some snow shoes and if you are hunting WIA land you are going to have a difficult time bagging birds. All in all we had a good time, I do not grade a hunting trip by amount of birds bagged but by the quality time I get to spend with my awesome wife. We are done for the year and I wish everyone else the best of luck and hope everyone has a good Christmas and excellent 2017!!
Off we go to a few more spots we know of and am finding the same thing, cat tails are full of snow and the only birds we are seeing are along tree/brush areas or out feeding in corn fields. We do manage to hit one nice spot and before we can get to it they are flushing 50 yards ahead of us, the whole day was this. We tried setting one person up as a poster and using the dog flush the birds towards the other with zero results.
Monday and Tuesday we are off west of the river to our friends spread, same situation both days. We can only get shots off at birds close to the road ( I refuse to be a road hunter ) and the largest amount that we see are eating in the corn and we are learning futility trying to get to the heavy cover. The only thing that we had success with is the sharp tail, while taking a break eating a sandwich they were flying from stack of hay bales to hay bales and flying over our truck, I was able to get a few while having lunch and then we put the stalk on a few and got them.
Anyone that is headed this way I?d suggest getting some snow shoes and if you are hunting WIA land you are going to have a difficult time bagging birds. All in all we had a good time, I do not grade a hunting trip by amount of birds bagged but by the quality time I get to spend with my awesome wife. We are done for the year and I wish everyone else the best of luck and hope everyone has a good Christmas and excellent 2017!!
