carpfisher
New member
Well, another great SD Pheasant Adventure come and gone. I give it a B-. Good dog work. We had 2 guys new to SD and they had a good trip.
We found birds every day on mostly WIA and some private land around Agar, FPGNL, and CRST-WIA land. We believe that SD GFP got the % increase very wrong and everybody we talked to agreed, including the local folk. If we found, the 3 keys: Food, H20, cover, we would generally find birds. We travelled as far west as Philip with little luck that way. But, it was a nasty, wet, windy day (Mon 5 nov).
We did have a very interesting incident. We were pushing a piece of medium cover that was a dried swamp/bog. Cows had been in it when it was wet and there were pretty good size divots from cow feet. Buddy calls me over and whisper "Hen" and points at his feet. There was a hen that appeared to asleep about 2 feet in front of his foot. He passes of his shotgun and reaches down to pick her up. Her head is slowly bobbing and weaving but her eyes were definitely closed. Just about the time he touches her she flushes and leaves a few feather behind. We were amazed and so was the 10 YO Boy that was with us.
WIA Issues: One place is “Yellow in the book and the GPS. It had no hunting signd posted and no WIA markers on the corner. Saw a scud of birds in the shelter belt. Called GFP and they weren’t much help. We could never find somebody home to clear the confusion. A second place was called out as WIA, picked corn, but it had cows on it.
Hopefully, we’ll have good cooperation from Mother Nature until next season and population will spring back.
We found birds every day on mostly WIA and some private land around Agar, FPGNL, and CRST-WIA land. We believe that SD GFP got the % increase very wrong and everybody we talked to agreed, including the local folk. If we found, the 3 keys: Food, H20, cover, we would generally find birds. We travelled as far west as Philip with little luck that way. But, it was a nasty, wet, windy day (Mon 5 nov).
We did have a very interesting incident. We were pushing a piece of medium cover that was a dried swamp/bog. Cows had been in it when it was wet and there were pretty good size divots from cow feet. Buddy calls me over and whisper "Hen" and points at his feet. There was a hen that appeared to asleep about 2 feet in front of his foot. He passes of his shotgun and reaches down to pick her up. Her head is slowly bobbing and weaving but her eyes were definitely closed. Just about the time he touches her she flushes and leaves a few feather behind. We were amazed and so was the 10 YO Boy that was with us.
WIA Issues: One place is “Yellow in the book and the GPS. It had no hunting signd posted and no WIA markers on the corner. Saw a scud of birds in the shelter belt. Called GFP and they weren’t much help. We could never find somebody home to clear the confusion. A second place was called out as WIA, picked corn, but it had cows on it.
Hopefully, we’ll have good cooperation from Mother Nature until next season and population will spring back.