Poll-How far do you drive to find birds?

How far?

  • Total voters
    33
  • Poll closed .
Shawk

Shawk

Member
Curious how far everyone here is driving for there hunts?
I've always been around 30-40 minutes to most of my spots... but I've been giving some serious thought to making a 3+ hour run in hope of getting my pooch on a bird or two more consistently... my kids have no interest. :/ It's a struggle here in my area (Black Hawk county & surrounding counties)... There are a few pockets here and there but it's tough going.
 
I measure my drives in days not hours. Three days is what I do every year. Two is a short trip. Hoping to do that in December. I live in NY. Dogs and I love wild birds so we drive.
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Okay to Good hunting is within a 15 minutes to 30 minutes for me.
Good hunting 1 hour or so away.
Great hunting is 8-9 hours.:eek: I suppose it's worth the drive;)
 
I'm struggling with that this year. I live in far eastern Iowa, and bird numbers are not great. My dilemma is drive 4-5 hrs to find some good hunting, or drive 20 minutes and shoot the preserve? It's 100 bucks to shoot 5, or food/gas to drive all day to shoot 3. Really tough if I'm by myself. It's frustrating. If I hunt 2 days, then throw in lodging.
 
I should have listed another option or two in the poll for those that are driving further. It's incredible how much we take things for granted. In the 90's when I hunted a ton, we had better hunting than most and now it's near the bottom. I never thought I'd shoot a pen raised bird and I definitely never had the desire to drive a few hours (let alone a day+) to hunt birds, but I'm at that point.
I took my GSP to Big Marsh yesterday for kicks saving my VERY few little spots for another time when my son can get out and I saw ONE bird in the field. I made my way to some of the most remote spots that probably haven't been walked a ton either. It absolutely blows my mind how spotty the bird population is out there now. I'm being nice by saying spotty. :( I have a hidey hole that looks absolutely incredible (water, buffer strips, knee to chest high grass-thick!) I hit opening weekend and didn't kick up a single bird.
As a side note on the way home yesterday... I did see a good covey of Partridge on the way home though. :) I see their numbers are actually pretty good in my area.
Keep after it guys... :thumbsup:
 
oops, sorry boys - I had voted in the poll before I noticed it was in the Iowa regional forum. So my vote shouldn't count
 
well.....I don't live in Iowa but here in IL I have to drive hour and a half to start to get into good bird cover. I do that 3-4 days a week..:thumbsup:
 
No sweat to those out of state. Glad you're jumping in! I probably should have posted in the regular forum instead... interesting that a bigger number than I thought are taking pretty long drives.
 
Some of us have no choice, hunting is always week or two long trips for me and long drives. I envy you guys out in the Midwest you can hunt all season long any day you want. We don't have any good preserves here and no wild birds except Ruffel Grouse. But in NY the deer season is the same time and I don't put my dogs out in NY during deer season. There is one month at the end when deer is over if the snow is not to high I get a chance then.
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I guess even though we live in an area that has pheasants , we take it for granted. My point was those fortunate to live in the central to western part of the state, can travel much less to find good bird numbers. Here in eastern Iowa, back in the 80's and 90's we had decent bird numbers, but now, lack of habitat, being the most crucial, has caused a marked decline in numbers, and can't always jump in the car and drive 5 hrs. to find good numbers of pheasants, and one shouldn't have to in our state.:)
 
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