Come on A5, on your thinking they fly/run as soon they know you are there and you are within several yards once they realize this? Every bird my dog has ever pointed I am sure knew we were there and we are on top of most of them at that "point". I don't think we are giving concealment enough credit as a defense tactic. Maybe you should see a good pointer work, not just flushers. Once pointed, all of us with pointing dogs have had to stomp around to finally get the bird to fly (sometimes right under your chin), that isn't real unusual. Less often the dog has to litterly dig the bird out of the understory of grass that it has buried it's self into.
My experience of pheasant hunting is limited to about 99% private land. I have plenty of that available and my thinking is to leave the public ground to the fellas without the connections to get on private ground. Once every season or two I will try a piece of IHAP or state owned ground late in the season, more for a change of scenery than anything else. Maybe on the public area, after the first few weeks, the remaining (surviving) birds are the ones that run/fly rather than conceal....that would make more sense to me...pretty much what GS said.
Our hunting experiences can vary quite a bit it seems, as we are only 100 miles away! Maybe the biggest differeces in our experiences is due the the hunting pressure of the cover we have available. I think I just had a "light-bulb" moment, maybe just a 40 watt.
Only 14 weeks til the Iowa opener!
We're going to kick this around enough that eventually everyone agrees with me.
Or at least until enough of us have a 40W bulb come on that we've explained ourselves in an understandable fashion. I like your point about the differences in our hunting. The dog. The cover. Pressure. And yet we're practically next door neighbors.
But "you're thinking they fly/run as soon they know you are there and you are within several yards once they realize this?" isn't really what I'm saying. Sometimes that's true (like real windy days when things work out right). But what it amounts to is this, "The longer it takes a rooster to realize he's not alone, the better your odds become of getting within range of (or pointing) that bird." Even if he can't pinpoint you, if he knows you're there, he's on alert. What it looks like from there can take 1,000 different paths. I think first he'll try to determine where the danger is. Sometimes he's wrong, especially if he's being hunted in an irregular fashion, like zig-zigging, coming at him from a direction he's never experienced before, etc. But if he locates you, even roughly, he'll try to evade you. There are 1,000 ways he can do that, as we know. Sometimes he feels his best option is to sit tight. Sometimes he runs, flies, or whatever. And I understand that a pointer treats a rooster different than a springer does, especially a pointer hunting cover that allows him to range pretty far. But as some point, even a big-running pointer needs to stick a bird, which entails getting close; in many cases, catching up to it (which is why I commonly jog after my flushing dog when he's on a moving bird). I believe THAT'S when concealment happens most often - after you or your dog get close. Many, MANY times roosters flush right under Ace's nose as he dives in to try to catch it (akin to kicking the grass to flush a pointed bird). He's found the concealed bird. And don't get me wrong, concealment is effective. But a man with a dog & shotgun does better than, say, a hawk or owl who relies on vision. But pheasants don't just LET you or your dog get close. You either caught up to them. You surprised them. They ran out of running room. Or whatever. The way I hunt, much of the time I know Ace is on a bird quite a while before we see him, which I believe usually means the bird's trying to elude us. Sometimes, because of how we hunt, we're able to get him to flush in range, whether that be at 5 yards or 35 yards. But I know, if we didn't try to be stealthy, birds would have more time to try to elude us, more would be successful, & we'd have fewer flush in range. Just no question about it in my mind. Similarly, I believe a stealthy pointer or man/pointer team would get more points than a noisy pointer or man/pointer team.
80 days until the SD resident weekend on public land. If my younger daughter is interested, only 66 days until Ace & I can take her out. We can get a ton of pheasant discussion in before our respective big day hits.
. But then I think back of my college days hunting in groups of folks and making all kinds of noise and cutting up with each other the whole time we hunted and always got on plenty of birds. I don't know what's best but I know the noise sure bothers me now lol
