Scouting for Pheasant

B

Boch0627

Member
How do or what do you look for while scouting for pheasant? Get up early and drive around looking for birds I get. But are there certain areas you look for? Cut corn fields.
 
Water! Knock on doors.Some of these farmers will completely shut you down .a lot of times these farms are leased to low life outfitters. Sometimes they only allow family to hunt, or locals. It helps to be a country type, and there is an advantage to know a local. Some farms charge money. I have always been an excellent scout. I have found places out in the stix.
 
Boots on the ground is great scouting. It's also quite a bit easier to get permission to "run" your dogs on a piece of ground than to hunt it. However, I've had times where having permission to run/train dogs has turned into hunting permission down the road as you build up a relationship with the landowner.
 
cyclonenation10 said:
Boots on the ground is great scouting.
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THIS. I have done it this way for 25 years now and just spent hours doing it last Friday. Get in your truck and knock on the door. Be prepared to get rejected too and always thank them for their time, even if they say no. The in-person scouting and asking for permission thing is a bit of a lost art. I think more people could get permission on private land if they simply put the time in and tried but a lot of hunters don't have that will power, time, or dedication.

In terms of habitat, I am looking for a good mix of brush, grassland, and trees. For late season, I look for cattails. There needs to also be a food source nearby. If there's a huge field of standing corn or multiple fields of standing corn, forget it until its harvested. Then go back after its gone.

I personally have success obtaining permission if I offer to go in there after deer firearms season in early November too. A lot of private land is hunted for deer here and if you tell them up front you won't go in there until that's over, they are often far more willing to let you hunt it.
 
Personally, scouting involves identifying habitat conducive to holding pheasants rather than actually laying eyes on pheasants. Pheasants need to eat, roost, breed, and survive, whether that means avoiding hawks, or ground predators, or January wind and snow. They also need grit for their gizzard. Gravel roads are an ideal spot for that, however, I believe Roundup Ready crops have allowed pheasants to be less reliant on going to gravel in the evening as sand/grit can be found on the ground, which is now no longer covered with vegetation. But that's a whole other conversation. Point being, there are lots of variables, but keeping the necessities of pheasants in mind when identifying places to hunt is the most successful, at least for me.

Parcels of land that are next to corn and offer good protection via habitat are statistically going to be your best bet.
 
No trouble with the permission we're hunting the Lower Brule res. Just looking at getting out early and scouting around different areas and just wondering what everyone looks for. Basically food, water, and cover.
 
gimruis said:
THIS. I have done it this way for 25 years now and just spent hours doing it last Friday. Get in your truck and knock on the door. Be prepared to get rejected too and always thank them for their time, even if they say no. The in-person scouting and asking for permission thing is a bit of a lost art. I think more people could get permission on private land if they simply put the time in and tried but a lot of hunters don't have that will power, time, or dedication.

In terms of habitat, I am looking for a good mix of brush, grassland, and trees. For late season, I look for cattails. There needs to also be a food source nearby. If there's a huge field of standing corn or multiple fields of standing corn, forget it until its harvested. Then go back after its gone.

I personally have success obtaining permission if I offer to go in there after deer firearms season in early November too. A lot of private land is hunted for deer here and if you tell them up front you won't go in there until that's over, they are often far more willing to let you hunt it.
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Getting permission is a lost art.Good call.
 
goldenboy said:
Food, water, cover. That is it. If you have food and cover but no water, birds will be scarce. Water and cover but no food, they can't survive. Water and food but no cover, the predators kill them.
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One thing I noticed this year scouting, is a lot of the ditches that are normally full look bone dry. I'm hoping earlier in the year they had residual pockets of water. I know my uncles spot, there's a spring fed slough so always water in it. Other wetlands seem to go completely dry in a year like this. I'm going to go over the map again and double check my areas for a water source.
 
Bob Peters said:
is a lot of the ditches that are normally full look bone dry
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Virtually every ditch and patch of cattails I hunted last season was bone dry. First time in 25 years I've seen that. Unfortunately, I think its going to be more of the same this fall now because its been so dry lately again.
 
Golden Hour said:
Personally, scouting involves identifying habitat conducive to holding pheasants rather than actually laying eyes on pheasants. Pheasants need to eat, roost, breed, and survive, whether that means avoiding hawks, or ground predators, or January wind and snow. They also need grit for their gizzard. Gravel roads are an ideal spot for that, however, I believe Roundup Ready crops have allowed pheasants to be less reliant on going to gravel in the evening as sand/grit can be found on the ground, which is now no longer covered with vegetation. But that's a whole other conversation. Point being, there are lots of variables, but keeping the necessities of pheasants in mind when identifying places to hunt is the most successful, at least for me.

Parcels of land that are next to corn and offer good protection via habitat are statistically going to be your best bet.
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Yup, there's marginal habitat that will hold a few birds. Old farmsteads, overgrown cow lots, ditches. But nothing beats C.R.P. next to grain. Of course, Cattails in the Dakotas. I never thought about roundup ready beans and more bare ground, you may have a point.
 
birddude said:
I never thought about roundup ready beans and more bare ground, you may have a point.
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Several years ago a guy who gives me permission to hunt every season planted a small field of organic corn and he left it standing all the way through the season in December. That spot was a freaking magnet of birds. All the grass, weeds, and other crap growing amongst the corn kept birds there all season. And since it was a small field, I could hunt it easily too.
 
Goosemaster said:
Water! Knock on doors.Some of these farmers will completely shut you down .a lot of times these farms are leased to low life outfitters. Sometimes they only allow family to hunt, or locals. It helps to be a country type, and there is an advantage to know a local. Some farms charge money. I have always been an excellent scout. I have found places out in the stix.
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As opposed to the high life outfitters.
 
goldenboy said:
Food, water, cover. That is it. If you have food and cover but no water, birds will be scarce. Water and cover but no food, they can't survive. Water and food but no cover, the predators kill them.
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If pheasants really need water, as in standing/flowing water, I will not see many birds this season. The creek than runs through our CRP is dry right now (as are most little creeks and some people's wells), no rain in the extended forecast. This creek is very seldom dry, it didn't dry-up last year, but this is the 3rd dry year in a row. There is water within a mile, but I doubt they convoy down and back everyday. I guess I haven't checked at the dam within a mile (it could be dry too) it might be a mile and a half for a creek that is still running. I will guess that of the 3 farms we have with cover and creeks, they are all bone dry currently. I will get out and check the others. I have a buddy by Cherokee, might have to see about hunting his CRP. 85 and windy today, that isn't helping our moisture level. It sound like there is more corn coming into the elevator under 14% moisture that over 14%...quite dry for this time of the year.

As far as scouting, if it is public ground, don't just drive-by, stop and get out and walk through some of it. I remember several years ago there was some CRP in IHAP not a long way from me and I had thought it looked decent. Well, we did try it one time, way thinnner than it appeared to be from the road, no birds there. I was very sandy and rocky....a great move to place that ground in crp, they wouldn't need a combine on that ground this year! I should swing in and see if it has thickened-up after some time now.
 
Any dew in the morning will give them enough water for the day just by taking it off the grass. So you can have dry soil conditions but if the weather is humid enough, they will be in their normal locations. If there has been extended drought, then they may have migrated over the summer to water holes and you will find them exclusively there- cattle dugouts, deep sloughs, WPAs, farmsteads with flowing wells (cattails next to cattle fence or old homesteads give that away). Rains are spotty in the plains so local conditions change after 10 miles sometimes.

As far as roadside scouting there are 2x-3x more birds picking gravel at dusk than early in the morning in my experience. Perhaps the ground is better in SD but I rarely find any gravel on top in the fields that have been cultivated so they must come out to the road. They can get by and come every other day so a single run through an area might miss half the birds.

Road hunt from 4-6PM and mark where you shot them out of the ditches. Go back the next afternoon and hunt the cover near that spot. Road hunt again that late afternoon until you reliably find an areas with high bird populations and stay where you find birds. That means gravel roads and not two-track grass, field access roads or pavement.

To see them from the road, choose those with weedy ditches next to standing corn. That is where they will pop out onto the road from cover after feeding in the corn to pick gravel. Standing soybeans are a distant second choice and cut wheat lives up to it's poverty grass reputation for hunters as well. Mowed ditches will keep them in the corn until right at dark.

Find a big slough with a deep center, weedy ditches and corn across the road and you can pass shoot them at twilight as the fly from corn to cover.
 
PeteRevvv said:
Any dew in the morning will give them enough water for the day just by taking it off the grass. So you can have dry soil conditions but if the weather is humid enough, they will be in their normal locations. If there has been extended drought, then they may have migrated over the summer to water holes and you will find them exclusively there- cattle dugouts, deep sloughs, WPAs, farmsteads with flowing wells (cattails next to cattle fence or old homesteads give that away). Rains are spotty in the plains so local conditions change after 10 miles sometimes.

As far as roadside scouting there are 2x-3x more birds picking gravel at dusk than early in the morning in my experience. Perhaps the ground is better in SD but I rarely find any gravel on top in the fields that have been cultivated so they must come out to the road. They can get by and come every other day so a single run through an area might miss half the birds.

Road hunt from 4-6PM and mark where you shot them out of the ditches. Go back the next afternoon and hunt the cover near that spot. Road hunt again that late afternoon until you reliably find an areas with high bird populations and stay where you find birds. That means gravel roads and not two-track grass, field access roads or pavement.

To see them from the road, choose those with weedy ditches next to standing corn. That is where they will pop out onto the road from cover after feeding in the corn to pick gravel. Standing soybeans are a distant second choice and cut wheat lives up to it's poverty grass reputation for hunters as well. Mowed ditches will keep them in the corn until right at dark.

Find a big slough with a deep center, weedy ditches and corn across the road and you can pass shoot them at twilight as the fly from corn to cover.
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I don't get this road hunting.
 
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