gettinbirdie
Active member
My brother and I left the Texas heat to run our dogs in ND last Monday. It’s a long ride from the Texas hill country to the north west corner of ND. The dogs were “losing their minds” by the time we got into ND. I decided to take the edge off the dogs and give us a chance to stretch our legs-we stopped at a field off I-94 that I did well in last year. This was my brothers first trip to ND. We got into this small field at 1 in the afternoon on Tuesday. It was awfully warm. We put up 36 sharpies in the 3 hrs. We killed one! It was a cluster, my brother knew I wasn’t super excited as I was a little quiet. A bad day running bird dogs is better than work! By the time we got to Minot for the night I was already anticipating our return to this field “ down south”. The next morning we drove a few more hours towards our destination not far from the Canadian border. While doing a drive by inspection on a potential field, we noticed an older woman tending to her horses while watching us with eagle eyes. I told my brother to drive over there, I rolled down the window and started making conversation with her( we are horse people too). She eventually invited me over the fence for an introduction To her “ponies”- Cathy had some fine horses! She eventually started prying- asking our business in ND. She stop to think about our answer. She said, follow me down the road.. she showed us several fields to hunt. She then looked at me and said “ I’ll be on that ranch over there” pointing down the slope. “ if you guys want to hunt geese- it is a really good place for it”. Everyone we met and talked to In ND were genuinely nice! We finally unloaded the first 2 dogs of our rotation at 11 am. We both shot limits of sharpies on the first field along with pointed about 15 pheasant. Ruby, my 1 1/2 yr old GSP pointed her butt off, bumped no birds, and enthusiastically retrieved all that were shot. I was super proud of her as she is the main reason I wanted to go to ND. The other reason was to complete a bucket list goal- point and shoot Huns! I told my brother we’ll save that overgrown strip for last- I was hoping for a covey here. As we walked the 400 yard overgrown fence row Toward the truck we were blessed with 2 covies of Huns ( 8-12 birds in each). My brother and I shot 1 bird each out of each covey and let them be for another day. We drove around searching for other fields- we found 2 we liked for the next morning in the next town over. The next morning was a brisk 40 degrees- we hunted an overgrown fence row that had a fairly wide shelterbelt along a wheat field. We were blessed with 3 covies of Huns here and an early limit! My brother completed his limit of Huns on the next field we had planned to visit. The rest of the day was spent eating, snoozing, laughing with our gsp’s. We had 2 five year old Field veterans with us along with young Ruby. That evening we spent prolly an hour trying to figure out how to get to a plot field I had marked yet another town over. By the time we got in there it was 6 o’clock hour. As we drove up to the first corner , two sharpies got up in the opposite ditch ( cut wheat Field). My brother said- I don’t think this field has been hunted yet, let’s go! This plot land was probably 300-400 acres, we covered it in less than an hour. It was chaotic- we limited out quick on sharps here. Not sure how many were in here as things went fast( prolly 15-20 birds). After dinner , we decided we would head home early. We hunted a couple of fields nearby the next morning- killing one sharpie apiece. We drove down south that afternoon to get our redemption from the first field we hunted. We didn’t arrive till 7 pm. We decided to run the older dogs here and sweep this area as quietly and quickly as possible. The dogs grinder out 4 points, giving my brother and I our final limits and redemption!
Some pictures: my brother with his first sharpie!
Young Ruby- she did an exceptional job. Better than I could have anticipated
North Dakota is an amazing place in the fall! 
It seemed like when we were in the sharpies they were thick... or there weren’t any. Very feast or famine. The Huns were super fun- very much like our bobwhites only slightly bigger in size. The numbers are definitely better than last year, a lot of young birds. We hope to return again next year!
Some pictures: my brother with his first sharpie!
Young Ruby- she did an exceptional job. Better than I could have anticipated
North Dakota is an amazing place in the fall! It seemed like when we were in the sharpies they were thick... or there weren’t any. Very feast or famine. The Huns were super fun- very much like our bobwhites only slightly bigger in size. The numbers are definitely better than last year, a lot of young birds. We hope to return again next year!
