Wrapped up the 10 day stretch on Saturday. Definitely a different year. We did well the first 5 days, the second 5 were tough going. Had 4 shooters for half of it, 3 for the rest. One of our party though is an extremely limited blocker that has survived several serious health situations. He rarely hunts more than a few fields. He's our friend though and as long as it wants to do it, we'll support him fully.
Anyway, we dealt with LOTS of snow. Birds were down under in heavy cover. Each of the 4 dogs at one time or another pulled a bird or two out of deeply buried cover and retrieved to hand; a couple were hens unfortunately. Hens are so fragile. I did have my girl hand me one that I launched and she flew away looking quite healthy.
Shooting was pretty good by the party; not many shootable roosters flew away. I didn't track exactly but I think I was around ~80ish % on my shots. Of course, with the weather a lot of them held tight for the dog and gave me easy shots. I even got a double this trip. When the wind got up to 45 though it was a bit of a different story.
We did not limit every day but were pretty close on the days we did not. Where we were, the corn was still standing and in large plots. I think a lot of the birds were in there pretty deep and hunkered down. We tried pushing and also edging some corn with two walkers/two blockers. Not much luck. I think the heavy snow made quite a difference. We found most of our birds hunkered down in deep cover; cattail sloughs and heavy weedy sloughs. You could see the scratched out patches in the bean fields where they were eating; the sloughs near those were pretty good.
The roads were ok the first few days but deteriorated. Stuck to gravel almost exclusively. The last few days with the mud were really bad, even on gravel. I pulled one guy out of a ditch on a heavy snow day. I pulled another guy out that high centered in deep snow on a deep rut old driveway. Then I backed a tiny bit too far on that pull and got my rears on the downside edge past the crown and I couldn't get it back up. He pulled me back up! Fair play!
All in all, certainly not our best year for bird numbers by far. Also not our worst by far. I'd have to call it a bit under average on bird numbers.
Still a great trip. The old house held together although we did lose one day of hunting when the pipes froze up on the 2 degree night. A couple of runs to town for parts, heater tapes, insulation, etc. We finally got water back working that night. As usual, great meals throughout. Pheasant Picatta, Pheasant Parmigiana, Grilled deer backstrap, grilled elk sirloin...we all probably gained weight despite the walking all day.
I hope we can all do it one more time next year. Thanks South Dakota!
I'll post a few pictures from the phone. Sorry, no geotags.
