Hunting with other people, throw enough orange on, I seen a guy almost get peppered! Using a blocker/ poster this goes double.
Hunting with a bunch of buddies is fun. Hunting with one buddy, who has a fur coat and four paws is the most fun.
In late season, temps in single digits all the birds are in heavy cover and cattails... except when they aren't. Like a few days in south dakota when we found more birds in light grass than anywhere else. In late January.
28 gauges can do the job sometimes, but 16s and hand cannon 12s are more better.
Occasionally pointers turn into flushers. Other times a flusher points.
There's a rare day for me when the planets align, my gun report is always met with a dead rooster, limit reached well before sunset. Much more common are wild goose chases over a grassy hill, down a cattail swale, cackles heard through a screen of vegetation or departing the far side of a thicket. No matter what I've yet to regret a day gettin' out and after em.
Private land dummies aren't always a shoe in, but let's face it, there's a special feeling with bagging a cagey old rooster that's been evading other hunters for weeks and months on end.
When it's mid December, you've been tripping through a hell on earth cattail swamp for 30 minutes, see a bird light out of standing
corn 250 yards away, keep an eye on it, maybe once in a lifetime, but it could be a rooster who'll fly all that distance to offer you a 40 yard crosser.
When you have a once in a lifetime shot, that you make, it'll be the day you left the gopro at home
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Photos and videos are nice to share with friends, jog your memory, remember that special day. But at the end of it all, if you're truly an initiated member of the bird hunting brotherhood and share the field with a special dog, the memories will be with you for life and couldn't be forgettern even if you tried.
Keeping a hunting journal is fun. Fun to write and fun to read months and years later.
Browning A5s are good guns. The Belgian Fabrique National originals are works of art, heirlooms, and pheasant killing machines. The Miroku Jap barrel A5s are precision engineered from modern high carbon steel, and pheasant killing machines. The new A5s have forsook the long-recoil action of the originals in place of the benelli locking-bolt buttstock inertial spring, they are pheasant killing machines. Use the shotgun that works best for you.
There's nothing better than a gun replete with handling marks, bluing worn from muzzle due to untold cubic feet of hot gas and projectiles sent at fleeing pheasants. Forestock finish faded from miles carried over golden autumn prairie in a sweat drenched hand, and gloved mitt on those frozen bleak days when all the fair-weather hunters are long gone. I've a dent in my forend when I foolishly lay it between Skye and a rooster she tracked a few hundred yards through swamp. Right after taking a picture she lunged forward for the bird and put a good ding in walnut with her nail. I silently cussed myself a fool. Now I see that dented walnut and am reminded of a happy hunt with a dog who means more to me than any aesthetics.
If your choices for shot material are steel or anything else choose anything else.
You can hunt with short people, just don't put them in the tall grass.
A personal choice and confession. When I was so green I could piss grass game farm trips happened a few times a year. They can serve a purpose. At this point in life, as a very experienced, completely average pheasant hunter, I haven't shot a pen-raised bird in many a moon. For a suburban late-in-life hunter it was a good set of training wheels. I started from SCRATCH, could barely hit a flare-nare hot-air balloon pheasant the first time I went. I didn't kill a rooster my first year hunting wild birds. Admitted late bloomer I've finally caught on, almost shot my age in wild roosters this year(#browndogscan2). I'm right down by caribou gun club, a great spot with great owner. I could go load up a field tomorrow. But Skye is 10, and God forbid, I don't want our last memory together with pheasants to be a canned hunt on a game farm.
Party hunting with a group can be a day you shoot them up or one when you say "good job" and never pull the trigger.
When your buddy remarks after a day of hunting, "My wife is gonna kill me, she just gave the dog a bath yesterday!" You realize they need better communication on the scheduling of dog baths.
Whether the game warden is friendly or gruff, have your ducks in a row, be honest, and there's nothing to worry about.
The dog is your buddy, teammate, and skill position player. After the hunt they shouldn't be relegated to a cold garage or outside kennel. Let them sit next to you on the couch or a nice rug in front of the fire.
Beeper collars sound like a dump truck backing up at the landfill. Some technology ruins the effectiveness of hunting and feel of the hunt.
If you're walking a mowed trail betwixt manicured milo, hired a "guide", have staff clean your gun while sniffing high dollar bourbon at a lodge you're sure doing something, but it ain't hunting, no matter how hard you try and convince you and everyone you know.
Some days Annie Oakely behind a dual field trial master hunter versatile champion deutsch wirehair spaniel pointing retriever of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin lines can't get close to a wild rooster. Young autumn birds can be easy. Often I hear wild roosters talked down upon by those waxing about pass shooting ducks or the mysteriously appointed king of the uplands ruffed grouse. Even our brethren, pheasant hunters, with access to cherry private land, excellent habitat, loaded with foodplots and private land dummies. Nothing against these naysayers, but try for a mature January rooster on hard hunted land and get back to me. He hears gravel popping under your tires half mile before you park. Knows multiple escape routes. Upon careful scenting and following by an experienced dog, will begin evasive maneuvers to give any canine fits. No wind? He flushes at 100 yards. High wind? With a veteran dog and careful approach you might have a chance. If lady luck smiles upon you there's still issue of shot swarm covering a strong flying adult rooster with a 40 mph tail wind, on unsure footing, shooting through a screen of cattails or edge of thicket. Those who proclaim pheasants are so easy to hit, call them sky turtles, or throw other pejoratives their way are only opening day pretenders or preserve shooting shills and fakers, never dealing with educated birds in finger-numbing conditions. I feel no need to vindicate the issue further either to the ignorant or those who know the truth of it.
The dog. A common cliche, "It's all about the dog." I could write another 20 pages on this. The main point is, there is no type of hunting whereupon a dog is more important. Ducks can be retrieved by a hunter in waders or canoe. Grouse hunters have been very successful without canine companion. There is no bird quite like a pheasant, with his will to survive and run and hide and burrow where a dog has been needed more.
Dreams of seasons to come. I really hope Skye gets another year afield with me. I'll knock on doors just to find some spots where she can sniff up a few more birds. She taught me the whole deal so I owe her.
Nebraska. Kansas was a money spot 20 years ago and everybody knows SD is good. I feel like Nebraska is stuck in between and has a lot of good bird hunting. But I think all these quail hunters have pointing dogs, might be tough for a retriever.... Then I think back to my sharptail hunt with Roxy last year, I'm a hack but she put up and we got more grouse than all the pointer guys at the campground. So I've got no qualms about a quail/rooster hunt in the cornhusker state.
Afterword. Hunting season is over. That doesn't mean you still can't have fun with the dogs. I took Skye and Roxy out yesterday on state ground, they throughly enjoyed running, exploring, and sniffing around on open land. Here's a picture of Skye yesterday, and the dogs right now.
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out of the oven and grab another grainbelt or two....
Less than 7 months to sharptails/huns!
