As a beginner, I pretty much like to hunt where I can get permission and where there are birds, but in my limited experience, my favourite place is a high-ground cornfield that drops down to a lower field along a small river. Between the two fields is a creek that feeds into the river, which is all grown up with cat-tails and willows. There seems to be all the right ingredients for birds here. I only got permission there late last year, and was having a hard time hunting alone, since the dog would push the birds out the other side - by the time they came over the cover they were out of range and could fly across the river. After two trips like that I brought an buddy along and he worked the far side, getting a great late-season bird as it came over him. This fall I'll be saving this stop for group hunts (I hunt alone a lot) and I'm also working on getting permission to hunt the far side of the river.
When I hunt alone I like the spots where there are ditches between small field of differnt types of crops, espcially inside of the dykes that line many Nova Scotian rivers on teh Bay of Fundy side of the province. The dykes are about 20 feet wide, with a river on one side and a (usually cut) field on the inside. The top of the dyke is usually wild grasses/weeds that are left fallow but are not that hard to walk through. It's an easy habitat to cover with one hunter and a dog, except that there are no breaks in teh dyke (by design) so running birds can go a LONG way without having to go to wing. I usually walk about 5 km on way along the dyke, and then drop down on the way home to hunt the hedgerows/ditches that seperate the small fields inside the dyke. Great exercise but lots of far-flushed birds. The dog and I have lots of work to do to learn how to hunt these and other habitats, but it's encouraging to see lots of roosters at least!
