South Dakota?
Your experience mimics mine there except you were hunting pheasants and I was jumping them while hunting ducks. I think the only solution is to get all the kids from the orphanage, promise them a day out with lunch and each a $20 bill if they'd run through that stuff toward you. Getting all the dogs out of the pound and turning them loose there would help too. Short of that it can be a very frustrating place indeed.Today was pheasant hunting at its finest imo. The temp was in the single digits when we started, no wind, and blue bird skies. We hit the field strong trudging through cover head high interspersed by snowed in stuff that was hard to walk. Shedding layers quickly in the field, sweating and short of breath though the temps were still below 10 degrees. Dogs birdy all the way knowing a sly rooster was running just ahead but they were burdened by their slow masters. Watching groups of 5-10 birds flushing just out of range every few minutes and only flying to the other edge of their fortress, some hundred or more by my estimates. After more than an hour of this we decided to push through this jungle of fire weed (or whatever it was) to the other edge where we moved all those birds to only to have the exact scenario play out again. Those birds kicked our ass today! Moving hundreds of birds and never having a shot is frustrating to say the least but being in a beautiful place with a dog that will give his all all day never gets old. Those roosters won today... but we'll be back, someday.:cheers:
Today was pheasant hunting at its finest imo. The temp was in the single digits when we started, no wind, and blue bird skies. We hit the field strong trudging through cover head high interspersed by snowed in stuff that was hard to walk. Shedding layers quickly in the field, sweating and short of breath though the temps were still below 10 degrees. Dogs birdy all the way knowing a sly rooster was running just ahead but they were burdened by their slow masters. Watching groups of 5-10 birds flushing just out of range every few minutes and only flying to the other edge of their fortress, some hundred or more by my estimates. After more than an hour of this we decided to push through this jungle of fire weed (or whatever it was) to the other edge where we moved all those birds to only to have the exact scenario play out again. Those birds kicked our ass today! Moving hundreds of birds and never having a shot is frustrating to say the least but being in a beautiful place with a dog that will give his all all day never gets old. Those roosters won today... but we'll be back, someday.:cheers:
Your experience mimics mine there except you were hunting pheasants and I was jumping them while hunting ducks. I think the only solution is to get all the kids from the orphanage, promise them a day out with lunch and each a $20 bill if they'd run through that stuff toward you. Getting all the dogs out of the pound and turning them loose there would help too. Short of that it can be a very frustrating place indeed.
Since everyone had told me that pheasants don't like water and won't run through it
That's funny. When there actually were pheasants on the wild life areas my friends and I never hunted dry ground. We'd get in the water at 8 AM and not leave until we were through hunting for the day. The only time we were on dry ground was walking from one pond to another and when we ate lunch.
Some guys wore hip boots but I waded wet. My socks would get bunched up over time from walking in the water and jam my toes up causing me to get a bruise under the nail and then lose the nail. The most I lost in one season was 7 toenails. It was so hard to get the boots off and then back on the next day one saturday I just kept them on and climbed into a big garbage bag and then got into my sleeping bag. Wore all the wet crap and slept like a baby. That was before cell phones and the internet of course so we were tougher then.
Seriously, pheasants love water. They will fly over tule patches in the middle of ponds and helicopter/flutter down and stand on bent over tules all day until sundown when they fly back out to dry ground. You had to wade out and look at every tule patch to be sure there wasn't a bird or birds in it.
They can swim like ducks and dive like them too. I've shot at least one pheasant that landed in a pond right in front of me and after it hit it disappeared never to be seen again with me looking right at it. The deepest water I can recall seeing them standing in was about knee deep when we flushed two hens out of sparse Japanese Millet. They had to have been partially supported by the millet but on the whole they were floating like ducks in the cover. I'll never forget it as it seemed so surprising.
After 10 AM on opening day if there was any pressure forget dry land and go to the water for the first two weeks at least. After the pressure drops off they can be found on dry ground.
That is all you can ask for once they hunker down in heavy cover.
It was a bit warmer where I hunted on Saturday (San Luis) and there were a lot fewer birds, but my experience was similar - older birds running round and round in the tules. I was hunting with a friend that has a older very experienced dog with a good nose and she was in the middle of the tules going in circles. Her tail was beating so fast and hitting the tules all the while, it sounded like someone playing a snare drum out there.
I got lucky and had a shot when the older dog displaced a younger bird to the edge of the tules and my younger dog picked up the trail. The two of them pinched the bird and I just happened to be in range when it happened. I crushed him and he fell...into a very thick tule patch. Now for the real fun.
I thought I had marked him pretty well and pushed in straight line to where I thought he had fell. Neither of the dogs were able to mark the fall because they were in 8-foot high tules when I made the shot. I called the dogs to where I was and put them into the "dead bird" mode. They were so amped out from running after birds in the tules, they just started sprinting far and wide looking for a dead bird - everywhere but where I wanted them to look. After five harrowing minutes of them wearing themselves out, I finally got the older dog to calm down and look about where I thought the bird had fallen. 10 seconds later, bingo. The bird had fallen down a hole in the tallest most tangled bunch of tules I have ever seen. I would have never shot or found that bird if it had not been for the dogs.
I think Calisdad made the point in an earlier post that it didn't matter to him whether they were chasing wild birds - his satisfaction comes in the pursuit and the dog work. I totally agree. I have had a few days of getting skunked now, but we did have hens flush near me and roosters slip out and fly out of range those days, which left me winded and excited. In addition to the dog not knowing the pedigree of the bird, they also don't know the sex, so a hen flush backed by a solid trailing job is pretty satisfying, at least for me. The only I can think of to top that for me and my dog is for the hen to be a rooster and for me to make a clean kill.
Maybe it was a little misdirection on the part of my "mentors".
I like the part about sleeping in the plastic bag liner and losing toe nails. I sure do complain a lot more now than I used to in the 1990s.
I'll never forget the time three of us hatched what we thought was a brilliant plan - to cross a slough to an island surrounded by a deep channel at China Island. We brought our waders and dragged a float tube to the crossing and then went through a lot of hullaboo to get ourselves across. It included one of the guys throwing a boot across the canal...almost. The boot hit the drink and the guy on the other side sent his Lab after the boot, at which point the thrower's dog decided to hit the water and pick a fight with the other dog. The boot made some funny "glub glub" noises as it sank into the muddy water while the dogs snarled at each other in the water. I then had to run back to the truck to get a spare pair of boots for the guy short a boot.
After we finally got everyone across, I looked upstream and saw some guy wading diagonally across the channel, his gun held high up in the air and water up to his chest. As he emerged from the water I could see that he was just wearing regular pants, boots and a shirt. He was soaking wet, but it was so warm it didn't really matter. He just got out and started hunting. We all felt like a bunch of dumbasses and pansy asses, particularly since we didn't shoot a single bird on the island.
I haven't worried too much about getting wet in the Grasslands since then. As a matter of fact, I hunt in some ancient Cabela's breathable waders that I have torn and tattered and that leak like a sieve. The waders do a great job of protecting me from Star Thistle and Russian Thistle and keep the nice cool water against my skin after I wade across a slough. Even with the recent cool weather in the Grasslands I ended up soaked in sweat after running behind the dog. I think there is very little chance that I will ever end up being too cold while pheasant hunting in that part of California.
How many birds did you see at San Luis?
Seven total birds, in two flushes for about five hours of hunting.
My dog is still too inexperienced to deal with the birds running in heavy cover. I will continue to take her into the heavy cover, with little expectation of actually getting a rooster up in range.
I am happy to see anything at all this year, after last year's experience.
That's nice weather. Wait till you go there and and the wind blows 30 mph when it's that cold and it's snowing hard. I passed a single trailer semi on the divide road in a blowing south wind that was shoved sideways on the icy road. When I passed I watched him fishtail in my mirror for several cycles until I had to pay attention to what was going on with my vehicle. White outs with idiots blocking the roads because they think the truckers know what they're doing instead of realizing they're just sleeping in the middle of the road in their sleepers. Only later do you realize how exciting your trip was.
One year I drove south in the snowed out north bound lanes of I-5 for almost 20 miles. Can't do that anymore since they have put up concrete barriers to prevent such foolishness. Amazed I'm as old as I am.
Lots of footprints in the photo. You guys weren't the first ones, huh?
Too bad we can't replicate the habitat and water from Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge at the other refuges in Sacarmento Valley.
That's nice weather. Wait till you go there and and the wind blows 30 mph when it's that cold and it's snowing hard. I passed a single trailer semi on the divide road in a blowing south wind that was shoved sideways on the icy road. When I passed I watched him fishtail in my mirror for several cycles until I had to pay attention to what was going on with my vehicle. White outs with idiots blocking the roads because they think the truckers know what they're doing instead of realizing they're just sleeping in the middle of the road in their sleepers. Only later do you realize how exciting your trip was.
One year I drove south in the snowed out north bound lanes of I-5 for almost 20 miles. Can't do that anymore since they have put up concrete barriers to prevent such foolishness. Amazed I'm as old as I am.
Lots of footprints in the photo. You guys weren't the first ones, huh?