Final Hunting Post

We left the house this morning & headed Eastward to hunt North of Alexandria, at the same spot where we saw many birds earlier in the trip. From our experience that first time, we knew that the water level was too shallow to be able to use decoys. This lead us to a very low effort hunt today, just walking in with our guns and chairs. We were surprised to find the water frozen when we arrived, although it didn't really make a difference. There were a few ducks nearby and a pair flew in front of us just before legal shooting time. Once we were legal, there was nothing anywhere close so we sat and talked for two hours, before calling it a morning and heading for the truck. Maggie was not very happy about the lack of work, considering she didn't get to retrieve a single duck on the trip.

After getting back to the truck and changing clothes, it was still before 10 AM (which is legal shooting time here for pheasants), so we drove an additional 25 minutes East before finding a spot to hunt. We ended up at two separate spots in an area called Tuschen Slough that were about a mile apart, between Spencer and Salem, SD. Winnie and Jackson were in the starting lineup for pheasants today. Winnie pointed and Dan shot one rooster at the first spot while Jackson hunted nicely with me and found hens on 4 separate occasions. It turned into good training, because he was not very steady on The last 2 flushes. Also of note, he really seemed to know what he was doing (as far as the hunting portion of the exercise) and was very focused during this time. He was working very well and took it upon himself to stay down in & hunt a slough that was 15 yards across and 100 yards long without my direction or even having to get down in there with him. His work was very enjoyable to watch today.

At the second spot, we jointly shot a rooster out of the cattails. This was an interesting turn of events. We had both dogs at heel because we were walking around the lake to be able to begin the hunt with the wind in our face.  We were walking in a field just far enough away from the water to be outside the cattails. During this walk, Winnie stopped & froze on point, looking into the cattails. We sent Jackson in and 10 seconds later a rooster erupted. The rooster's crash landing site can be seen below. The skidmark is where Jackson came to an abrupt stop as he made the retrieve. Jax was down in the cattails so I couldn't see exactly what he did, but he was not steady on this bird either...

As we continued to hunt the cattails along the edge, there were other hunters on the opposite side of the lake that shot and missed a rooster & we watched it fly into the cover a couple hundred yards in front of us. We proceeded to hunt up to that area, where Winnie pointed the bird solidly. Dan kicked around in front of her and then released her from point to trail the bird and she refused – insisting it was there. It turned out that she was right and Dan was eventually able to dislodge it from the thick grass it had buried itself under and had to chase it for about 10 yards to get it airborne (I do have this on video and will be happy to share it with anyone who wants to see it, once I have time to get the editing done). After skidding to a stop, he made a good shot and dropped the bird with a single shot.

We cleaned the birds and changed clothes and are now just out of South Dakota, having just crossed the border into Iowa. After we stop and get something to eat, we plan to tally up the week's statistics and will post a summary.