Pheasant Scunting & Hunting

For anyone that doesn't know what scunting it is, please refer to today's earlier post.

Through the late morning and afternoon today we checked out 5 spots that were all a few miles west of Plankinton. One looked promising enough for us to exit the truck and do a little scunting. Winnie and Mag hunted that grassy field like a couple professionals. Winnie was ranging out between 50 and 75 yards and covering a lot of ground while Mag quartered within easy shooting range between me & Dan, all with very minimal commands. After about 10 minutes they both got birdy and Winnie registered a beautiful point that produced a very lengthy trail (10 minutes of hard trailing by both dogs with another point by Winnie in the middle) that ultimately resulted in a flushed and shot rooster. 

We also flushed one hen (that Mag pointed-I have no idea why) and one additional rooster. We both missed long shots on the rooster - long shots because I had broken off to follow Winnie in a slightly different direction and Dan was supposed to be keeping an eye on Mag. He wasn't, and didn't notice her get birdy & flush the rooster & therefore was not in good position for the shot. After a total of 30 minutes, we were satisfied that this would be a good spot to hunt in the future so we packed up, got the dogs some water, and headed for the next place to investigate.

This afternoon (from 3:30–5:30) we hunted the Hoover GPA, 15 miles south-southeast of Chamberlain. It was one of our targeted locations for scunting and It turned out to be an excellent spot. After doing a quick recon from the truck, we decided to spend the rest of the day hunting the area. In total, we got four more roosters, and missed shots at two more. Both dogs continued their performance from earlier and were phenomenal. 

On two separate occasions, spaced over an hour apart, Winnie pointed and trailed with several stops to re-point and then continue to trail, eventually pinning a rooster for Dan to flush and shoot at overall distances (in both cases) easily greater than 700 yards. One thing that we noticed is that she has apparently learned about running birds and has begun trailing at a high rate of speed and is willing to break off her points when released and continue to trail. We are sure that she's learning because two separate times today while she was pointing, Dan released her from her point and even physically moved her off point and she refused to do so. On both occasions, there was a rooster in front of her. This tells us that she's learning the difference between the bird actually being there and a strong scent pocket from the bird very recently being there.

Similarly, but somewhat less spectacularly, Maggie trailed one rooster a couple hundred yards and eventually dug it out of some very thick grass under which it had buried itself. That made for an easy bird to clean and I won't have to worry about biting down on any pellets!

Overall, it was a warm, but great day. We thoroughly enjoyed it and shared several high-fives. Two of our five birds today were joint kills and one Mag got on her own.. For those of you keeping score at home, Bill fired four shots and dropped two birds. Dan fired 11 shots and dropped 4 birds.