This evening we hunted the Casanova GPA SW of
Aberdeen from 3 until 5:40. Jackson & Winnie were both afield during
that time. We put up around a dozen hens within shooting range & 1
rooster at that distance. We also had 1 rooster flush slightly out of range
that we shot at anyway.
The rooster that we killed was another display of
teamwork with Winnie pointing & trailing it, then Jackson picking up
the trail and going a little faster than Winnie & ultimately flushing the
bird. I promptly & cleanly folded the bird with one nice shot at about 40
yards! It took me a little while to get my feet set and get on the bird, which
is why it got out so far. I was lucky that from Dan's angle he couldn't
identify if it was a rooster or hen - so he held his fire. Under normal
circumstances, with the amount of time it took me to pull the trigger on that
bird, Dan would have usually fired at least twice...
The out of range flush was Jackson's fault, as he was
ranging too far and put up a rooster at about 50 yards. I hit it with
the first barrel but not enough to bring it down and missed cleanly on my second. Dan
fired 1 shot to try and help since it had been clearly hit already, but also came up empty.
Through the evening, Winnie registered many points.
Some were on hens that held to be flushed & many others were birds that decided to run. For a
large portion of the night, we were hunting a large field of 5' tall tumble
weed plants that made it very easy for the birds to run, a little tougher for
the dogs to get through, and really difficult for humans to try to keep up with
the dogs who were trailing the pheasants.
Since we got most things packed during the late morning/middle of the day, we had only about an hour of work to do tonight when we got home. At this point, we are 98% packed. We're hunting a point tomorrow morning and not setting decoys, as we expect it to be purely a pass shooting spot. This also helps us move quicker tomorrow and get on the road a little earlier to head home. After ducks in the am, we'll stop at the house to pick up the boat and do a last walk-through. We'll then drive South toward home & stop just before Sioux Falls, SD to hunt pheasants. That will get us moving in the right direction & still hope to be able to put in a few more hours going after some roosters.
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