Friday Pheasant Hunting

We broke the seal and finally have a bird in the bag! While we only got 1, it was a nice piece of teamwork by Mag & Winnie, and a good shot by me. Winnie initially pointed the bird - Mag heard Winnie's beeper screech and made a beeline for her - they both followed the trail of the running bird for probably 400 yards, including crossing a gravel road. Winnie ended up circling downwind of it (we're not sure if she did this on purpose or not) and pointed it again from ~15 yards away. Mag ran in and flushed it. Dan was closest to the action and promptly whiffed (although he claims he was looking directly into the sun and only pulled the trigger in the hope to hit the bird as a reward for the great job the dogs did). Luckily, the rooster was flying in my direction and offered about the easiest shot possible for me - a right to left crosser at about 15-20 yards. It folded cleanly and Mag sat on the flush/whistle. Unfortunately, Winnie didn't and I couldn't stop her before she got to the bird. After a little coaxing, Winnie picked it up and returned it to Dan.


We had 1 other pheasant opportunity at a CREP site, but the rooster (which we watched fly in and land 150 yards in front of us) flushed wild in front of the dogs and Dan took a long poke at it, and a second shot that probably would have been more like rifle range than shotgun range... Dad is enjoying himself and all good through day 1.


We only had boots on the ground for about 1.5 hours for pheasants tonight due to morning duck scouting running into the afternoon, our neighbor stopping to visit at lunchtime, & our landlord asking us to scout a spot for him to take us later in the trip. On a good note, we saw THOUSANDS of ducks flying over/around Lake Lily (about 4 miles West of the house). Over the next couple days, we are going to figure out how to hunt them...