Tough Night for Pheasants

This evening we hunted the last 3 hours of daylight about 20 miles West of Lily along the route 37 corridor between Groton and Conde, SD. Both Winnie & Maggie hunted well all the time, but we are coming home with only one rooster. That bird flushed just before the end of shooting time and about 10 yards in front of us while both dogs were birdy & working up to it. Dan dropped it with his second shot & Winnie made a nice retrieve in a stand of heavy cat tails.

Maggie found & flushed two hens earlier in the evening (both well within shooting range) but that doesn't help us put meat on the table! There was a considerable amount of time during our hunt this evening that one or both dogs were very birdy & trailing sent hard. It made for an exciting hunt, but it didn't produce the results we were looking for.
We are getting pretty frustrated with the lack of roosters. Not sure what we need to do differently (if anything), but we hope to be able to have better results to post over the next few days...

Tomorrow we are planning to hunt ducks at the place we shot the 9 GW Teal on Saturday and then heading back to the Aberdeen area for pheasants.

Hope everybody is enjoying watching the election returns. We are torn between getting to sleep & wanting to watch... I think we're all going to be very tired when our alarms go off at 4:15 tomorrow.