2017 Trip Recap - Final Post

2017 Trip Recap / Stats:
Lily, SD - Chamberlain, SD - Storm Lake, IA

• We hunted ducks for a total of 12 hours and killed 16 ducks.
• We hunted pheasants in Chamberlain for 8 hours (& spent another 8 driving to find hunting spots) & killed 1 pheasant.
• We hunted for 9 hours 15 min in Storm Lake, IA & killed 11 pheasants.

Individual shooting totals for the trip were:

Dan:

Ducks: 27 shots, 10.5 ducks

Pheasants: 16 shots, 8 phez

Total: 43 shots, 18.5 birds (2.32 shots/bird - 43%)

Bill:

Ducks: 28 shots, 6.5 ducks

Pheasants: 9 shots, 5 phez

Total: 37 shots, 11.5 birds (3.2 shots/bird - 31%)

Dad:

0 shots, 0 kills, 1 point...

General thoughts: This trip has been by far the coldest we have taken since the December 2009 trip to Missouri. We now know the potential of Iowa for a future pheasant trip & this year solidified our thoughts that Lily is not the right place for duck hunting for us (combination of too much 'big' water & lack of ability to gain permission to hunt small potholes that were on private property). We're not sure where that leaves us for the future - but we have 12 months to figure that out. Both dogs hunted well & performed as expected. We missed Maggie, but found that the trip is very doable with 2 dogs... We all agree that we did a good job of making the best of the situations we were dealt (icy weather, poor SD pheasant hunting). We also feel like this was the first trip where our duck & pheasant results were comparable - OK for both, with some good days & some bad days for each. We successfully executed our pact to not get into a verbal altercation with one another this year... That makes it the first trip in 5 years! We seem to think that compartmentalizing the duck & pheasant hunting (vs. doing both every day) makes for a more restful, less hectic trip - but so would finding a central spot that good duck & pheasant hunting both nearby - reducing daily driving miles & scouting miles (after the first year). Maybe somewhere in NW Iowa is that magical place???

Final Hunting Day

We hunted SSE of Storm Lake today at 3 separate spots & finished the day with 3 birds. Each of us got 1 & Dan hit another that we weren't able to recover. Weather was a balmy (in comparison with yesterday) 36 degrees with light wind.
All 4 dogs were tired & we needed to pack to return home, so we didn't start our hunt until 11. All the spots we hit today were grassland fields with some wetland cover, nearby to harvested cornfields. After an hour, Lance had 1 bird & we moved on to another spot. That spot produced a couple hen flushes for us & a rooster that lost a few feathers to Lance's gun, but kept on flying. The final spot was a recommendation of a local passerby who talked to Dan. It produced 1 rooster flush event, but that was 5-6 roosters all getting up together! Winnie found them and held a great point. Jax moved up to join her, momentarily pointing too, then moving in to flush & start quite a melee'. I shot & killed 1 & missed another with my second barrel. Dan shot at the same bird I killed (just after I did), nailed a second bird, & then crippled a third bird. Jax retrieved my bird, Winnie retrieved Dan's killed bird, and all 3 dogs (Lance was hunting Sarge) tried to recover the wounded bird. We saw it running & Winnie was within a foot of it at one point, but it escaped into the thick grass/cattails never to be found. We hunted for another hour or so, flushing a few more hens, but no more roosters. We concluded the hunting around 3:30, all sufficiently tired. This was a good way to conclude our Iowa hunting - I'm sure we won't soon forget a 6-rooster flush!

Iowa Limits - Friday, Nov. 10

We finished our hunt today at 4:30pm, with 9 birds. Dan finished with 4, Bill with 2, and Lance with 3. I cleanly killed Jax's 2nd bird flushed, redeeming myself from the earlier mentioned miss. However, I  then failed to be ready when 3 roosters flushed all from the same spot (each following the one before it). I shot at the 2nd (missed cleanly) & then watched the 3rd to mark the landing. Jax & I hunted over to where he flushed it & I wounded it, landing it on the other side of the river. Dad saw where it went down, marked the spot and registered his first point of the trip. Dan directed Winnie to the area, where she also pointed it & retrieved it to Dan, after he put a shot in it to finish it. That's teamwork!

Overall for the day, Dan bagged 4 birds on 6 shots & also finished my cripple with a shot as it tried to flush a final time. I fired 4 shots and killed 1 bird and crippled a second one. Although we didn't hunt together at all (Dan & Dad were on the other side of the river from me), Dan reports that Winnie hunted very well & retrieved superbly, although her bird handling was a little rough (no explanation for that, as it is not typical)...

Friday Morning Pheasants

Today we hunted a couple pieces of public land outside Storm Lake - the first was a small stretch of the Maple River in Sac County & the second was a 3 mile stretch of the Raccoon River, just SE of Storm Lake. We started at 9 & took just under an hour for the first spot, bagging no birds. Dan took 1 marginal shot at a rooster & I had a close flush by Jax, but my swing on the bird abruptly met a tree, which ended any chance at a shot. Hunting along the river bank is sometimes similar to grouse cover - small diameter/young trees and thick...

At the second spot, the setup of the hunting area, roads, & 3 mile stretch of river necessitated that someone drive the truck ahead each mile & block/wait - with the idea of switching jobs each mile & then having a ride to take Lance & his dogs back to his vehicle that was parked at the start of the hunt. I volunteered Jax & I to take the first turn driving up to wait. During their first mile, Dan & Lance each dropped a rooster & Winnie retrieved both of them. While waiting for them & hunting a little, Jax flushed a rooster < 20 yards from the truck & I missed it because I wasn't ready to shoot so close to the parking area! I write this at 12:45pm having just arrived at the 2nd mile waiting spot because Dan & Dad are walking the opposite side of the river with no way back across until the end of the 3 mile stretch. Lance offered to take a turn driving/waiting, but I volunteered to do it again - Jax is hunting ok, but also appears somewhat sluggish & could use a day of light duty... Also, it is 22 degrees with 16 mph wind (see pic below) & I don't mind sitting in the warm truck waiting for them instead of walking through the heavy cover in 8 degree wind chill weather (see 2nd pic)!

Iowa Hunting

Thursday, Nov. 9 - We left Chamberlain today a little after 10am, heading for Storm Lake, Iowa. Lance secured a hotel for us for the next 2 nights here. He has hunted 1 public spot in this area, as well as some private properties nearby. We don’t anticipate being able to hunt the private ground, but expect the public hunting to be significantly better than SD.

We arrived in time to hunt a Walk In Area located just NW of Aurelia, IA for a couple hours before dark. It contained a stretch of the Maple River, which is about 10 yards across & very windy - creating some excellent cover to hold roosters. Weather was 25 degrees with 10-15mph wind. In our 2+ hours we flushed 6-8 hens ( several off of nice points by Winnie) & 2 roosters in range. We also had another 4-6 roosters flush wild well ahead of us. Jackson produced both of the close-flushing roosters - 1 was a bird he intensely trailed 200+ yards through a CRP field (causing me & Dan to run to keep up with him) & the other came out of the heavy stuff along the river. Pictures below are pulled from the video of each of those flushes. For a change, I supported Jax well, killing each bird with a single shot - surprisingly shooting quicker than Dan on the first bird! You can see Jackson (orange vest) just to the right of where the rooster flushed, & Dan beyond that in the first pic below. Tomorrow, we plan to leave the hotel around 8am & hunt a different property with habitat similar to today's spot.

Wednesday 12 Hour Pheasant Hunt

We left the hotel at 6am, planning to drive an hour or so SSW to find cover to hunt Sharptails & Prairie Chickens starting at sunup while we also scouting for pheasants (10am is legal pheasant hunting start). Due to the spring/early summer drought here, many of the normal public access hunting properties were cut for emergency hay (for animal feed) this summer - leaving no cover for hunting. In addition to sparse cover to hunt, the pheasant population took a hard hit from the same drought. While some visiting hunters likely cancelled their trip here - many (like us) didn't. So, this puts us in a position where there is intense hunter competition for few places to hunt, & very few birds on those properties (due to the drought & the roosters that have been harvested so far this season).

The moral to this story is that we spent 12 hours pursuing birds; actually walking/hunting around 3.5 hours & killed no birds. I shot at 1 bird that was just about out of range & Dan shot at 2, in pretty much the same scenarios. The dogs (all of them) are hunting fine - there just aren't many roosters here. We flushed 20-30 hens in shooting range, just no roosters...

As we were discussing the wisdom of continuing to do this, Lance suggested/offered that we all go to Iowa, where he shot limits of roosters on Monday while stopping to visit a friend on his way to meet us. Since there are better opportunities to actually shoot a rooster there & it's on the way home anyway - why not!

Below is a picture of Winnie, Sarge, & Woody pointing/backing. Unfortunately, this point didn't produce a bird...

First Full Day of Pheasant

Wednesday, Nov 8 - Today's weather topped out around 30 and winds were 5-15mph. Overall, a really nice day to be pheasant hunting. We first went to a GPA about 35 min SSW of Chamberlain & hunted it from 10am-12:15pm. It had great cover, food plots, wetlands with cattails, and lots of hen pheasants. Overall, we flushed 30+ hens & 3 roosters. Dan shot 1 of them & Winnie trailed the very alive cripple until catching & retrieving it. The other rooster flushed wild just out of range in front of me & the 3rd one was in front of Dan, but he was obstructed by a tree & couldn't shoot.

We grabbed lunch to go at McDonalds in Chamberlain & met our friend (& Winnie's breeder) Lance Fargo at the hotel to make a plan for the afternoon hunt. In the afternoon, we checked-out 2 of the other spots the WCO noted for us - 1 of them was worthless (a drought here this summer caused many of the grasslands to be hayed for emergency animal feed), 1 looked 'ok'. We also stopped and hunted a 1/4 mile swath of roadside right-of-way along a sunflower field. Winnie had a beautiful point on a rooster that held perfectly until Dan flushed it. He them missed what he described as a "break-away layup". We proceeded on & hunted the 'ok' spot noted by the WCO (a WIA just NE of Presho) for the last hour of the day & put up around a half dozen hens & 1 rooster that was just out of gun range. We hunted Lance's 3 dogs, Winnie, & Jax all together. While all of the dogs are good, the combo of 4 pointers and a flusher made things a bit tough (keeping Jax in range). We also realized that Jax's whistle command for "Stop/Sit" is the same as Lance's dogs' command for "go"... We're figuring it out...

Change of Plans Monday

After we found that both our primary spot and secondary spot for duck hunting this morning were iced over (along with everything else in the county!), we decided to pack up & leave Lily. We were able to check into our hotel in Chamberlain a day early, so we decided that would be the best thing to do. Better to cut our losses & go to hunt something with a better chance of success... Since we were up at 4am, even after the 2:45 min it took to pack, we were still on the road by 9:45am.

We arrived in Chamberlain around 1:45, grabbed lunch at Pizza Hut & then headed over to talk to the SD Game & Fish Officer to ask some questions about the local upland hunting & some suggested places to hunt. The WCO there was very helpful & suggested around a half-dozen spots in the vicinity that he thought might be good. We then checked into the hotel, unpacked & got back out the door to hunt as fast as we could.

We got to the field (a 1/2 section Walk In Area - WIA) about 20 min SSW of Chamberlain. It was crisp and 31 degrees with 5 mph wind & about an inch of fresh snow on the ground. We hunted from 5:15-5:45 through a series of brushy draws that looked like they could/should hold birds. Winnie was VERY excited to get to finally hunt & Jax worked out the kinks, and did a nice job. We saw some hen pheasants flush wild a couple hundred yards ahead of us out of the shin-high grass, which was everywhere except the draws. The dogs also both got birdy once in the cover, but produced no bird.
Here are a couple pics of how they traveled from Lily to Chamberlain...

Video Post

Hopefully you are able to view these videos. If not, please leave comments so that I can upload them again in a different file format... Please excuse the low resolution, I had to do that to get them to upload. I'll be happy to show them to you in high-speed resolution in person - just ask when you see me!

Each of these 3 shows the highlights (or lowlights) of a day of hunting. They are generally self-explanatory & will hopefully add some visual cues to the activities described in earlier posts. Although we aren't able to capture all the action on camera, this will hopefully be enough to give you and idea of what's happening here.

Parental Warning: there are some instances of Adult Language - particularly after missed shots!

So-So Sunday

Today's hunting wasn't what we hoped it would be. We ended the morning around 11am, with 5 ducks. We were late getting set up, which cost us at least a few birds & as many as a bunch. Ice was a constant problem - causing some of our tardiness (some was just our negligence), continually icing-in our decoys, & preventing birds from landing within shooting range most of the time. With Teresa's slough being small-size water, it is prone to freezing quicker than large, open water (but that's what also makes it good hunting for decoying puddle ducks!). Temps were in the high 20's and the wind was light (5-10 mph).
We had a lot of birds trying to land with us as we set decoys & had more that did land in the decoys as we were working to get our hide set-up & guns loaded. By the time we were ready, it was 15 min after legal shooting time & we had scared all those birds away. Despite this, quite a few did come back a little later & generally decided to land about 75 yards up the bank from us. This made us decide to pick up and move there, as the factors visible in the daylight (like ice - which weren't apparent in the dark) let us know that we weren't going to get many birds to land directly in front of us. The exception to this was Dan's 1st bird (drake Gadwall) that he took cleanly with 1 shot.
After 20 min of changing spots, we were ready to hunt again. There were several other close-by pieces of open water & through the morning we took turns walking around them to jump ducks off those spots. A couple of those walks yielded jump shots, with Dan getting 2 more Gadwall on his walks & 1 Bluebill(?) that I jumped and sent his way while he stayed to guard our decoys. We didn't recover that one, since I had Jax with me & when we got back, the bird was barely alive but next to the ice shelf - so I didn't want to send him. The bird later dove and went under the ice, lost until things thaw... My 1 bird of the day was a drake Gadwall that decoyed-in while Dan was out returning the favor & flushing it my way. It was a clean, 1-shot kill that Jax easily picked up 25 yards away on the water. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera rolling & it surprised me, offering only a snap shot to kill it - so no video of that one...
As bird activity slowed & ice continued to build-up, we decided to call it a day. We're going to do a little scouting this afternoon to make a final decision on a spot for tomorrow morning. Ice is going to get worse, as today's high is 25 and overnight low tonight will be 18. The temps aren't at all uncomfortable, but the ice they are causing is a complicating factor that ranges from annoying to very irritating, to dangerous...

I've been able to get some video (why else would I have that ridiculous thing on my head?) & hope to upload something tonight.

Saturday Hunting

We hunted this morning at the Holmquist WPA. This is a large lake, but we saw several hundred birds yesterday tucked against the shoreline (getting out of the wind) & figured that they'd be there again today, since the wind direction was the same. We got some shooting from start time (6:45a) until around 9. It was a good morning for hunting, with temps around 30 with 15+ mph wind and very overcast skies. If we had shot better, it would have been more successful all the way around... As it turned out, we came home with 2 birds (1 Shoveler & 1 GW Teal). Bill shot those 2 birds on 3 shots (but claimed 0 ducks on the other 12 shells he expended!). Dan went 0 ducks on 7 shots on the morning: wounding 1 bird which quickly dove & resurfaced much too far to do anything about. Overall, we figure that we should have killed 7 or 8 birds. Dad was not feeling well this am, so he stayed at the house to try to get some rest & ensure that he's good to go for the remainder of the trip.
We left the decoys in the water (it's nice to be in a place you don't really have to worry about your stuff getting stolen...) & grabbed a quick lunch back at the house, returning with hopes of more action in the afternoon. That was not to be.
Upon returning & sitting there over an hour with nothing moving, we packed-up & moved to another spot a few miles away that has been holding birds. We flushed a hundred or more walking in, but none came back. Dan did shoot 1 Bluebill there, so the afternoon wasn't a total washout. At 5:15, we packed it up and headed home.  Jax made easy work of the retrieves today, but did have an issue of coming out of his hut in the morning (aka breaking) - so we did a little training when bird movement slowed down. He's sleeping soundly & I'm hoping he has enough stamina to last for all 8 hunting days of the trip! Below is a picture of him resting his head on a snow-covered rock this morning. Sometimes I question his decisions...
We're hunting tomorrow am at the same place we went yesterday afternoon. There were lots of birds there the 2x we drove by it today, so hopes are high. The short term forecast looks good, but temps will fall hard starting tomorrow night (Mon/Tue low teens overnight) - so we need to find some spots to hunt that won't be iced over. That will be our job for tomorrow afternoon...

Scouting Day & Some Hunting

We arrived in Lily at 4am today (Friday) & quickly unpacked to get out for a short early morning hunt. It was around 30 degrees and the water was a little frozen. We broke enough to make a small hole and placed our decoys in it. We shut that down after 40 minutes of no activity to have ample time to scout. We accomplished most of what we needed to for duck scouting & noticed that there was snow, clouds, & wind in the forecast for the late afternoon. Instead of heading back to the house to rest, regroup, and get ready for tomorrow, Dan & I went out for a low maintenance hunt (only 2 decoys) near Teresa's house (that we hunted last year). We had ducks on top of us for most of the hour + we hunted & had a great time. We totaled 8 ducks (6 Gadwall & 2 Shoveler) and Jax did a great job of battling ice, multiple mark retrieves, a couple blinds, and multiple cripples. We lost 2 of the birds to the ice - Jax chased 1 until it dove and went under the ice shelf, never to return & another that lay atop the ice, but was in a place neither Jax nor I could safely get it. A hawk here will have a nice meal tonight... We stopped hunting with 45 minutes until sunset to be able to get our work done and get a reasonable night of sleep.

We dried out our gear (it was snowing pretty hard - as you can see from the photo below), Dan fixed the wiring on the truck (so we hopefully won't have a dead battery in the am), and we got everything set for tomorrow mornings' duck hunting. Now, it's off to bed - since none of us has slept  in over 40 hours!

2017 Trip is Underway

We're traveling through flyover country as I write this initial post: mid-day Thursday, somewhere between Indy and Peoria. We got underway about 2 hours late for a host of reasons - mostly related to the truck battery having issues because of a faulty hook-up by the audio-visual installer of the new radio/CD/DVD/Backup Camera. With that handled (we hope), we're making good time and should still be just fine.
Our plan is to arrive in Lily, SD around 4am, unpack, and try to get in a short morning hunt - or maybe just experiment with breaking/cutting ice... After a quick hunt, we'll spend the day scouting to see what the next 4 days of duck hunting will have to offer.
On an unpleasant note, our dog power is lacking this year because Maggie had to stay home. She's been having some medical issues, that we hope are just a kidney infection - but without being sure, I couldn't take the chance on bringing her. Jackson's going to have to pick up the slack - especially the first 4 days!