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.