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...