0'fer on pheasants

We hunted a few spots that were recommended to us by a PF contact out here but had no luck tonight with pheasants. Both dogs hundred very well with Jackson starting to quarter across all 3 of us as opposed to hunting only for Bill like he has wanted to do in past years. The experience he is gaining each day is noticeable and fun to watch him learn and progress. The only criticism that I have of him is that his owner failed to properly condition him, so there were quite a few times that he got tired and decided to put himself "at heel" and walk with Bill instead of hunting. In his defense, it was over 70° today (far from optimal weather) for hunting. Both dogs got birdy a couple times and Winnie had 1 point at 1 minute after the last legal shooting time, so (to be legal) we called her off of it and headed home. While that would have been very sporting of us, what really happened was the bird was in some REALLY thick brush and after pointing it 2-3 times in there over the course of about 5 minutes, they still couldn't get it to flush and we had to give up on it.

 Tomorrow we intend to hunt  pheasants farther to the west (in the Route 37 corridor) between the towns of Conde and Groton.  It will cause us more driving time, but there are higher concentrations of birds the further West of Lily that we go.

 We also scouted a couple more duck spots this afternoon and found another spot or 2, so we're starting to get more comfortable with our surroundings in that realm.

Both dogs are already happy to be home and comfy, as you can see...

Thank goodness for Teal

We hunted this morning from 6:45-11 on a Walk In Area next to a private residence. It was a narrow slough (20 yards across and a couple hundred yards long). The owner (Teresa) gave us permission to hunt inside their safety zone and to park in their yard. That will earn her a pack of whoopee pies later in the trip! Overall, we brought home 9 GW Teal, about half drakes and half hens. Those little suckers fly so fast there is was no chance to pick out only drakes. Dan was the big winner today, shooting 6 & I shot 3, officially, since it is a 6-bird limit per person. Hypothetically, with a limit of 12 between us it could have been possible for me to only have shot 2 and Dan to have shot 8 (adding up to 10 because we -hypothetically of course- could have both shot 1 of the birds.
Nothing was really decoying, so all of the shots were passing shots. That made for some tough shooting and Dan did well, connecting on 8 of 17 shots. I had a rougher go of it, connecting on 2 of 10. In a lesson on duck blind communication, Dad now knows that when we rapidly say "duck, duck, duck" it means get down so I don't shoot you - not "hey, there are some ducks..."


Mag was more excited (and not in a good way) than we can ever remember her being. This manifested itself with near constant whining and even a couple yips/barks after we shot the first double of the day. The whining was more annoying than harmful, but the barking had me pretty mad. On a good note, she was totally steady on the retriever stand and did a great job finding several birds that dropped into the cattails. She couldn't see the action very well, so most of her retrieves were blinds - although the longest one was about 50 yards. Overall, she was good, and her excitement for birds is probably more a commentary on how little I've trained her this year, and how few birds she's seen (even training birds) in the past 8 months...


We scouted a couple more spots for tomorrow/Monday duck hunting and have now eaten lunch. We're heading out in a couple minutes to look for the huge numbers of ducks we saw on Lake Lily last night then hit 2-3 pheasant spots in that same general area. Jackson will be teaming up with Winnie for pheasants tonight.

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...

Day 1 Duck Hunting Attempt

No ducks today. We hunted only from 7:45 to 9:30, then called it a day. Temps today are 65 degrees and there was not a cloud in the sky. It was the definition of a bluebird day... We had a fair number of ducks flying in our vicinity for the first hour of the day and had a couple small groups thinking about joining our fakes, but none made the fatal mistake. Dan did take 3 shots at some passing overhead (in a "why not" moment), but came up empty. This morning was a good intro for Dad - we wouldn't want him to expect a pile of birds every day! We spent the remainder of the am driving the area to scout and did find 2 good concentrations of ducks. One place is within a safety zone, but the homeowner gave us permission to hunt there - so that is our spot for tomorrow. The second promising spot will be likely be Sunday's spot.


Jax had the duty this morning and was a good boy although he didn't have much to do, other than sit quietly. Because we hadn't been able to scout the cover near our intended spot for this morning, we needed to pack in chairs, stools, layout blinds, and ghillie suits (to be prepared for whatever cover we did find).We used our 'decoy cart' to get all our stuff into the field this morning, so we were happy to have decided to bring it along.


We got back to the house around 2:15 and are eating lunch now. We're planning to hit 3-4 spots for pheasants this afternoon/evening that were recommended by a local Pheasants Forever contact that we made prior to the trip. Let's hope that Winnie & Mag have more retrieving asked of them than Jax did this morning!

Travel Complete

The final leg of our travels went smoothly and we made it into Lily, SD around 4:30pm. Upon our arrival, we got into the house, dropped the boat in the garage and headed out to scout the last 2+ hours for a good duck spot or two to get us started tomorrow morning. Given our abbreviated scouting time available tonight, we stayed close to the house and checked out some spots that we knew were open to the public. We found 2 large ponds that look promising. The 1st was holding hundreds of geese (Snow, Canada, and Speck) as well as a fair amount of ducks mixed in with them. We were confident that we could have a successful hunt there in the morning, but kept on with our scouting to try to find another spot for Saturday. About 15 minutes later, we came across another large pond North of Lily near Bristol that was not only holding ducks, but had a pocket of a dozen or more pintails plus several dozen Mallards - that will be our spot tomorrow. We are all REALLY tired and looking forward to some sleep.  All 3 dogs got a head start on us: Winnie is on my bed, Mag is on her dog bed, and Jax was quick to snag the couch...

Is this Heaven... No, It's Iowa

Our morning stop at the Field of Dreams movie site was great. Although we had to wait for the fog to burn off and then brave some cool temps and morning dew, it was more than worth the inconvenience. Dad was very surprised to wake up at a ball field (it had been conveniently his turn to sleep during that leg of the drive) and the dogs had a some good time to run around and stretch.


After breaking out the hidden cleats, gloves, balls, & bats, we enjoyed playing catch together on the field and then each taking some BP. Dan scored the big hit, sending  one of my expertly-thrown batting practice pitches deep into the left centerfield corn. Dad only slightly torqued his bad knee... I came away uninjured, though I do have to admit that my back is a little sore from over swinging on a few pitches.


We got back on the road around 9:45am, so we will get to Lily later than expected, but should hopefully have enough time to find a duck hunting spot for tomorrow morning. We should arrive around 5, drop the boat, and have 1-2 hours of light to scout.


Taking the Suburban is working out well. Our 'bed' in here is very comfortable, there is plenty of room for us, the dogs, and our gear. Everything is totally accessible and convenient. Let's hope that it is good for day-to-day usage as it has been on the drive out here. Our gas mileage has not been as good as hoped, but we've been driving 70 most of the way to make up time. If back it off to 65, we would be good...

Here we go!!

We got a late start from the house tonight and have just left our 1st travel stop in Columbus, OH. Unfortunately, we are already 6 minutes behind schedule! To remedy this, we will increase our driving speed from 70mph to 71 mph for the next 6 hours. Pshewww... Tragedy averted!! However, (for some odd reason) blogger has decided to stop keeping the app updated with iOS changes, so this is going to be a little more cumbersome this year, but we're trying to work around it. The latest weather reports tell us to expect unseasonably warm temperatures again this year, but we are still hoping for better results (for ducks) based on a stronger resident population in the area that we are hunting this year. 422 miles to our next stop in Knoxville, Illinois at 5:39am CST.

Trip Recap

Shooting RecDan Upland Hunting: 6 birds bagged on 12 attempts. Missed 3 "lay-ups", 1 fairly easy one, and 2 difficult shots. 2 of the birds bagged were on a covey of Hungarian partriDan Upland Hunting:

Hunting Recap:

Dan Upland Hunting:

16 birds bagged on 27 shells (59%), killing 16 of the 19 pheasants shot at (84%).

Bill Upland Hunting: 12 birds bagged on 18 shells (70%) - though 2 of those were taken by Maggie, which nicely inflates my numbers. A pure shooting percentage would be 10 birds on 18 shots (60%). I killed 10 of the 14 pheasants I shot at (71%).

This year presented different types of hunting scenarios (we were able to walk closer together with clear fields of vision much of the time) & different results than previous years. One way this manifested itself was that of our overall 21 pheasants, one-third of them were joint kills. In quickly reviewing a couple of the video clips, we noted that many of these joint kills occur under one second from the time the bird flushes until it starts to fall out of the sky, succumbing to simultaneous hits. I guess if you want to hunt with the Everly's, you have to be both fast and accurate (Rich...). We also noted that we hunted many less hours than in previous trips. Overall, for the nine days we hunted pheasants, we logged only a total of 19 hours in the field. This was due to a couple unique scenarios as a result of automotive issues combined with more miles to get to and from our hunting spots.

Dan Waterfowl Hunting: Much like last year, Dan's shooting percentage for waterfowl was dismal on the first day. Unfortunately, this year, the first day was also the only day of shooting. His official stats were one duck on seven shots (14%).

Bill Waterfowl Hunting: 2 ducks on 2 shots. What more can I say...

Dog Recap:

Our dogs are awesome.

They combined to flush 56 pheasants in gun range, 24 of which were roosters.

Winnie pointed 17 of those 27 roosters. Additionally, she pointed 14 hens. We noted a significant change in her trailing method, now having learned to trail at a fast pace which allowed her to catch up and re-point many of the running roosters - providing additional shooting opportunities for us. She also increased her range, routinely getting out to 100+ yards, but checking back in with us appropriately. During this time, she only bumped 1 bird that we can remember. Her marking of downed birds was excellent and her retrieving was certainly adequate, but Dan is still desirous of improvement.

Maggie's upland performance was again excellent as expected. She consistently hunted in range and found, trailed, and flushed any birds that were in front of her. The luck of the draw was that she did not have an abundance of action, getting only four flushes. While hunting in the same area as Winnie, she did a good job of recognizing when Winnie was on point and quickly moving in her direction to assist in trailing or flushing the bird, as needed. She had 2 honest-to-goodness points (which is a new thing for her) on and also saved me a shell by catching one on the ground on a different occasion.

On waterfowl, Mag didn't get any retrieves, but did a nice job in an area of concern for me heading into the trip, which was her steadiness. On a couple different occasions, we had birds close-by before shooting time and on another day we had Coot swimming in the decoys. She was good in all these situations. It was nice to see her get back to doing the right things, after having some issues last year.

Jackson had an excellent trip. His waterfowl hunting was brief but effective and he got lots of practice sitting and waiting while exhibiting good behavior on the other duck hunting days.

In the upland field, he continued to develop more confidence and ability to focus. We noticed that he quartered very nicely in front of me, but didn't do such a good job extending that to get over in front of Dan. This tells me that I need to work with him on hunting the entire gun line in training scenarios. He had lots of action for the week, getting a total of 16 flushes. Four of these came in a single event, along the Missouri River and seven others were today – when we had lots of action. His retrieving for the week was excellent, with the caveat that his steadiness was virtually nonexistent. In several scenarios, I contributed to this delinquency by allowing him to make the retrieve. This is definitely something for us to work on in the coming year. We again enjoyed observing his inconsistent attitude towards jumping up into the truck. Sometimes, he would leap in without hesitation while other times, he would balk repeatedly, as if he did not have the ability to make it.

Final Hunting Post

We left the house this morning & headed Eastward to hunt North of Alexandria, at the same spot where we saw many birds earlier in the trip. From our experience that first time, we knew that the water level was too shallow to be able to use decoys. This lead us to a very low effort hunt today, just walking in with our guns and chairs. We were surprised to find the water frozen when we arrived, although it didn't really make a difference. There were a few ducks nearby and a pair flew in front of us just before legal shooting time. Once we were legal, there was nothing anywhere close so we sat and talked for two hours, before calling it a morning and heading for the truck. Maggie was not very happy about the lack of work, considering she didn't get to retrieve a single duck on the trip.

After getting back to the truck and changing clothes, it was still before 10 AM (which is legal shooting time here for pheasants), so we drove an additional 25 minutes East before finding a spot to hunt. We ended up at two separate spots in an area called Tuschen Slough that were about a mile apart, between Spencer and Salem, SD. Winnie and Jackson were in the starting lineup for pheasants today. Winnie pointed and Dan shot one rooster at the first spot while Jackson hunted nicely with me and found hens on 4 separate occasions. It turned into good training, because he was not very steady on The last 2 flushes. Also of note, he really seemed to know what he was doing (as far as the hunting portion of the exercise) and was very focused during this time. He was working very well and took it upon himself to stay down in & hunt a slough that was 15 yards across and 100 yards long without my direction or even having to get down in there with him. His work was very enjoyable to watch today.

At the second spot, we jointly shot a rooster out of the cattails. This was an interesting turn of events. We had both dogs at heel because we were walking around the lake to be able to begin the hunt with the wind in our face.  We were walking in a field just far enough away from the water to be outside the cattails. During this walk, Winnie stopped & froze on point, looking into the cattails. We sent Jackson in and 10 seconds later a rooster erupted. The rooster's crash landing site can be seen below. The skidmark is where Jackson came to an abrupt stop as he made the retrieve. Jax was down in the cattails so I couldn't see exactly what he did, but he was not steady on this bird either...

As we continued to hunt the cattails along the edge, there were other hunters on the opposite side of the lake that shot and missed a rooster & we watched it fly into the cover a couple hundred yards in front of us. We proceeded to hunt up to that area, where Winnie pointed the bird solidly. Dan kicked around in front of her and then released her from point to trail the bird and she refused – insisting it was there. It turned out that she was right and Dan was eventually able to dislodge it from the thick grass it had buried itself under and had to chase it for about 10 yards to get it airborne (I do have this on video and will be happy to share it with anyone who wants to see it, once I have time to get the editing done). After skidding to a stop, he made a good shot and dropped the bird with a single shot.

We cleaned the birds and changed clothes and are now just out of South Dakota, having just crossed the border into Iowa. After we stop and get something to eat, we plan to tally up the week's statistics and will post a summary.

Friday Pheasants

This afternoon we hunted pheasants at three different spots for a total of 3.5 hours. The first hour was spent at a Fame Production Area about 10 miles East of the Hoover GPA that we have been to several times - which was also our second stop. The first place was a spot we had scouted earlier in the week and thought could be good, but had not hunted it yet. Upon seeing it again, we agreed that it looked good. The problem was, it produced only one hen.

At the Hoover GPA, we spent two hours and did a couple miles of walking. Winnie and Mag continued their excellent work and we bagged one rooster off a nice point from Winnie at the end of our time there. She also made a good retrieve of about 60 yards. We both fired simultaneously at the bird, so we're not sure who gets credit. In addition to that rooster, we also flushed three or four hens, one off a joint trail by both dogs that was probably around 500 yards in duration.

The last spot we went to today was the same spot where we finished the day yesterday. We had only 30 minutes there, but made the most of it, with Dan taking a rooster that Winnie again did a very nice job of marking and then trailing as a cripple.

We're getting gas now and then heading back to finish packing. Tomorrow, we are hunting ducks about an hour East of here and then will hunt pheasants in that area too, after changing clothes in the truck midmorning between ducks and pheasants. When we're done with our pheasant hunt, we'll head for home and have an hour head start...