The sites of Underwood North Dakota

Throughout the week, we snapped a few pictures of the major attractions in the city of Underwood.

As you can see from the welcome sign, there is a golf course very close, so next year we plan to leave enough room in the truck so we can bring our clubs too!!

There were really only two places the eat in town: Snyder's cafe' and Grimsley's Fuel and Exhaust (where we actually did get pizza twice through the week).

We didn't get a picture of both of them, but here is one of the two bars in town, which happens to be co-located with the senior citizen center.

As you can tell from the pictures, the people here seem to be very good at multitasking. My favorite example of this can be seen in the picture of the chiropractic center / nail salon.

You may also notice the grain processing plant right in the middle of Main Street. This was across the parking lot from our hotel and had active train tracks that ran beside it for loading.

That pretty much wraps off all of the sites and attractions of Underwood, North Dakota.

Tired hunters

Here's a picture I took last night after we finished packing. It looks like the three dogs have Bill surrounded, making sure that he cannot get up to take them hunting, at least for a few more hours.

Yesterdays goose hunt

As you can see from the pictures below, our goose hunt was successful. While it didn't turn out exactly how we had hoped, with thousands of geese landing directly on top of us, we did have thousands of geese fly directly over us at low altitude and land approximately 300 yards from us. It was a very cool site to see. Between the two of us we were able to kill two lesser Canada Geese and one Specklebelly Goose. We could have killed more, but we only brought 10 shells with us - so we killed our 3 geese and called it a day since we knew we had a long night of packing ahead of us.

We were mostly packed by 11:30 PM. When we woke up to hunt pheasants today, winds were over 25 mph again which was not good conditions for pheasant hunting, as we learned the first two days here. So, we finished up our packing and hit the road to head back home.

We expect to hit Minneapolis around 7:30 PM, where we will be visiting with Craig Peterson and his wife Mary. Our ETA in Carmichaels is approximately 1 PM Friday. We are looking forward to hunting Pennsylvania state game lands Saturday morning and seeing how our dogs work East Coast pheasants.

Last big day

Well, duck hunting was a bust today. We were in early and set up (same spot as yesterday), and had about 50 ducks land on the pond in front of us out of range. One came into range and we shot and killed it. With no ducks in the air, we saw the writing on the wall and shut it down at 8:45.

We switched Gunner for Win and Mag and were pheasant hunting by 10:30. We flushed 7 today, 3 hens and 4 roosters. Too bad we came home with nothing. Of the roosters, 2 were behind trees or other obstacles that blocked our shot, Bill flat out missed a gimme that Mag had trailed for about 200yds, and the 4th flushed just out if range. Despite no kills, it was a good day.

I write this post from a cornfield, waiting for Dan's geese to arrive... We watched them hit this spot at 9:30am, so we are hopeful they will return tonight. If so, it will be a sight not soon forgotten!

Plan is to pack tonight, hunt pheasant tomorrow am, then hit the road around lunchtime.

Rainy pheasant hunt

Dan here... It's been 40° and raining all day. We started hunting pheasants at 12:30. We flushed, and I shot a rooster two minutes into the hunt. Two minutes later, Mag flushed a hen and a rooster out of range. We hunted for 2 1/2 hours more in the rain and saw no more pheasants. Winnie flushed and I made three solid hits on something Other Than a Pheasant. I will explain whenever I see any of you in person. Please remember to ask me, as this is an interesting story. This is the picture of some of the cover we hunted today. Specifically, this is where I shot the "Other Than Pheasant". The GPS totals for today's pheasant hunt were: Winnie 10.04 miles covered, Maggie 9.12 miles covered. There were several large expanses we had to cross to get from hunting spot to hunting spot, which is what inflated their miles on today's hunt. However, that means that we walked more today than other days, though the walking was a little easier at times.

It's 3:04 PM and we are now heading back to the hotel to change clothes one more time. We're both very tired, but we figure that we didn't drive 1500 miles to sit on a couch in a hotel. So, instead we will head out for what hope we hope to be an awesome goose hunt.

Most ducks I've ever seen

Well, I'm not sure what to say about our hunt today. The day started-out with about 700 Ducks (not exaggerating) land on the pond directly in front of us before legal shooting time. Once we were allowed to shoot, we probably shouldn't have since we couldn't hit anything all day long. After 2 1/2 hours of shooting, you might assume that we got our limits; However, we only came home with nine ducks. We finally ran out of shells. When I say ran out, I mean we shot 65 shells.

After about halfway through this fiasco, our shooting was so bad that Gunner stopped being irritated with us for missing, and didn't even bother to pay attention when we shot.

I guess our wives are again absolutely right in that we need to practice our shooting. To that end, we both agree that we will shoot lots more sporting clays over the next year.

While we are both immensely embarrassed at our shooting performance, even that cannot overshadow the spectacle that we were lucky enough to witness. It is truly hard to describe what we saw with accuracy. I hope the pictures will do it a little bit of justice.

Gunner did a very good job today, staying steady through all of the morning activity of ducks landing when we couldn't shoot. He also remained steady at the beginning of the morning as we were shooting and missing, then it became really easy for him to stay steady because he was operating under the assumption that we would miss every shot! He had to pick up a couple very long cripples, and one long blind through open water, but everything else were fairly simple retrieves for him.

We stopped to thank the landowner and ask permission to hunt there again tomorrow, and it was granted. We are now on our way back to the hotel to pick up Winnie and Maggie and continue North to the new pheasant grounds we scouted yesterday. We are hoping to be back to this area with enough time left for a goose hunt this evening, but I'm not sure that is going to materialize.

After skipping dinner last night because we were both too tired to eat, I am really looking forward to eating a sandwich in the truck while we drive to the pheasant hunting location.

PS- In other news, the brakes on the truck are again working properly. My thumb is painful but I'm still in stable condition.

So far on this trip our occupations have included: hunter, mechanic, doctor, dog trainer, salesman (schmoozing landowners to get permission to hunt) chef, and pack mules (waterfowl hunting requires one to carry a lot of gear).

Evening scouting and tomorrow's plan

Scouting was very productive, even though it was a bit abbreviated. We found several spots, all in close proximity to one another that looked good. We also watched several roosters running around this area, so that's a good sign... The dogs went for the ride with us and they saw them too. Winnie pointed one from the front seat of the truck - see picture below!

Tomorrow, we're going to hunt ducks first, at the pond where there were several hundred sitting today. After we limit there, we'll change to pheasant clothes and go kill 3 roosters each. Once that is done, we are going to do a layout hunt for Canada Geese in a field where we have observed them landing late afternoon/evening the last 2 days.

Now it is time to try our duck a'la orange and then hit the sack!

Wish us luck!

PS - Having an issue with the brakes on the truck, so let's hope it's nothing serious. We checked the fluid reservoir tonight and it was empty. We added 2 bottles of brake fluid and checked visually for leaks and found none, so we'll keep a close eye on it for the next 2 days - before the trip home...

I'm not a doctor, but I did stay at a Holliday Inn express...

It's a good thing we have a nurse for a mother and that I was pre-med 2 semesters.
We also now know that we should leave the cooking to the professionals - Lori and Jennifer!

While cutting up oranges, apples, onion for our duck dinner, Dan sliced his thumb pretty bad. Unfortunately, it was at the tip of the thumb, so it can't be stitched - so it was Dr. Bill to the rescue. Thankfully, we were well-prepared with several first aid kits and had enough supplies to get it handled. I attached a couple pics that I took while the action was happening - multi-tasking at it's finest!

With the combination of direct pressure, military coagulant, athletic tape, and crazy glue - Dan is back in action!

Now that we're over this bump in the road, we are off to do some scouting.

Probably no additional posts for tonight, but I will be sure to check for comments later.

After scouting, we are looking forward to watching Romney wipe the floor with Obama, then we'll head to bed.

After seeing the ducks on the pond (and gaining permission) that we posted earlier, we are deciding if we want to hunt ducks or pheasants first tomorrow. We'll see...

Monday's duck hunt

Dan, Bill and gunner hunted a new spot for ducks today. We hunted from 8 to 11 and killed five ducks. One hen Pintail, one Shoveler, and three Gadwall. We are heading out to scout for pheasants this afternoon since we are giving the dogs a break. Let's hope our pheasant scouting pays off and we can put up enough roosters tomorrow to get our limits.

Here is a picture of the spot we plan to hunt tomorrow for ducks. The picture quality isn't the greatest because it was taken with the phone from 500 yards away. With that being said, we estimate 500+ ducks to be resting on the water. Every speck you see on the water is a duck. We looked at them through the spotting scope, and identified them as Mallards, Gadwall, and Wigeon. There is limited vegetation around the edge of the pond, so we expect hiding will be a problem. We have now realized that before next years trip, we need our wives to make us ghillie suits.

Sunday roosters!

After getting some advice about hunting the thick stuff, coupled with some intel from the landowner where we hunted ducks this morning, we did better this afternoon. Overall we found 5 roosters and 6 hens. However, the hunting was HARD. We covered about the same amount of ground as previous days, but 80% of it was in cattails, other similar high stuff, and phragmites that was about 9 feet tall. To say that it was tough on the dogs and on us is the biggest understatement of the year!

Winnie and Gunner hunted for 2.5 hours and then we switched Gunner for Mag because Gunner was totally tired after crashing thru cattails and thick stuff for 2 hours. Winnie and Mag hunted together for about 2 more hours. All 3 hunted superbly. Gunner registered 2 beautiful points, producing 1 bird - a hen. We are guessing that on the other point, the bird ran out and they just didn't find it because I've never seen him hold a point that long and NOT produce a bird... Other than that, he found and flushed a rooster in the cattails that I shot and Winnie made a nice retrieve, because he couldn't see it because the cattails were too high...

Winnie had a several good points on hens and 2 on roosters. On the first of the 2 roosters she pointed, she found and pointed it, then trailed the rooster for about 75 yards as it ran, was slowing to reset and point again when it flushed. It was a 25 yard shot for Dan - that he missed... The other point was excellent too. She was in the middle of phragmites and we heard her beeper go off, and then again, and then again, and then again... Finally a bird holding tight! Dan charged in and flushed it, and I shot it for Winnie to retrieve - which she did. Mag stayed steady while I shot and she honored while Winnie retrieved.

We had a passing rooster fly low enough to take a shot at, and we both missed - mostly me missing and Dan firing to back me up... A few minutes later, Dan flushed another rooster underfoot (independent of the dogs) and promptly missed that one too. At that point, he was getting (understandably) frustrated...

We concluded the day by stalking and killing a duck on the slough as we headed back to the truck. Mag was happy to swim across it to make the retrieve.

I included a few pictures here that I hope can do justice to the cover we were in today. It was enough to make even Dan decide that we are going to NOT hunt pheasants tomorrow and let the dogs (and our own legs) rest. We'll hunt ducks tomorrow morning and spend the afternoon scouting for some new pheasant spots for Tu-Wed-Thur. We're planning to hunt pheasants in the morning on Tuesday (and ducks in the afternoon) to maybe give us a better chance on the pheasants.

After such an exhausting afternoon, we were too tired to make dinner, so we splurged and  treated ourselves to a fancy dinner - takeout pizza from the gas station next to the hotel. It was really good!

Here's some background info on these pictures: The top one is the cover where Winnie pointed and held the rooster that I shot. She was in the middle of the tall stuff (phragmites). The cattails to the right were as tall as Dan.
The second pic is Mag running in front of some grasses that were not nearly as tall, but were super thick. We went through a good bit of this stuff, and all of it was really hard for us to walk through. No wonder the dogs are all so tired!
I twisted my ankle 2x (which has been about the daily norm) and fell down 3 or 4 times (which has also been the norm). It's just really tough going out here!!!
The last picture - well, can you look at it and tell us "what's wrong with this picture", or at least - what doesn't make sense?