SD Pheasant Hunt Cont.

I arrived back in Washington, IN Saturday evening after dropping Wayne and Diane off in West Lafayette. All told, it was a 15 hour trip. Fortunately, for the last 3 hours, the Purdue/Indiana football game was on the radio and the good guys won.

We hunted 6 days. I brought home the maximum birds allowed - 15. As previously mentioned, this was a good year for S.D. pheasants. But, when the corn is all harvested, the hunting will be much better. I'll share a couple of stories.

One day we took a road trip. Not that there were necessarily more pheasants where we went - just something different and an opportunity to see some different country. Ed, his friend, Al,Wayne and me drove northwest to the Gannvalley area - country where Ed and Al had hunted on previous occasions. There were a lot of pheasants. Although we shot several birds it was obvious that late afternoon was going to be the time to hunt because they were in the unharvested corn and would be moving to the ditches and CRP acres. Unfortunately, we had to head back so that Ed could attend the wake of a family friend. Wayne even shot a pheasant in a cemetery - must have meant to be! Ask him about it sometime.

We also received an offer from a local farmer that saved the very last of several short rows of corn for us to walk through. As he was finishing up, the pheasants kept flying back into the standing corn. We bagged 3 birds as they busted out the end when we walked through. The same farmer had a slough in the middle of a bean field that we noticed several birds flying into. As we walked through the slough 20-25 birds flushed. There was a lot of shooting but only a couple of birds down. All of this was a fitting end to a great day.

I also mentioned in the previous post about the splendid dog work. Cork performed well. A dog is a must. I'm sure that we would have lost 50% of the birds if not for the dogs. Cork made some unbelievable retrieves of dead and running birds, one time tracking and chasing one through a cattail slough with 12-18 inches of water/ice for over 10 minutes. Cork is a Pointing Lab and he made several nice points over pheasants. Even if he does not point, I can tell when he is tracking a bird about to flush.

S.D. allows what is called road hunting. Hunters are allowed to have a shotgun ready to load in their vehicle. When driving down the road, if you see a pheasant in the right-of-way, you can jump out and shoot it. Several birds met their fate in this fashion as we drove from field to field. I label these birds as the dumb ones - and I got a real dumb one the last day of hunting - having to chase it down the road and through a ditch to get it to fly.

Here are a few more pictures taken the last two days of hunting:






This is the dumb bird and the last one of this hunt.