I'm meeting two friends North of Minneapolis tomorrow night and we're going to chase ruffed grouse and woodcock (aka timber doodles, aka mudbats) for a few days. They can't arrive until tomorrow night but I have a little more free time. Originally I was planning on leaving last Friday and driving to Saskatchewan "on the way" to chase Huns for a couple of days but with the burglary, and then being in a drought I decided that could wait for another year. So instead I headed to Iowa, stayed with some great friends and caught up a bit, them drifted up to SW Minnesota to see if I could find some pheasants. The season opened Saturday, and I'd be hunting public access ground so my expectations were tempered.
This morning I called a friend that farms in Northern Iowa and he warned me that almost all the crops were still up due to recent rains that have kept combines out of the field. He said reports from the opener were less than stellar...
After grabbing a WIA map at Wally World I hit the road towards some tiny little unknown dots on a map.
Sure enough crops are up everywhere but I found some nice patches of grass just before lunch and put dogs on the ground.
Walk In land, private ground leased for public access is a Godsend in my opinion.
In the first field we found 6 pheasants but only one rooster. ...and he was such a baby rooster they he didn't have all his colors and I couldn't ID him for certain.
The second field didn't look as good and a short walk yielded only a couple of whitetails. Then the third field looked great. Grass and thickets with soybeans on both sides. Sure enough, first thicket and the dogs lock down. A cackle, and I see a rooster pop out the end. BOOM, BOOM, and my first rooster of '17 is in the bag. ...and he might be the youngest rooster I've ever killed. And he's my first ever Minnesota pheasant.
We worked up a few more birds but with only one shooter, and some big grassy thickets the birds kept slipping out the opposite side. But we were consistently finding roosters, if only a few.
One more thicket, I splashed through a "deeper than it appeared" creek in order to chase a birdy dog and was rewarded 50 yards later as a bird rocketed into the sky. One trigger pull and my 2 bird limit was finished.
After that I drove around scouting and hoping to bump into some Partridge, but no dice. Still, no matter where you chase birds the sunset always makes it worth the trip.
This morning I called a friend that farms in Northern Iowa and he warned me that almost all the crops were still up due to recent rains that have kept combines out of the field. He said reports from the opener were less than stellar...
After grabbing a WIA map at Wally World I hit the road towards some tiny little unknown dots on a map.
Sure enough crops are up everywhere but I found some nice patches of grass just before lunch and put dogs on the ground.
Walk In land, private ground leased for public access is a Godsend in my opinion.
In the first field we found 6 pheasants but only one rooster. ...and he was such a baby rooster they he didn't have all his colors and I couldn't ID him for certain.
The second field didn't look as good and a short walk yielded only a couple of whitetails. Then the third field looked great. Grass and thickets with soybeans on both sides. Sure enough, first thicket and the dogs lock down. A cackle, and I see a rooster pop out the end. BOOM, BOOM, and my first rooster of '17 is in the bag. ...and he might be the youngest rooster I've ever killed. And he's my first ever Minnesota pheasant.
We worked up a few more birds but with only one shooter, and some big grassy thickets the birds kept slipping out the opposite side. But we were consistently finding roosters, if only a few.
One more thicket, I splashed through a "deeper than it appeared" creek in order to chase a birdy dog and was rewarded 50 yards later as a bird rocketed into the sky. One trigger pull and my 2 bird limit was finished.
After that I drove around scouting and hoping to bump into some Partridge, but no dice. Still, no matter where you chase birds the sunset always makes it worth the trip.
