Miss Bodet and Pheasants - Iowa, Minnesota & South Dakota

Miss Bodet, took 3-roosters in Iowa & 2 in Minnesota in the same day on public land. Then on another trip I knocked on doors in South Dakota and shot limits of pheasants for 6 days, without paying a fee. 

Bo was only a couple years old on these hunts.  

Transcript

Miss Bodet and Pheasants – Iowa, Minnesota & South Dakota    Season:3  Episode: 4 

I had been to this house a couple of times when there was a truck in the drive and TV talk from inside. At first I knocked politely. Then more aggressively. 
On my second stop I banged on his door. It felt rude, but still wasn’t enough to stir anyone inside.
I’d never met Carl, but his neighbor said he was hard of hearing. 
The third time I stopped, I banged on the door like a swat team. Carl came to the door smiling. 
Like his neighbor, Carl was very friendly and told me that I was only the second guy to ask for permission all season. He said he thought the cover was way too thick to hunt. Some guys had tried to hunt it two months ago, on opening day, but they didn’t last 30 minutes. He even tried once but the kochia was so thick he couldn’t push through it. 
I explained that I would likely be in the area for a few days and asked if I could hunt that long. He said to hunt it as much as I liked. And wondered if I had been there at daylight before. He said he wasn’t sure I could do very well, even if I could walk in there, because hundreds of birds poured out of the field at first light every morning. He said maybe even a thousand. He didn’t think there could be any pheasants left at 10:00 a.m.  

Now don’t be skipping over the next 20 minutes or you’ll be lost. My Dog Hunts isn’t like the other upland bird hunting podcasts. I’m here to tell my stories. Not to sell you gear that you don’t need to be a great upland bird hunter. And if any of you new listeners think I use the word “I” too much, you need to understand, “I” hunt alone so there’s no we or us in most of my stories. And I’m not hear to impress you with any number of birds I’ve killed. I’m here to convince you that you can likely experience better days of bird hunting than you’ve imagined if you just dedicate yourself to being a better bird hunter. 

Hello, I’m Randy Shepard and welcome to My Dog Hunts Podcast

I hadn’t seriously hunted pheasants in Iowa in a lot of years. My female black lab Bo was young and we were on our way to South Dakota. I made a late start and knew that we wouldn’t be hunting at my destination before noon the following day so decided to drive backroads through northern Iowa. I thought I could sacrifice a partial day in South Dakota to find a new place to hunt in Iowa.  
I stumbled onto a public area I’d never visited. It was a Federal Waterfowl refuge and the signage sucked. There was no way to tell what areas were open to hunting and what was not. There are several like that in Iowa. Plenty of “Waterfowl Refuge” signs but no “Open to hunting” or “Closed to Hunting”, like I see in other states. The sections I was looking at were strictly upland, holding no water. After circling the area, I stumbled on a headquarters, but there wasn’t anyone minding the front. I looked for brochures, none. Went back outside and searched the entry signage for a map or some designation but there wasn’t any. 
Back inside, I made enough commotion to cause alarm and a woman came to the front. She said everyone was on lunchbreak. I asked if any part of the refuge was open to upland bird hunting and she asked where I wanted to hunt. I said I’d like to decide where to hunt once I understood my options. I suggested that they must have a map. No, they didn’t. I asked her how a sportsman was to access their area without any indication of what was open or closed? She said that people stopped in the office. She agreed that they could do a better job of notification if they just had more funding.
Now this is pretty close to how the conversation transpired. I know I may sound like I was rude. But I still don’t understand how a public resource manned by six employees in a newly constructed, log, office complex, couldn’t find a few hundred bucks for a map on the front sign or even to print out a few dozen black & white, 8-1/2 x 11, site plans showing open/closed areas. But what bothered me most was that the office didn’t seem to care if anyone knew how to legally access it. 
As it turned out the corner that I initially wanted to hunt was open, and I returned with Bo. I really wasn’t expecting much, just a couple of pheasant flushes for Bo but a rooster would be nice. It was a small enough cover that it might have been overlooked by opening week hunters.
It was choppy hills with a shallow drainage on the back side that couldn’t be seen from the road. That’s where Bo got birdy. She flushed the hoped for couple of hens and then dashed for the back corner fence. That had to be the rooster, using the hens as a distraction. He must have felt clever. Bo was only in her second year but she had a lot of experience with pheasants. She had already understood that we weren’t shooting at drab hens and broke off at the flush, running down the fresh scent heading for the fence. 
She would dash off to the point where I was afraid of a wild flush and then backtrack and re-start. I think the rooster’s hesitation was due to his heading for a bare, picked bean field. He was going to have to fly. A startled cackle would have added a lot to his flush but instead he tried to be stealthy. Flushing low and quiet, trying to make it around the backside of a rise. I was expecting him to flush on the other side of Bo and barely caught the flash of feathers out of the corner of my eye. I just caught up with him as he disappeared and I saw his tail flip up at my shot. I knew this retrieve was going test Bo as she didn’t see any of the action. 
I ran to the fall and BO being a puppy, ran to cut me off like she would have, even if I hadn’t shot. 
It’s really hard for me to not wade into the scene when I know a bird’s not dead. Instead, I stand back and watch the periphery of the fall site, particularly for weed and grass movement. Still being young, Bo hadn’t perfected her dead bird and cripple hunting skills, but she’d only lost two roosters. One in South Dakota that fell in a beaver pond and dove under water and another in North Dakota that I could see running several hundred yards ahead of her down a picked corn row. Bo was only 8 months old on both of those roosters and hadn’t yet learned that unlike training dummies, birds weren’t always right where they fell. You may have noticed that young dogs don’t always fully trust their nose and will break off scent and return to the fall, because that’s where the bird is supposed to be. Or….maybe that’s just my excuse for my pups.
I needn’t have been concerned. Bo was excitedly prancing like a mousing fox, ears erect and gleeful expression, honing in on the slight rustling the rooster was making trying to nestle deeper into the duff.
Bo used her ears a lot in locating tight sitting pheasants. I’d often see her stop hunting, tweak her head on way or another, then her expression would change as she bounded onto the bird. I would see her do that again in a couple of days.
I don’t know why I didn’t continue hunting the waterfowl refuge. I guess I hadn’t fully decided if I was going to just remain in Iowa or travel to South Dakota. It was November so I wasn’t expecting to shoot many sharp tails while pheasant hunting in Sodak, so three pheasants a day in Iowa was as good as three a day in South Dakota. 
Later in the afternoon I was 60 miles away at a public area I’d passed dozens of times over the years and never hunted. I decided to let Bo stretch her legs and then we’d spend the night at a nearby camping area. I’m still surprised that Bo flushed two roosters in this public. The first went out wild when we were skirting around a deep creek and she pinched the other with a hen in an outside fence corner. I was day dreaming and didn’t have much of a warning. One minute Bo was pushing from one weed clump to another and then she suddenly lunged to the side and out went the two pheasants. I hit him well and we had one rooster more than I’d hoped for. That sealed South Dakota out of my plan. I figured if I could pick up two Iowa roosters in a lazy afternoon, I could find three in a full day.  
It was 4:30 by the time we got back to the truck with enough time to pick up suppIies in the small town and be back at dark. 
The morning broke cool in the 20’s and the windows of my topper were heavily frosted. Bo was a perfect driving companion. She would quietly sleep on the seat and only stand up to stretch every few hours, accept an ear scratch and then return to her seat. She wouldn’t slobber on the windows or whine when I’d stop for fuel or snacks. But I didn’t dare leave anything edible in the cab when I wasn’t present. Well, she was a lab.
She slept under the cap with me on a bed of my hunting clothes, in the opposite corner. She was always quiet until about 4:00 am. Then she’d come over and nuzzle me awake to play. She was never affectionate at any other time. Just in the early morning on hunting trips. She’d mouth my arm rumbling like a mauling bear while I could hardly feel her. Rolling over and digging half-heartedly at my covers and not lie still until I scratched her belly. Then it was like she was in a trance.
After a few minutes we’d both go outside for some air. I’d pour her a fresh drink on the tailgate and she’d return to her bed in the corner. A couple hours later we’d both be up again, her staring intently at bacon and eggs, spattering in the frying pan. Every hunting morning with Bo was as enjoyable as the day of hunting.
I had my eye on another large public area nearby that I had again never hunted. I guess I was always in such a hurry to get out of state that I just didn’t consider staying in Iowa. Mostly it was the multiple species opportunities further west and that Iowa was no longer the state I’d grown up in. Pheasants out the back door and just a couple hour’s drive to limits of ruffed grouse and could have shot, limits of bobwhite quail. By now, the ruffed grouse were gone and decent quail hunting was twice as far and half as good.  
I did a drive around at 7:30 and passed over a hill for a turnaround and noticed a small piece of isolated public. It was only 40 acres but it was bordered by picked corn on one side with a few acres of 10 foot high cane at the fence and then heavy waist-high grass with old farm terraces sprouting willows on the opposite side. I knew that few hunters would venture into that tall cane. There had to be a couple of roosters here. 
I could only track Bo by the rattling seed heads at the top of the stalks. I had to carry my Superposed at port arms to have any chance of shouldering it at a flush. And any flush would have to be close and towering for me to even see it. Bo was great in this kind of cover. She would stop periodically and listen for me just like I would her. If she was more than 25 yards away, we would both work towards each other. 
I could see a small opening ahead that I could actually relax in for a minute and be able to get a shot if a bird flushed. Bo was clattering all around me and just as I stepped into the clear, a rooster bolted into the opening with Bo right behind him. He towered to gain altitude and I hit him at his peak. There was a refreshing cloud of breast feathers so I knew he fell dead. A cripple in this jungle would likely end in a lost bird. If the bird got more than twenty yards out, neither of us could see it. 
I stayed in the opening to make it easier for Bo to find me with her bird. She liked to lounge with her pheasants. Not so much the other birds. Or maybe she was just more tired with pheasants. She’d lay down beside me with one foot holding the bird down and I’d sit with her. When I was young, I’d have felt this was wasted time. Should be back after ‘em. But being older, a few minutes with my dog after the retrieve was a congratulations to both of us. Her for the flush and retrieve and myself not so much for the hunt, but for the off season work, putting together the time and money, to be here.
I know that most guys feel hunting should be shared with a friend. I really enjoy sharing hunt stories in the evening, but following my dog and birds gives me a measure of satisfaction that I just don’t see in the eyes of my friends. They’re more leisurely than I. It’s not as important to them to trek over the furthest hill just to see if there might be birds on the other side. They’re just as happy to keep after birds we’ve already moved. Chasing birds to their death isn’t the hunting that I enjoy.  

We continued along the corn field with Bo flushing a couple of hens. I fully expected to see a rooster flush at the road. There was a farm house kitty corner across and two roosters and a hen headed straight for it. They were a little too far out and I wouldn’t have shot anyway. But I did feel I should have hupped BO and blocked the end myself. But then we had one rooster in the first 20 minutes and still three quarters of the piece to hunt. We’d be finished with this in another hour and a half and still have plenty of time to find a couple more shot opportunities.  
It turned out that finishing this piece was with an empty gun, three roosters in my coat, and BO flushing two more roosters in range, just to show the bird gods that we practice restraint.
We were working along a terrace in the middle of the field where I expected a bird to flush from a pocket of willows on the top side. But Bo was into a group of 8 or 10 birds on the low side. First two hens followed by a rooster. He tried to cross in front at 30 yards and just before I shot another rooster flushed straight out. I shot the straight rooster at 25 yards with the improved cylinder barrel and then the right bird at about 35 with the improved modified. They each got a load of steel 2’s that I would rather have been lead 6’s. But my preference notwithstanding, Bo found two dead roosters.
I’m not sure how to explain my feelings about an early limit of birds. I don’t really want to quit hunting. Not even to travel to a bordering state to start over. I don’t want to leave the field. Not to return to the truck or move to keep hunting. I just want to stay outdoors and walk and shoot. But only multiple species allow that freedom and even then, on some days, the hunt still must stop. Next thing, the season’s over and no matter how many states or miles I walked, I still feel like I missed out on something. On sensations that can’t be rediscovered next season. I’ve learned that too much changes. Too much in our personal lives, the habitat and birds. Some years catastrophic changes and others small increments that lesson the experiences. I live in the fear that one day I’ll be like everyone else. Just happy to be outdoors, even without the birds, telling stories of the old days, that no one believes.
Soon after our second sit session of the morning, I had a coat full of roosters and heading for the truck with no sense of what I would do next. Having a limit of pheasants before 9:00 am was a small torture. 
Bo was still having fun even without any retrieves. She flushed another rooster that sailed to the opposite bottom corner from where we parked. I decided that I would give Bo some more practice with him and she flushed yet another rooster on the way down. 

I did have a Minnesota license in my pocket and plenty of time to travel and hunt the afternoon. But I’d done that before with Critter and Woogs. Well, that was with Critter and Woogs and not BO. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t along at the time. 
Many of you may have heard the story when just a couple years earlier Bo and I took multiple limits of pheasants in multiple states her puppy season. That was in the Minnesota – North Dakota – South Dakota pheasant podcast. 
I had always wondered how many original double limits I could take in my lifetime. How selfish is that! What about in the dog’s lifetime? Bo already had three double limits and a triple limit, but not the Minnesota/Iowa double limit. 
We were on our way to Minnesota. From a long ways south. I knew what GMA I would hunt. There were only two I was familiar with that I had always shot birds in. It was a three hour drive to the nearest one. I stopped at the halfway point and bought Bo a couple of hot dogs in buns and myself a couple slices of pizza. Yeah, she got one of my slices of pizza as well. You just can’t reward a dog too much for an early limit and opportunity to keep hunting. 
I wasn’t expecting to shoot anymore pheasants, I didn’t even know what day of the week it was. That happens a lot when you hunt by the seat of your pants. I just knew I would get out and walk some more, carrying a gun. That Bo would hunt and maybe find birds. 
It was even colder than at daylight and spitting snow. I parked on the south side and walked around a small frozen marsh. There were pheasant tracks in the skiff of snow on the open ice. Bo was birdy and I could hear flushing out in the cattails but couldn’t see above those on the border. We circled higher up to a small chain of dirt tanks that had thick pockets of weeds below them. At the second dike we found the largest group of just roosters I’d flushed in Minnesota. Three were in the air at once and I missed, just before I could shoot again a pair flushed at 30 yards. Hey, I’m sure you’ve missed a few pheasants too. I’m standing there in disbelief with an empty gun and not so much as a feather drifting down. Then another rooster flushed just to brighten my mood. 
I lost track of the first three but one of the pair landed on the edge of cattails on a direct line to my rig and the late flusher landed mid-point, on the opposite side of the larger marsh. I know I’ve said that I don’t like chasing flushes, but this was most likely every rooster in this WPA. I’d never flushed more than four on a hunt here. 
We had the wind in our favor heading to the truck. I wanted to stop back and get Bo a drink anyway. I forgot to water her after our lunch and everything out here was froze. Right where I marked that rooster, Bo got birdy and lunged into the cattails. It’s a good thing she was a blocky strong female Lab because the stiff cattails just about stood her up. She put her head low and started rooting a path in when the rooster flushed. He cackled like a respectable rooster should, but ceased at my shot. I let him clear the cattails as he was headed to the far side across open ice. I could see him skidding to a stop as Bo burst into the open. There was cattail fluff in her wake both on the way out and returning. The return was much more difficult with the plump rooster. She skirted the thick tails for a few yards before locating a thin spot that she could punch through. I was halfway to her kicking a path as best I could. The wind was stiff and I’d turn my back to keep the fluff out of my eyes, but you know how it billows back into your face from the downwind side as well. All in all a lot of fun.
We didn’t stop for a sit here. I took the bird from her, cleaned her face of feathers and fluff, and then gave it back for the 100 yard walk to the truck. We cut across on ice and avoided all but 10 yards of cattail bliss. 
At the truck I watered Bo, gave her the bones left from my slice of pizza. (I seldom eat the crust), called my friend Russ and then my wife. Russ had hunted with Bo and me quite a bit and he was as proud of her as I was. I told him about our morning and that we needed one more Minnesota bird for her fourth double limit of pheasants. I finished with I was certain that I’d be texting him in an hour to let him know we had our last bird. I’ve seldom been more confident of a limit, but I knew exactly where that other rooster had entered the far side of the marsh, that Bo would find him and I would finish the deal. I’m not sure how much of my love for bird hunting my wife understands but I do know that my enthusiasm is a contagion for her. You’d have thought we already had number five for the day from my wife’s Woo-Hoo reaction.  It turned out that both our enthusiasms were justified. 
I kicked around in some tall grass full of tree trunks and branches the DNR cuts down to eliminate roosting for raptors. I hoped to find a rogue rooster without chasing the one I marked. Bo only found a hen, so we were off on the half mile hike to the far side. I didn’t want to take the short cut across the ice, again in the hope of finding a different bird. 
It was probably five minutes between when Bo first scented the rooter and the flush. We were both in and out of the tails, meandering onto the open ice and then back in again. I was still out on the ice questioning my footing for a shot when he flushed cackling toward a road and private property. I didn’t have to turn much and since he was flying low into the wind, I had plenty of time to shuffle and shoot. He fell 30 yards away on the gravel road. I had already sight checked for traffic both for my shot and the inevitable dash Bo would make if I hit him. The road was clear for as far as I could see in both directions.    
Bo was held up by a five strand fence and thick brush. But eventually made it to the dead bird. The wind was flopping his wings one way and the other as Bo tried to clamp both to his body. Like most dogs who handle a lot of pheasants she had learned to pin those wings so he wouldn’t beat her in the face.  
She waited for me to cross the fence and lift her over on the return. The only time any of my dogs cross a fence without my assistance is when running a bird. In normal travel my dogs will always wait for me to hold the wire or lift them over. Even when they could easily step through. I instill the wait into them as much to reduce the chances they’ll need stitches as to keep them from crossing onto posted property.  
Five roosters from two states in the same day might be the lowest number a guy needs to accomplish a double limit of mid-western pheasants, but that doesn’t make it common place. Or easy. It was exactly 3:00 pm back at the truck when I texted Russ and Laura pictures of Bo with her five roosters. Somehow I’ve lost that pic from my phone so I can’t use it on the title page of this episode. I’m sure my wife has it mixed in with several thousand pictures and videos of grandkids. But I could record another episode in less time than it would take to locate it
This was the second best “didn’t make it to my destination” hunt I had with Bo The other was the previous year when we stopped short of a Montana coyote hunt to chase pheasants, grouse and coyotes in western South Dakota. I’ll have to re-listen to my other pheasant hunting episodes to see if I told that story, but I’ll give you a hint….we shot two coyotes, a few sharptails and 18 roosters in the final 6 days of the South Dakota season.  Yes, I ate three of the roosters in the early days of the trip. And no, I didn’t eat the coyotes.  

Well, I did some re-listening and I could find a reference to that trip but not the story. Soooo..
Many of my trips I’ve planned for months or more in advance. Others are just seat of my pants time killers. I had been looking forward to a December Montana coyote hunt less and less, due to the thousands of miles I’d already driven bird hunting that fall. I was half way to Montana and decided that rather than driving all night again, and being sleepy for the first day of coyote calling, I’d stop for the night, in western South Dakota.  I had Bo with me because my wife was visiting family in Illinois, and I was planning to be gone for up to 10 days, and couldn’t ask my friends to watch Bo for that long. 
Besides, as I mentioned earlier, Bo was a great traveling companion. She’d been to Montana with me the year before and it had to be more fun for her to run in the wide open  a couple of times a day in Montana, than stepping off a friend’s deck to pee in Iowa.
I reasoned that I would bird hunt with her the first day and if we did well, I’d just stay in South Dakota to hunt pheasants and shoot a few lesser quality coyotes than those Montana pales. 
Is it wrong for me to say “we” when it’s just me and my dog? We…camped in a cold, dark, primitive area for our entire stay. I slept late the first morning and was passing through an area not known for pheasants when I saw four roosters on public, scooting into cover along a pond. I knew they had been exposed to a lot of traffic throughout the season and would be difficult to get close to, but Bo needed to let off some steam and better here when I didn’t expect to shoot a bird than in the midst of a dozen or more I really wanted a shot at. This pond was in a heavily grazed grassland. We were barely out of the truck when I saw three of the roosters running up a finger where they would coast across the road and be in a different wooded finger over the hill. I ignored them because I’d noticed that one bird had split off and I saw him duck over the dirt bank at the head of the pond. 
I kept Bo close till we were about to step over the top, expecting the rooster to flush from the woody bottom just as we topped out. Bo lunged to the bottom, then worked a trail up to a fence and then behind me. There was hardly any cover along the fence so I couldn’t imagine how he got by us. I started to trot up the hill the fence crossed just as Bo turned down a skinny grass finger. He flushed about 20 yards in front of Bo but still in range. He sure was a sly bird, but he wouldn’t be passing those genes on. 
As Bo was heading to her retrieve, she flushed a single sharptail from the sidehill. We hadn’t even made it to our hunting ground and we had two birds when we would have normally just jumped out to pee.
I picked up another rooster late in the afternoon off some private. I was driving to a farm a couple miles back that had a good looking draw leading up to public. As I was pulling up the long lane, a woman was leaving in a Jeep Cherokee smiling and waving as she passed. I had my window down and waved for her to stop. She was really friendly and I explained I was looking to hunt he draw out back. She said she thought it would be ok, but I should follow her a mile or so to her son’s house. She asked me to wait outside and she would call her husband to make sure it was ok. 
When she returned, she said she couldn’t reach her husband but the family was done bird hunting for the year and I should just go ahead. She said they’d shot a lot of pheasants over the Thanksgiving holiday but there were still plenty left. She even suggested that I just hunt some corn strips and grass cover at the base of their lane. And that if I didn’t get my birds there, stop back at her son’s and he’ll take a spin around the windbreaks at the house to push some birds out for me. She said there were always a couple hundred there. She said her husband would be back in an hour or so, but she hadn’t told him I’d be on their ground. She said if he comes home, he probably won’t even say anything to me, but if he asks, just tell him I said it’s ok. 
I’ve met some accommodating people over the years, but never like this. I explained I was still uneasy, and wouldn’t ask her son to chase birds out for me. She couldn’t understand why not. Before she left I asked her who owned a chunk of CRP up on the highway. I told her I’d stopped at the house a couple times when there was a truck in the drive. I could hear a tv, but no one came to the door. 

She said, “Of that’s Carl. He’s hard of hearing, you have to pound really loud. I’m sure he’ll let you hunt too.”
I was nervous about hunting without her husband’s knowledge but didn’t think of just waiting in their lane until he returned. I thought that maybe I could just hunt the cover out front, get my two birds and be gone. 
Bo and I worked a narrow strip of standing corn around the corner, where she put a rooster out in the first 50 yards. I hit him well crossing some chopped stubble. As Bo was returning with the bird another flushed out the end and I watched him land in some brush at a pond. With the bird in my coat we worked the grass toward the pond, to force the pheasant to flush away from the buildings, even though they were a quarter mile up the road. I just didn’t want her husband driving over the hill to see me shooting that direction. 
That rooster eventually re-flushed but he stayed low heading for the homestead despite my plan. That was it for me. I was just too nervous to continue and left before her husband arrived. 
I’d never met Carl, but his neighbor said he was hard of hearing. I stopped at his house and banged on the door like a swat team. Like his neighbor, Carl was very friendly and told me that I was only the second guy to ask for permission all season. He said he thought the cover was way too thick to hunt. Some guys had tried to hunt it two months ago, on opening day but they didn’t last 30 minutes. He said he even tried once but the kochia was so thick he couldn’t push through it. 
I explained that I would likely be in the area for a few days and asked if I could hunt that long. He said to hunt it as much as I liked. And wondered if I had been there at daylight before. He said he wasn’t sure I could do very well, even if I could walk in there, because hundreds of birds poured out of the field at first light every morning. He said maybe even a thousand. He didn’t think there could be any pheasants left at 10:00 a.m.  
He also owned another weedy 40 acres on the opposite side of the road. I drove to the two track on the north end and parked a couple hundred yards off the highway. I loosed Bo. I didn’t even take a step into the field when she had a half dozen birds in the air. As I was picking out a rooster, more birds were flushing in waves as those first birds passed over. I hit the rooster hard and we had our limit. 
I was expecting to work a lot harder than this for mid-December pheasants, but I wasn’t expecting these numbers. By the time Bo returned, there were even more pheasants hop scotching over the hill. Most just skirting the cover and landing in a few yards like they didn’t have a clue why they were alarmed. I’d guess in the end, 35-40 pheasants had bounced around and we had hardly entered the 80 acres of cover.    
One thing I was certain of was that I would have plenty of time to call coyotes in the mornings and evenings if the whole field held this many birds. Let alone the other patch across the road. 
If there was one thing I’d learned from my pheasant hunting in Nebraska, I didn’t want to run any more birds out of these fields than I needed to shoot my three each day. If hundreds of birds flew out of here every morning this could be the best pheasant numbers I’d ever hunted. 
It was. I was confident enough that I would burn up both of my 5-day, South Dakota license periods. And Bo and I ate a rooster that first night. 
I never did stop at dawn to verify the departure. I was out coyote calling and scouting for sharptails. I kinda wish I had watched just once, or even at dusk. If they were going out in the morning they had to be returning to roost. I alternated between the two fields each day. Shooting three in one and then three in the other. A typical morning was to just walk the perimeter of that day’s field, being as quiet as possible. No slamming doors, and no whistle. I slipped in every morning starting out to the west to avoid walking into the sun, and about 20 yards inside the edge. 
The first morning, I realized this wasn’t CRP. It was a wheat field. Evidently the herbicide didn’t take and it was overgrown with all manner of harvest inhibiting weeds. Then in the early fall, the kochia drifted in. All of the low areas were covered in a blanket of waist to shoulder high, prickly, tumbleweed. There were times when I had to kick my way through just to get out of the field. It was brutal and really hard on Bo as well. Every few yards Bo would look back at me with that. “Really!” look on her face. Then she’d get a snoot full of pheasant, and barge in.
This wasn’t the kind of week that I can talk about in detail. Bo and I took our three roosters every day, hunting one to three hours each day.
I didn’t do my best shooting. Over the six days, I probably averaged shooting at 4 roosters a day. I don’t have much opinion about dog work as for the most part, it was difficult to observe Bo, due to the density and height of the cover. I will say she was a trooper for holding up, even though most days were relatively short. She was a 90 pound lab and the cover was probably the most abrasive at her shoulder height. The ideal dog in a blanket of kochia would have been about the size of a ferret. The pheasants had a maze of tunnels along the ground, but flushing up through that thorny blanket was hard for them. Thankfully many ran to the outside before flushing, which made for much easier retrieving for Bo. We only lost one bird that trip.   
Even trying to be stealthy, we flushed somewhere between 30 and 100 or more birds each day. I tried to be selective in my shots, hoping to only shoot birds that would fall outside the perimeter of the cover. Mostly to go easy on Bo. If you think I was being a little soft, you should try walking through a field of kochia in shorts some time. Some days, I was able to drop all three birds in the open, but others I couldn’t be that selective.
Then, I also tried to not miss. Shootings noisy and alerts the birds. But you can guess how well “not missing” went.  
Being least intrusive is a quirk of mine. As much as I love to hunt, I really don’t like harassing game. I feel best when I disturb as few birds as possible and then leave the remainder to go about their day. Wildlife has enough to deal with fighting nature and predators to not be overly harassed by us. 
On particularly quiet mornings I even hesitate to take the first shot of the day. That first BOOM! Is like a declaration of war on the landscape. “I’m a human with a viscous dog and we’re here to kill some of you.” An announcement that you can’t take back.
Living a week of snowless, overcast, December days, in temperatures just one degree from freezing your fingers, with a good dog and hundreds of close flushing, wild pheasants, and not hearing a single gunshot, other than your own, is what pre-season dreams are made of.  
Experiencing a late season hunt like that was something that most guys would offer a low hanging appendage for. I can say that all I suffered was the loss of my second most anticipated trip of the year. Calling coyotes in northern Montana. Well, not totally lost. There were a couple of afternoons that the wind lay down for calling, and I managed to pull in a few coyotes, taking just two. But for me, just having the opportunity to call coyotes after having already experienced a great day of bird hunting, is more than frosting. My hunting cake was pudding filled.  
Speaking of quirks, I’ve always balanced a good day against my expectation of what a second option might have been. I don’t know about you guys, but I try to always have several backup plans for each trip.  That’s how I end up pheasant hunting in South Dakota on a Montana coyote calling trip. Taking 18 roosters in 6 December days, over a wonderful dog, and never driving more than 10 miles each day….well, it would take a truck load of Montana coyotes to beat that.

I’m Randy Shepard with My Dog Hunts, if anyone asks who you’re listening to, Please speak kindly of My Dog Hunts.