I can't say too much good about "Critter". She hunted the tail end of the southern Minnesota/Iowa ruffed grouse years, the best Kansas and Nebraska pheasant years, and a half dozen Dakota years.
This hunt was a seat of my pants exploration into northern South Dakota. I was looking for a new area for pheasants and sharptails, and we found it. The strange thing is, in the following days, I found an even better area that I've spoken of in several other episodes. If you like pheasants and sharptails, you'll enjoy this talk. If you like springer spaniels, you'll love this hunt.
I can't say too much good about "Critter". She hunted the tail end of the southern Minnesota/Iowa ruffed grouse years, the best Kansas and Nebraska pheasant years, and a half dozen Dakota years.
This hunt was a seat of my pants exploration into northern South Dakota. I was looking for a new area for pheasants and sharptails, and we found it. The strange thing is, in the following days, I found an even better area that I've spoken of in several other episodes. If you like pheasants and sharptails, you'll enjoy this talk. If you like springer spaniels, you'll love this hunt.
Critter's Double Limit of Pheasants
I could still see South Dakota in my rear view mirror and beside me there were roosters in the ditch. More in a grove by farm buildings. Then a huntable, nondescript blacktop road reroute, that left a two acre triangle of weeds in the old right-of-way. I stopped at a farmhouse just up the hill with a lady on the front porch.
Now having knocked on more than a hundred farm doors and with working in a boarding kennel throughout high school, I’d seen my share of mean dogs. There was a mongrel in the yard blowing snot with every bark. I’ve never let a dog keep me from knocking on a door and with the owner on the porch I felt pretty safe. Once out of my truck I wasn’t so sure. It was immediately obvious that she had no control. This mutt had his nose in my pockets looking for raw red meat. He was nibbling at my fingers and butt the whole time I walked what felt like a mile to the steps. I think he could smell my Iowa tenderloins still coursing with warm blood.
Hello, I’m Randy Shepard and welcome to My Dog Hunts Podcast. I’d like to apologize in advance, for this story being short. If I take the time to add to it, I’ll have even less time for next week’s episode.
I hope you remember Critter. She passed a long time ago but our hunts together are still fresh. She was a stocky, liver and white springer and maybe the best dog I’ve ever owned. That last trip to the vet, ride home, and following months, were agony. It was several years before I could accept that I wanted another dog, but even now, I still miss her. Let me tell you about another of our hunts together.
Critter seemed to have developed a firm grasp of the results of flushing game birds within gun range. If I shot well, she could carry a warm, limp, fluff, of fragrant feathers as proudly as a team captain trophy. If I shot less than perfect, she could experience an exhilarating chase after a bird that couldn’t escape by flight. And if I missed, she could further perfect that over the shoulder glance that was already becoming hurtful in its intensity.
I did a lot of running behind that little girl, trying to establish her position in dense cover for whistle correction if she wasn’t making game, and a melody for wind worn ears if she chose to ignore me. But this afternoon was looking to be different. I was parked along a Walk-in area in northcentral South Dakota, eating a sandwich just ten minutes before noon, the opening hour of the first week of pheasant season. When as if by stocking, a flock of about two dozen pheasants flushed from a posted shelterbelt and sailed across the road to land in public access, just 50 yards in front of my truck.
As was my practice, I skipped the opening weekend crowds of South Dakota by hunting prairie grouse in Nebraska. Then Sunday evening, I headed north to hunt the weekdays for pheasants in South Dakota. This would be the first time I hunted pheasants on state lands instead of the Rosebud Reservation in Todd County. I decided it was time to discover what all the “off reservation”, South Dakota hype was about.
Before it was even light out, I knew this was surreal. Now I’d hunted pheasants a lot in my home state of Iowa at the tail end of the “set aside” program and had witnessed clouds of pheasants darkening a slough in waves. And though not nearly that many in Kansas, still a lot of pheasants. And even good pheasant numbers in southern Minnesota. But none of that prepared me for the dozens of roosters I heard cackling in the pre-dawn in northern South Dakota. I’d gotten out to pee along a desolate gravel road with no distinct idea where I was headed. I had never before or since heard so many roosters cackling. I just turned around and around listening. I don’t know why I didn’t stand my ground to find a place to hunt close by, but I didn’t. I drove on.
At first light I was in an area of hills and grasslands to look for sharptails before the noon pheasant hours. I cruised roads and walked a couple of covers without seeing either a grouse or pheasant. There was a pair of hunters near me all morning but just before noon they left in a cloud of dust, heading east.
East was the direction I’d heard all the pheasants that morning, but I headed further west to some Walkin I hadn’t set eyes on yet. That’s where I stopped to have my sandwich.
A useful practice that I’ve learned to follow religiously over the years, is to always load my gun first after exiting my vehicle. Don’t let the dog out first, put on my vest, or open a box of shells, or pee, without loading my gun first.
I quietly snicked the over/under closed on a couple of Federal Premium 7-1/2’s and gently opened Critter’s box, to loose the little banshee on the unsuspecting quarry. I know that today everyone swears that even 6’s are too small for pheasants, but when you’re young with lightning reflexes 7-1/2’s were deadly for the first shot on roosters.
Critter was cutting circles in the grass around the truck all hyped up for another hunt when she caught a whiff of the birds. I was hurrying, halfway expecting an eruption of targets. As usually seems to happen with me, either the birds all flush out of range or the dog only finds a few of the numbers I watched land. I don’t know how they disappear, but they do.
Of all the birds I’d watched land just moments earlier, Critter flushed about half. But two of them were roosters and I hit both of them well. Critter like most of my springers had a relaxed view of her retrieving responsibilities. Once she was within arm’s reach, I was required to perform an embarrassing act of coaxing and acrobatic lunging to facilitate the exchange.
Once in my coat, we worked the perimeter of the quarter and then up into a small clump of hills behind us. I never want a hunt to end this early, so I wasn’t in a hurry to shoot my third rooster. We would try to work for our last bird. And if it didn’t show, we could always stop back and re-hunt this spot.
We walked a mile loop flushing a couple of hens when Critter got hot at the base of the hills. She was running up a cut between the two highest and I was trotting and gasping to stay close to her. I know, there are those of you who question why I hadn’t whistle trained her to “whoa” or “hup”. Well, I did, but I kinda like the hustle and exertion of working with my dog instead of against her. Pheasant hunting shouldn’t be easy for either of us. If it was, then the ruffed grouse hunters would have a right to color them as ditch chickens and clown birds.
Suddenly, off to my left, a sharptail flushed. I wasn’t expecting a grouse after 30 yards of her trailing. I almost didn’t shoot after the delay of considering where I was and open seasons. That’s something you’ll find running through your head a lot when you hunt multiple species in multiple states. You must constantly consider where you are and what’s open before you start blasting away at every game bird that flushes.
I knocked the grouse down at about 40 yards, but Critter kept trailing and soon had several more sharpies in the air. Clucking instead of cackling. I pulled on a bird angling to my left and the rest were already out of range. With two birds on the ground, I reloaded and stood my ground while Critter ran for the closest dead bird. As soon as she broke away, the expected late flushing single went up to my right and we had the three bird South Dakota limit of sharptails.
Boy, that was a surprise. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally, sharptails will run with an average pheasant. I’ve had Critter trail them for a hundred yards or more and had others flush within inches of my feet in ankle high grass. Once a whole flock of a dozen or more held like that on the Rosebud. The wind was blowing over 40 miles an hour and those birds just didn’t want to fly.
By now, my vest was a little more than heavy but we were just a couple hundred yards from the truck. I emptied my game bag, grabbed a few more shells and went back to the front of the pickup to see if any of those earlier roosters were still hanging around.
There was at least one. We hadn’t made it 100 yards from the truck when Critter pushed out a tight sitter in easy range. It was only 1:15 and we had a combination limit of pheasants and sharptails in the truck, from public land, in an area I had never hunted before.
I really didn’t have a plan for the afternoon as I was just out exploring new ground. I didn’t even think to look for gray partridge in the area and just headed north looking for the next east west highway. When I found it, I noticed I was only a few miles from North Dakota. I wasn’t sure just how far west I already was but recalled that on a free spirited coyote calling trip a few years ago, I saw a lot of pheasants on both sides of the border. At the intersection, a sign said I was two miles from North Dakota. I did have a North Dakota license from an early season sharptail hunt. Incidently, is a backward way to a double limit of pheasants.
I could still see South Dakota in my rear view mirror and there were roosters in the ditch. More in a grove by farm buildings. Then a nondescript blacktop road reroute that left a two acre triangle of weeds off the road. I stopped at a farmhouse just up the hill and where was a lady on the front porch.
Now having knocked on more than a hundred farm doors and with working in a boarding kennel throughout high school, I’d seen my share of mean dogs. There was a mongrel in the yard blowing snot with every bark. I’ve never let a dog keep me from knocking on a door and with the owner on the porch I felt pretty safe. Once out of my truck I wasn’t so sure. It was immediately obvious that she had no control. This mutt was looking for raw, red, meat. He had his nose in my pockets nibbling at my fingers and butt the whole time I walked what felt like a mile to the steps. I think he could smell my Iowa tenderloins still coursing with warm blood.
Here are a few tips to deal with dogs like this:
1) Keep your hands in your pockets! (They’re more difficult to chew on through the fabric.) This is when you’ll be thankful; that you didn’t buy those discount britches. I know you’ve been told to show your hands. That works with mildly tempered dogs, but not mean ones.
2) Ignore the dog! Don’t speak to it or let it smell your hands! See Rule !
3) Don’t hesitate once you’re out of your rig. Walk straight to the door like you own the place. If he thinks you’re about to run, it boldens him. I’ve never had a dog actually attack me, but they will nip you in the butt when you turn your back. You may think of walking backward to your rig, while facing terror, but you have to understand what you’re exposing. The kids might call it your “junk” but I’m not sure you think of it that way.
If the dog is particularly crafty and you haven’t exposed your hands, it’ll probably nip your butt. If you’re particularly crafty, you’ll be prepared. Just as you feel his hot breath on your behind, kick up one of your heels and crack him in the bottom of his jaw. Hard and fast. Don’t turn to look just give him what for. The dog will yelp, but won’t associate the pain with you. He won’t have a clue what just happened. Keep walking. I’ve had to resort to this measure with everything from currs to Irish wolfhounds and each of them backed down after experiencing my greeting. I had one owner ask me why his dog yelped and ran away, I told him I had no idea.
I can hear you. “What the hell are you talking about!?” “Who wants to shoot a few pheasants that bad?” Observe my waving hand.
The little lady on the front porch in North Dakota was astounded. She asked how I got by her dog. She said the mailman had stopped delivering to their box on the road. She had to drive to town to get her mail. Ditto with any parcel deliveries. She said they even had to lock the dog up when her grandkids visited. “You are the only stranger to ever make it to our door. You must be very brave!” I said, “No ma’am. I just didn’t want to give your dog the satisfaction of chasing me back to my truck.” She said that they save hunting for family, but in my case I could hunt the small corner across the road. She said it didn’t look like much but I would find a bird or two in there.
She was correct. It was a narrow strip that only gradually grew wider at the far end 100 yards away. But it did have three roosters cowering from passing traffic. The first rooster sat politely as I ensured that Critter was working the off-traffic side of the triangle. He flushed at a comfortable range and I hit him hard as I didn’t want a cripple chase. I wasn’t sure if her mutt was going to cross the road and I’d have to kill him to save Critter. Critter was prancing back with her first North Dakota rooster. She was birdy the rest of the way to the end. Luckily they held till I was in range with one flying across the road and the other to my left. I took the left bird and missed with my lower barrel but toppled him with the upper. He was still flapping when Critter reached the fall but most of the life was already out of him. Even if I had hit him with my first shot there was no way I was going to chance the other bird. It could have been a headache I didn’t need.
I wasn’t five miles or an hour from arriving in North Dakota and just needed one more rooster for our dual limit. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken a dual limit of birds on my first hunt in a new area. As it turned out, the easy birds had already been sacrificed. Me and my springer were going to have to earn our last bird.
Posted. Posted. Posted, read the signs. I drove for miles and miles searching for unposted private. I knocked on several posted doors but didn’t rouse anyone. I drove to a public reservoir that had a sliver of land around the perimeter. There were five roosters lounging in the corner of a fence, but I didn’t know or care if it was open to hunting. I really wanted for Critter to hunt up a bird for me. By late afternoon I’d seen more than a hundred pheasants around farms I’d knocked and five badgers. I’ve never seen that many badgers in my life.
Finally! A farmer mending fence. He barely looked up as I coasted to a stop on the gravel. He spoke reluctantly as I explained my dilemma. He wasn’t sympathetic. He suggest that if I kept knocking, someone in the area would let me shoot one pheasant. But the past several hours had convinced me otherwise. I asked him who owned the picked corn across the fence. He said it was his. He must have been a church man and couldn’t lie. I suggested that there was probably a rooster in there that could finish me up. He said he thought I could do better. I told him that he’d never see me again. That this was the only time that I ever hunted pheasants in North Dakota and would be heading back to South Dakota at the end of hours. With 90 minutes of shooting time he finally surrendered. Once he caved, he was helpful. He said I could probably find a bird along the creek on the east side and if not the base of the hills on the south usually held a few. He even suggested that if I had time, there were grouse in the back hills as well. It wasn’t until I reached the creek that I realized that he normally charged a fee for pheasant hunting. His problem was that I only wanted to shoot one bird and he didn’t know how to handle that. I don’t think he knew how to charge a guy by the hour or bird, so he just let me on.
The creek bottom was wooly and should have held birds, but it didn’t. The cornfield had decent grass cover between the rows of stalks which should have held a bird but we couldn’t find any there in our first pass. There were three or four sink holes in the field that I saved for the last few minutes if needed.
For nearly forty five minutes I’d been repeating to myself, “Shoot fast and hit him hard.” 45 minutes was a long time to repeat a meaningless diatribe that would be lost in the first gasp of a rooster flush. At the base of the hills Critter perked up and I knew I was in trouble. There was a fenceline running up the steep grade and I knew that any pheasants near there had watched us approach and probably had a head start over the hill. They did, but stocky Critter hadn’t burned a lot of steam earlier in the day and she caught them well before I did. A couple of them were roosters going out 60 yards in front of her and 150 yards from me. At least I could catch my breath while waiting for her to return.
Working along the base of the hills, Critter stayed up high and I stayed a few yards out in the cut corn. Soon she flushed a sharptail high over my head and I dropped him out in the stalks. Critter was still trailing a runner so I left the bird, dropped in another shell and hustled up the hill. She flushed another grouse that I shot as well. But that wasn’t the bird she was trailing. I heard pheasants flushing just around the shoulder of the hill when my third North Dakota rooster was cackling against the low sun. I hit him, but not well. He was coming down with all his landing gear functioning but I didn’t have another shell loaded. I never should have shot at that second sharptail. Once around the corner it was a bare pasture. I hate bare pastures. Over the years I’ve lost several pheasants that fell out of sight, in over grazed pastures. I knew we were in trouble. Critter went over a football field sized corner like a vacuum cleaner. But she didn’t even get birdy. Maybe he righted himself and glided to who knows where. After about 20 minutes it was to the point that there was nowhere else to look. He was simply gone.
We backtracked and quickly found both sharptails dead where they fell. In our search, Critter busted three more sharpies, but I wasn’t going to repeat an empty gun with a rooster in the air.
I had time to hit the two biggest sinkholes in the middle of the field and then walk the creek the quarter mile back to the truck. All we found in the sinkholes was a single hen. I trotted to the creek with an eye on my watch. I was hoping that a bird slipped in from the corn stubble after we passed. About 100 yards from the truck, Critter came out of the bottom to hunt the upper edge. I didn’t need her with me as the edge was narrow and I stomped on every clump that could hold a bird. But that creek bottom was a nasty tangle of blackberry bushes and I was afraid she was getting cut up. She was a tough dog but the wrong height for this stuff. She was too tall for the ground hugging thorns and too short to jump over.
I know I sometimes sound like the hunting video with the last day last light ending, but…. I was explaining to Critter that we just had a wonderful day and would try for 6 roosters again someday, when she pushed a young rooster out of a tangle near my feet. He stayed low and straight away across the creek. I hate low straight-away shots. He was weaving through the saplings and brush when I shot. I was confident that I hit him well from, his turned up tail and then the splash of feathers when he collided into a tree on the far bank. Just like I’d watched a dozen ruffed grouse do in Iowa and Minnesota.
Critter had a long haul through the cover and swimming the creek to the bird. The water at the far bank was deep and the cut was over her head. I wasn’t sure she could make it out so I began to slide down. I wasn’t prepared to swim, but I could coax her back. Then we could walk around to the bridge to retrieve the bird. I was about halfway down and already bleeding when she made it over the far bank. She was pure white but I could hardly see her through the brush. Then I could hear her picking her way back to the water and knew she had the bird before I saw it. Our sixth rooster of the day. A South Dakota/North Dakota double limit of pheasants on the first day pheasant hunting in North Dakota.
I took the bird from her while she was still in the creek and once she had her feet on our bank, held a hand at the back of her head so she had leverage to pull herself out. I kicked and ripped a clear path for her to follow up to the field edge.
A decent man can’t help but love a bird dog for what they do. In comparison, everything that we do in our bird hunting has meaning to us. We realize the personal financial and family sacrifices we make to be here. But our dogs don’t. The limitations of time, by the day, our lives and the life of our dogs, hangs over our heads. Dogs don’t know this. Everything our dogs do is for just that one immediate bird. Just the one moment. They don’t think like we do. They don’t reminisce in their late years reliving the glorious days. I know that this is a dark thought but I hunt hard to be certain that in my last years and days, when I can’t physically be in the field anymore, I’ll have endless memories of these times to get me to the end of mine.
I hope you do too.