My Dog Hunts - Upland Birds

Combination Limit - Sharptails & Pheasants South Dakota

May 06, 2020 Randy Shepard Season 1 Episode 4
My Dog Hunts - Upland Birds
Combination Limit - Sharptails & Pheasants South Dakota
Show Notes Transcript

This was my first of many combination limits of sharptails & pheasants. I sprinkled in some opinion on guns and chokes. Why I attempt dual limits and hopefully a little inspiration for you to attempt a few of your own. 

PHEASANTS & SHARPTAILS
1990    



• Note: This isn’t an exact script of the podcast. I wrote this as a magazine article, but it follows the podcast story very closely.
 


I’m not sure if it was the wide open panorama of the prairies or the seemingly endless public hunting opportunities that intrigued me. I know that it wasn’t the challenging shooting. This wide open stuff didn’t compare to more eastern ruffed grouse woods. Once you learned to accurately estimate range, prairie grouse are pretty easy shooting. They weren’t hard to knock down or kill. Just a couple of pellets will cancel their flight. And like ruffed grouse, if they have any life left in them, they usually just flutter their wings quickly instead of trying to run.   

I think it was more that I had been hunting ruffed grouse exclusively for many years and it was time for a change. I was introduced to prairie grouse hunting at just the right time.

It was my second trip to South Dakota and I was dogless and nearly clueless. I had shot a few prairie grouse and was just finding my way with the where’s, whys and how’s of sharptails and chickens. I’m not the guy who wants to say he shot one of every species in North America. I’m the guy who wants to learn to hunt every species. Anyone can hire a guide or accept an invite and shoot a bird. But not everyone can make it on his own taking limits along the way. 

It was the middle of the second week of pheasant season and the shooting hours for pheasants began at 10:00 a.m. on the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Reservation. Unlike the other reservations in South Dakota, the Rosebud Sioux had an agreement that for hunting and fishing rights, Todd County South Dakota, belonged to the Sioux. There are no state hunting or fishing rights in Todd County. That’s why even today, you see no state land and no Walk-in public access in Todd County. 

I didn’t choose to hunt Rosebud for any reason other than it was straight north of the Valentine Refuge and I did choose to hunt there. The Rosebud was the closest hunting once I had a Nebraska limit and that’s all that mattered, It didn’t hurt that at the time I hunted there, the Reservation small game license was cheaper than the state and it was good for the entire season rather than just ten days.  Today, enough, if not all, of that has changed and I haven’t hunted the Rosebud in many years. Last I read they require a native Indian guide for all hunting which is reason enough to never bird hunt there again. The bird hunting was good, but there is equal to much better hunting all around Todd County today. 

The temp was 20 degrees when I started hunting a long shelterbelt near the Nebraska border. There was a slight skiff of snow that was protected inside the shelterbelt. I hadn’t intentionally hunted pheasants in years, mostly because I didn’t own a dog and I was married to ruffed grouse hunting. Today, I was cheating on ruffed grouse for an affair with pheasants. 

This shelterbelt had at one time been a road bed. There was a brush and tree choked ditch on either side of the old roadbed that was now overgrown with light brush and weeds. Not impenetrable ruffed grouse brush, but drier, prairie brush. 

We’ve all read the advice that when hunting pheasants without a dog you should hunt strip cover. I understand the theory. The narrow cover will restrict the bird’s ability to slip back past you and they should either hold tight or run to the end of the cover where they patiently wait to be booted up within range. But those of us who have hunted strip cover without a dog realize that only on rare days does the reality match the theory.

Welcome to my rare day. I had been working the mile and a half long belt mostly from the middle grade but occasionally weaving through the ditches kicking any brush that looked like it might hide a rooster. In the first quarter mile I was startled by a couple of rabbits, but not even a hen pheasant. 

Soon after, I noticed a set of pheasant tracks crossing the bed. The north side of the bed was bordered by a thin pasture, so there wasn’t much danger that a roosted would slip out that side. I took a mental note of the cover ahead and where the bird might hold. The south side was the new road bed so this was about as good a strip cover as anyone could hope for. I followed the tracks back and forth across the bed always keeping an eye ahead for a wild flushing bird. 

I lost the track for a while and realized he had slipped back behind me. There, in the snow, was a track entering a grass clump but none leaving. Like with a pointer, there’s a pheasant, probably a rooster, a couple feet in front of you. Now you’re getting nervous. Flip the safety off and on a couple times like removing the safety isn’t an automatic thing to do. I gave the grass a couple of tentative pokes with my foot being sure to keep my balance. Then, oh Hell! Just tromp through it! Thrashing, color and cackles! 

I had hoped he would stay in the clear but at about 20 yards he cut south, through tree tops, heading for the corn pivots across the road. I hit him well with the improved cylinder barrel and he cart wheeled to the ground. I had shot few roosters over the past years and found it particularly exciting to see such a large colorful bird crumple in the air and hit the ground with a firm thump. Not the soft plop of a ruffed grouse. I had no idea just how much I had missed pheasant hunting. 

Wheels were turning. I knew there were a lot of prairie grouse just a quarter mile to my south and more a couple miles north. I had hunted prairie grouse here a few weeks earlier and moved a lot of birds. Now, I was realizing there may be a few pheasants as well.  Those of you who have hunted or read of South Dakota pheasant hunting, must realize southern Todd County is not golden triangle pheasant hunting. It would be rated poor by just about any mid-western state standards. 

Continuing east I was more confident about getting into birds. I would have been happy if this was the only rooster I shot that weekend, but I was to be very happy. 

It was quite a ways to the next flush. Noble Jones of the Rosebud DNR had instructed me of the shooting restrictions around property. He said it’s simple, no shooting within 220 feet of any buildings. And the utility poles are 220’ apart.  And there you go like a sanctuary boundary, a rooster and two hens flushed at the base of the boundary for a driveway. He even cackled. They flew across the road and I was hopeful that I might be able to flush him again, around the pivots later in the day. To some hunters, hens are a nuisance, but to a dogless hunter, hens may be the only excitement of the entire day. I have always believed that the easiest way to flush a rooster is when the rooster is with hens. A lone rooster is an easy bird to walk past, but when all of his hen friends are flushing, he’s much more likely to flush with them.  

Between the second and third driveway was only about 50 yards of open shooting and another rooster flushed, but within the open shooting zone. I did not. If a call were placed it would be difficult to defend and I didn’t need that hassle over a rooster.

I could now see the end of the belt against a north/south road 200 yards ahead. That last rooster had flown down the length so hopefully there would be at least one rooster holding. In these situations, even when hunting with a dog, I will hunt up to about 100 yards of the end, then pull out and circle to the end, then hunting back in the direction I was pushing from. It confuses a lot of birds, even a few this morning. 

A pair of hens flushed close and then a rooster. I didn’t have to ride him out as he flushed at about 30 yards. I hit him hard with copper 7-½’s, hesitated, and then reloaded. That’s the thing about double barrels, in a split second, your carrying a single shot and then poof, you’re empty.

It was a mile and a half back to my truck along the active road, but I didn’t mind. I had two roosters when I had expected none and still most of the day to hunt. 

I turned my truck east to face the rolling prairie hills and fixed a sandwich with chips and a soda for lunch. It was almost noon, and I knew that I’d be out for about three hours if I walked both of the pivot edges and corners. I was parked near the intersection of two pivots with a sizeable chunk of prairie grass in front of my truck. Who would guess that while I was eating lunch, a dozen pheasants including at least two roosters picked up about 100 yards out and settled back down 50 yards from my truck?!

This has happened to me enough times over the years that I wonder if I couldn’t just spend the day in my truck waiting for birds to drift by. 

I stuffed a few more shells in my vest from an open box on the floor, quietly opened the door, slipping out and with a snick of the door and a snick of the over/under I started to quietly walk a wide, half-circle, to close in at the edge of the pivot, and work back towards my truck. I didn’t know if the birds had already made it into the corn or if they were still between me and my truck when suddenly there were several hens with a close rooster still another rooster further out, all circling around me for the standing corn. As I spun around, a third rooster flushed behind me and nearer the corn. I was on him in an instant, flying low and nearly straight away. The kind of shot I usually hit but cripple, so I was resolved to shoot twice no matter what. The no matter what turned out to be because I missed with the first barrel but hit him decidedly with the tighter choke. 

Dark pheasant feathers drifting over waving tan grass, in a stiff prairie breeze, is a bird hunter’s delight. Especially when there’s a colorful, very dead rooster pheasant laying under those drifting feathers. 

I hope you understand just how wonderful and alive I felt on this South Dakota mourning. This was the first limit of pheasants I had ever shot outside my home state of Iowa and although I still expected some shooting at sharptails and maybe a chicken I was already content with my day and trip. 

Hunting alone and dogless in unfamiliar country might seem lonely to some hunters, but once I flush a few birds within range, I feel right at home, with good friends.

I had left the other two roosters in the back of my pickup and contemplated taking this one the hundred yards back instead of carrying it several miles. But carrying birds is all part of the hunt and the warmth and weight can be a welcome comfort in the cold. Besides, I might need this successful reminder to keep me pushing for hours through featureless prairie, hoping for sharptails. 

I worked past a tail pond at the intersection of two pivots and then uphill, along the outside edge to the upper corners bordered by a spring pasture. I was right at the crest that the first grouse flushed, then several more. I took a long shot drawing feathers and shot again. The bird faltered both times, but continued following the main flock till I lost sight of them. This was going to be a long attempt at a re-flush. 

I reloaded and within another 20 yards another small bunch flushed, this time much closer. I shot twice, two puffs of white feathers and two disjointed birds tumbled out of the gray sky. I am as terrible a marker of downed game as anyone can be. I don’t know how anyone with my experience, hundreds of short trips to dead and crippled birds, can have such a difficult time walking 20 yards to a dead white bird the size of a football, let alone two of them. 

Once I find a loose feather, I can usually work my way to even a crippled bird, but finding that initial feather or even the entire dead bird is a perplexing puzzle for me. I will devote as much time to finding a hit bird as it takes to find and shoot a live one, but some days, you just have to walk away. And if you can’t live with that fact, then you shouldn’t hunt...and if you can live with that too easily, you shouldn’t hunt.

Both sharptails were lying dead, about 50 feet apart. One along the fence and the other downhill in the pasture, but it still took me several minutes to find them. 

I stayed tight along the fence, not wanting to flush another bird until I searched the pasture where the first grouse might have sort of landed.  It was a long walk and search that yielded nothing but a small mule deer buck and two does bedded in a slight depression. I walked wide circles for about an hour in that flat pasture not feeling hurried to shoot my last grouse. I was certain that I could shoot one more grouse in the 40 acre of good grouse grass behind me. It was a very good looking pasture nestled in an otherwise overgrazed and pivoted landscape. 

It was after 3:00 by the time I circled back to my truck and drove to the corner of the pasture. I worked the lower half waiting for the perfect 20-30 yard crossing shot. I flushed a few wild grouse and became more excited the higher I got. At times I questioned my belief that the perfect shot would present itself, but I didn’t want to watch another cripple sail to the horizon or spend anxious minutes sorting for a cripple in thick grass. 

I was making my way to the crest of the hill where I had flushed the earlier grouse when birds began stagger flushing at tempting range. I began to trot up the hill and there they were. A pair of sharptails flushed at 20 yards, catching a boost from the wind and turning south. I hit a bird hard and followed the wind-blown feathers to where it lay on the ground. 

Since that day, I have repeated that dual limit many times. Twice I can recall in Nebraska and many times from various locations in South Dakota and once in North Dakota. Some times I wish I had kept a journal, but that wasn‘t why I shot the birds. I just happened to be hunting a long way from home with nothing to do but hunt. Some days after a limit, I would call fox and coyote and on others I would scout for new, hidden places on foot. This is one of the things that I love most about hunting Nebraska and the Dakotas, there are so many areas that don’t hold enough birds to attract the crowds, but for a lone hunter with or without a dog, limits come too soon and with so much more ground left to explore. 

Critter. Built like a linebacker. A female stud.

I can’t recall if it was the first with Critter, but certainly the most memorable. We started in the Nebraska sandhills and moved to South Dakota during the first week of South Dakota’s pheasant opener. I always left the first few days of the opener to the crowds and moved in on a Wednesday expecting a good hunt on Thursday and Friday. Then I would have had a few days to make a plan to avoid the upcoming weekend crowd for the rest of my stay.

We overnighted in a motel in Pierre while I poured over paper maps. I plotted a route to to northcentral SD avoiding Indian Reservations. I located a west river area with sufficient public access to search for sharptails. I stopped to take a length just at first light in an undisclosed location and never heard so many rooster pheasants in my life! Too many roosters in every direction to even think of counting. I rechecked maps and pinpointed several Walkin areas close by. 

We hunted the entire morning without seeing a single grouse or pheasant. I was surprised to not find grouse, but there wasn’t the pre-hunt planning information available then. A guy just made a stab at a location planning to move along till he found birds. 

I was already changing my focus to pheasants as noon approached. In an area with more crop and more Walkin I settled on a CRP field with the surrounding sections in corn. I was surprised that the only hunters I saw all morning were heading out of the area in a hurry to what I assumed they felt was a better pheasant area. 

I was parked at the entrance watching the dash clock tic-toc to 12 eating my typical PBJ lunch, when a flock of about 25 pheasants sailed out of the corn and landed within 50 yards of my parked truck. Just before my clock showed 12, I heard a distant town whistle blow noon. 

As quietly as I could I slipped on my vest loaded the Superposed and healed Critter. We would slip out of my rig and circle wide and quietly to push the birds back towards my vehicle instead of deeper into the section. I identified a half dozen or more roosters in the flock and didn’t want a full flush because I was carrying a two shooter. I though we were wide enough but 100 yards from the truck Critter bolted off to the side and flushed a rooster. I dropped him with the first shot and spun left and right expecting more flushes. Nothing. I reloaded and could see Critter had the dead bird. I lengthened our cast in case birds had run deeper than I thought and finally released Critter for real. In less than 50 yards she had several hens in the air and then a pair of roosters. I missed with the first barrel but hit the bird hard with the improved/modified. As Critter brought that rooster back, I knew I could get a third rooster in just a few minutes so broke away to hunt the perimeter of the field. I was in no hurry to limit out on pheasants so soon. 

We were nearly full circle and Critter never got birdy when we were passing a couple of choppy hills. At the base of a draw between them Critter got birdy and weaved her way up the draw. Soon she had good scent and she was sprinting. Sometimes I think that running to keep up with a flusher is a good way to burn off the adrenaline of an expected flush before the bird appears. Then, sometimes, I think I should have trained my dogs to reliably hup on a whistle so I didn’t have to run so much. But I was still relatively young and a little running felt good.    

Critter was nearly to the crest and after 40 yards of running I was certain she was trailing a pheasants. She had broken from an all out sprint and was sorting scent up a side hill. I always welcomed the brief period between Critter over running scent and turning to pucsh the birds back towards me as it was less ground for me to make up. The bad part was it was also an alarm that I only had seconds before the flush. 

Sharptails! Nearly a dozen grouse were clucking their way over the rise as I pulled up and dropped the nearest bird, swung to the side and dropped a second. I reloaded as quickly as I could hoping for a late flusher. After several hours in the morning without seeing a grouse I wasn’t about to let a limit bird slip away now. Maybe my first bird was the late flusher as no more grouse came out of the grass. But Critter had the first bird on her way back and I could see a slash of white feathers higher up that wasn’t moving. 

As was typical, Critter insisted on carrying her last bird for a ways before I sat down to let her rest as we were just a few hundred yards from the truck and hopefully our last pheasant. I sat at the base of the hills with her and talked of what great hunters we were.

There’s a saying among fishermen, “never leave fish to go find fish.” And I was beginning to think I made that mistake with the earlier group of pheasants. Critter and I had just hunted for a couple of miles around the CRP field without flushing even a hen. But it was only about 1:00 so there was plenty of time to find one more bird even if these had moved on. 

Well, I needn’t have been concerned. The remaining pheasants were right behind my truck. I stopped to empty my game bag and leave my coat behind before looking for the last rooster flush and Critter bounced into a clump of weeds just yards from my tailgate and flushed a half dozen pheasants with two roosters in the group. It took me both barrels to knock down my last bird and Critter just a few seconds to meet me at the tailgate where I always left her full water bowl under the shade. She plopped at my feet lightly clutching her rooster with one on her water bowl. I sat with her again, laid the bird in my lap so she could keep an eye on it and slid the water under her chin.  

Once we were stowed back in the truck I checked a map for a route further west and realized there was a blacktop road just a few miles north that paralleled the North Dakota border. The remainder of this day will be part of another podcast that you won’t want to miss, but for now, we’ll bounce to the following morning. 

I warmed up my Jeep pickup while I checked South Dakota Walkin Atlas. Yep, there was a lot of access land ten miles south of my campsite. I decided on the largest continuous acreage and we were on the road sharing a breakfast of Ritz crackers and peanut butter. 

I realize that the previous day, we didn’t take a combination limit of sharptails and pheasants as should be a requirement for inclusion in this podcast, but the end that you haven’t heard was one of the most spectacular days of bird hunting I’ve ever had.  And the entire week of hunting was a week I’ll never forget. 

I don’t keep a journal, but I relive all of my hunts so many times in my head, that most days are as clear as text. But there are parts of this five days that are difficult. We shot a lot of pheasants, 18, and quite a few sharptails, 16 and a few Huns three. And if I had a non-resident duck license, we would have easily limited out on the dozens of drake mallards, we incidentally flushed off the CRP stock tanks when pheasant hunting. And the turkey! I passed a flock of 50-60 Merriams on public land, every day while grouse hunting. I vowed to myself that like Arnold, “I’ll be back” next year with enough time, licenses and tags to make a spectacular season out of just five days.

At our first stop, Critter and I worked the edge where a CRP field bordered hay ground. We had three sharptails on our first pass. By now, the 2’s of last night’s snow had melted off but the ground was still damp so I threw a tarp on the ground to rest and have some lunch.      

Proximity to limits never meant much to Critter. Like me, she expected to dump a full game bag at the truck and head out for more. She would even hunt after dark in the vacant campgrounds I chose. I would leave the flap of the tent partially open so she could check the perimeter of our camp several times during the night. I would lie half awake whenever she left listening for her return. I could often hear her galloping by like western movie horses, fading in and then fading out. It wasn’t till one morning in western South Dakota that she pushed a bobcat out of a plum thicket within 100 yards of our camp, that I reconsidered letting her run at night. From then on the tent flap was secured till dawn or I had to go out. 

On one pre-bobcat trip, in that same camp ground, Critter woke me after one of her midnight romps, scratching my face with a bristly muzzle. I bolted upright thinking oh crap! She got in a tangle with a porcupine. I’d only had one previous dog that was sprayed by a skunk but never one that tangled with a porky. Critter kept pushing her way up to my face while I tried to hold her back so she didn’t injure herself more. When I finally got a light on my sweet little girl, I was relieved and totally disgusted in the same instant. The bristles that she’d been scratching against my face weren’t porky quills after all, just dead grass. …..she’d been rubbing my face with a mouth full of dead grass…. wadded up in a ball of used toilet paper. 
 
Just before the noon shooting hours, I decided to drive to the other side of this block to see if it looked like better pheasant cover. Yeah, there were higher hills to the north, with a broad wash that drained across the road into a chain of willow lined stock tanks surrounded by dark weeds. All surrounded by wheat stubble. 

As I was fussing in the cab refilling my coat with shells, a rooster stepped out of the grass just 50 yards in front of the truck, picking grit. Critter was on the seat beside me and she saw him too. 90% of the time she was a trusted obedient dog. Once outside the truck, I could just tap my leg for her to heal and walk to within range of where the bird crossed toward the hills and Critter would stay at my side until I released her…but after several minutes of that rooster strutting in front of the windshield, she might just bolt. If I had known how many pheasants were in this area, I wouldn’t have cared, but so far this was the only rooster we’d seen. 

I leashed Critter down the road and when about 20 yards from the clump of grass I had visually marked, I turned her loose. I don’t know how many of you have watched videos of fox and coyotes mousing. You know, when they bounce high into the air and come down with all four feet together trying to trap the mouse. Well, when a rooster is right under a flushing dog’s nose, but won’t flush, they do the same thing. It must be instinctual. Critter hadn’t made it five feet into the grass and she was whining and yipping as she pounced in a tight circle trying to pin that bird. The expression on your dog’s face as they pounce like that is of pure joy and anxiety. Ears flopping, back arched, mouth poised to snatch, all the while whimpering. It’s comical. 

How that rooster avoided her jaws is beyond me, but with that kind of fore warning he didn’t stand a chance against a Superposed and Federal Premium 7-1/2”s. As soon as Critter pushed her way out of the waist high grass I returned to my truck for a camera. I wanted an eye level picture of just the rooster and her face pushing through a wall of brown grass. It looked better in my mind than on a slide, but I still look at it every now and then and smile. 

We were finally back in hunt mode and I directed her up the draw and into the hills. There were a couple of dark patches of weeds in flat spots and I could see a couple of plum thickets on the far fence line. There would be another rooster or two up here. I wanted to save those willows and dirt tanks for another day if I could. They were something to really look forward to. Near the top of the hills, the draw v’ed and Critter followed the left side. In just a few yards, she was birdy and the race was on. 

A girlfriend had gifted me a pocket tape recorder so I could keep a verbal record of my hunts and I happened to realize it was in my pocket. I set it for record and took off to catch up with Critter. I was running uphill trying not to raise my legs too high or I’d spill the loose shells out of my pockets. Panting like I was in worse shape than I thought, I talked for the recorder, knowing I was losing ground. By now Critter was running as hard as she could and I knew that if the bird didn’t flush soon, he would buttonhook back to let her pass. That was always my best chance to get in range, when Critter put her head down. If she started bounding higher shifting her nose back and forth I’d know she lost scent and the bird was between us. There she goes, she’ll be turning back soon and I have another ten yards to make up. I was heaving like a fat man being chased by a lion when I knew I was in range and planted my feet. I was talking into the air hoping the mic would pick it up that he’d flush any second. When he punched out of the grass heading to my left. It was a good range for my choke and abilities under normal circumstances but I used all available fire power to knock him down with the second barrel of copper 6’s. at about 40 yards. 

After the retrieve I determined that Critter needed a little rest and I would sit with her for a few minutes or maybe an hour. My sitting proved to be uncomfortable for Critter so I laid down. That was better. What’s the hurry? I had hours to find one more rooster. The sun was shining warm on my face, my truck was parked on a two track a couple hundred yards down, and Critter was chewing grass and nuzzling a warm dead rooster at my side.  

But Critter could be a fickle little bitch. One minute I was certain that I may as well sleep because she needed a lot of rest and the next she’s whining and tromping on me to get up and go. 

We crested the hill to check out a plum thicket on top but there weren’t any birds home, then dropped back down to the y in the draw and worked the other branch to the top and another plum thicket. Nothing. We worked a loop back down to the two track but there was no way I was invading those dirt tanks across the way. Instead I decided to keep hunting the perimeter searching for a rogue rooster. We were heading toward a broken down fence a quarter mile away and in less than 10 feet Critter went from birdy to a rooster in the air. When I checked my watch it was just past 1 o’clock and we were limited out on sharptails and pheasants, all on public land, and in an area I had never bird hunted before. 

I kinda wanted to get back to camp just for a visual of where I’d spent the night. I had been driving all over southern North Dakota the night before trying to find a campground or motel. The wind was howling and blowing snow but I couldn’t find a camping area and all the motels were already booked with pheasant hunters. I was just ready to sleep in my little cab on a street corner when I recalled I’d been coyote calling in this area a couple years earlier. There was a state camp ground a couple hours from here in South Dakota. I pulled in to the empty campground at 2:00 a.m and pitched my tent in 2”s of snow.

Although I was looking forward to a hot camp lunch I decided to drive a little out of the way to check out another area that looked good on the map. Yeah, there was an old grainery out in the middle of the section and up ahead a whimpy shelterbelt that withered to just brush a half mile out. But….. Those aren’t songbirds. Up ahead, a covey of Hungarian partridge flew across the road and landed along the edge of that Walkin shelterbelt! 

This was kinda like road hunting, but kinda not. I’m not against walking ditches for birds when nothing else is available, but cruising ditches for birds, from a truck window, is hardly excusable when you have access and numbers of birds to walk up. 

But I was scouting land, not birds and these were partridge. I had few opportunities to shoot partridge and this was happenstance. They went down 50 yards off the road. OK. They’ll probably get up wild and if I do get a chance just one flush, no follow up.

I dropped two 7-1/2’s in, didn’t bother with a coat or extra shells, and let Critter out. I didn’t try to control her as the birds had landed outside the shelterbelt and I knew she’d be hunting through the thick of it. They would be upwind of her and I should get shooting if they didn’t flush wild from my presence.  

I was two bird lucky on the flush. The main body flushed just as Critter pulled out of the brush into the grass and I dropped one then Critter ran right over another that held a little too tight.   
    
You wouldn’t have thought that I’d break away. But I did. It was only 1:30 in new country and I had a limit of pheasants a limit of sharptails and just three birds away from a limit of Huns. I passed a flock of 50-60 turkey a half mile back on public and was seeing mallards and pintails from the road. I had had some of my very best days ruffed grouse and prairie grouse hunting when I didn’t hurry and just walked the miles. I was willing to take a break, check out camp, eat beans and hunt this area for the afternoon.

After lunch Critter and I walked out to the abandoned grainery, hunted the outside edge of the wheat stubble and traipsed an extra quarter mile to a rock pile on a rough hill top in the center of the wheat. We walked the shelterbelt for more than a mile till it petered out and then hunted the break along a heavy draw back to the truck. We flushed enough pheasants and sharptails to limit again, but not one partridge. I drove to the next Walkin and another after that hitting all the edges that should have held Huns but not one.   

A few years later, I was passing through the same area on my way home from coyote calling Montana and I spotted a pair of fox laying on a snow bank about ten miles west of where I’d been searching for Huns this day. While driving to the nearest ranch house to ask permission, I saw another pair and then a single ran across the rancher’s lane. I stayed and hunted fox for three days and averaged seeing a covey of Huns per mile. All within 15 miles of where I’d been previously skunked. I even returned to this area to see if there were as many Huns there that I’d just missed. In several hours I didn’t see a single covey. 

I’m sure that a local guy would have known there were birds a few miles away, but this was my first hunt in the area and 600 miles from home. I’m not complaining I had a helluva trip and several more in the same area over the years. But I never found Huns like on that fox hunt again.   

To this day, I’ve still not taken a limit of Huns and pheasants in the same day. I could have been hunting western North Dakota the past few years with a good chance of taking them, but North Dakota has the lowest limit on Huns of any state with huntable numbers. And a lot lower than some states that don’t even have huntable numbers, like the 8 bird limit in Iowa. But this coming 2020-21 season, I will be in North Dakota for a couple of weeks trying for Huns and pheasants. If I get them, I’ll still try to duplicate the combination in South Dakota where the Hun limit is five.