With my current lab Bo at 7 months old, we take a double limit of pheasants in North Dakota & Minnesota. The next day we take a triple limit of pheasants in North Dakota, South Dakota & Minnesota and finish with a double limit of pheasants in North Dakota and South Dakota on day three!
Spur of the moment, seat of my pants scouting trip, turns into the best bird hunt of my life!
With my current lab Bo at 7 months old, we take a double limit of pheasants in North Dakota & Minnesota. The next day we take a triple limit of pheasants in North Dakota, South Dakota & Minnesota and finish with a double limit of pheasants in North Dakota and South Dakota on day three!
Spur of the moment, seat of my pants scouting trip, turns into the best bird hunt of my life!
PHEASANT & PHEASANT
MINNESOTA (2) & NORTH DAKOTA (3)
Nov. 2, 2010
I returned home on a Sunday evening from Bo’s debut, dual limit hunt in Nebraska. While we didn’t get the greater prairie chicken & snipe or dove combo I was hoping for, we did retake the sharp-tail and snipe combo that I took with Critter many years earlier, and a combo limit I’ve sought for many years, 3-pheasants and 3-greater prairie chickens in the same day.
By Tuesday, I was getting antsy and I believe on my wife’s nerves, “you and Bo are on a roll, why don’t you find someplace to go hunting?” That sounded suspiciously like an ultimatum.
I reloaded the pickup and Bo leaving my wife smiling in the driveway, as we pulled out at 11:30 p.m. for the all night drive to the North Dakota - Minnesota border.
There aren’t many guys as foolish as I. No public land atlas for North Dakota or Minnesota. No licenses, no contacts and no sleep. The only reasonable thing I did was to maintain low expectations. I always ask my wife before leaving home, “How many critters will I get?”.
She asked, “what’s the limit?”.
I explained to her that this wasn’t that kind of hunt. This was just a scouting trip to see if a longer hunt would be worthwhile. I explained to her that Bo was only 7 months old and flushed her first pheasant just a couple of days earlier. It was crazy to think of taking limits in an area that I had never hunted, three weeks into the season, with a pup. I told her if I come home with 4 roosters I’ll be happy and 6 roosters would make me very happy. After all, if I drove all night, I could hunt Wed. Thurs and Friday and drive all night home to be at work at 4:30 a.m. on Sat. That’s some pretty fast and tiring hunting.
I was scheduled to be off work again in a couple of weeks and was vacillating between attempting a double limit of pheasants in North Dakota and Minnesota or bob-white quail and about anything in Kansas. In 20 years of planning and chasing dual limits, even having already taken three double limits of pheasants, I had never considered including Minnesota and North Dakota or Minnesota and South Dakota, for a double limit of pheasants. For all those years I was willing to accept the previous Minnesota & Iowa double limit I’d taken but just didn’t include Minnesota as a premier pheasant state. A lapse of judgment effectively illustrated by several post 2010 pheasant harvest reports, where Minnesota hunters actually shot more pheasants than Iowa hunters. That fact alone should embarrass the Iowa DNR.
P&P M&ND page 2
I caught a wink of sleep on “Main Street Somewhere” in west-central Minnesota, and picked up the state pheasant stamp before turning off on gravel to search for a place to hunt. Properly licensed for Minnesota and still 30 miles short of my intended starting point I stopped to knock on a door. There was decent cover all around and the place was kind of a shambles. Just what a hunter likes to see. No one came to the door. As I pulled back onto the road, I saw two roosters land in a swath of grass on a side-hill. Private land and encouraging. I decided to drive around the section and on the far side found a farmer kicking dirt around his new pole building.
I learned his land bordered public and he said he had a hard time keeping guys out. After a few minutes of talking he gave in and said I might as well hunt it, everyone else did.
All he had that was worthwhile was a small slough in the middle of a disked corn field. (Kind of takes protectionism to a fine degree.) A very small slough 400 yards out in the middle of a disked, frozen cornfield. Ya gotta want a pheasant pretty bad to hop a quarter of a mile across frozen, slippery, dirt clods to maybe see a pheasant.
I started across with the sun in my face, at 9:00 a.m., the daily start time for Minnesota.
I just reached grass with Bo 15 yards in front of me, when she flushed a few pheasants. I couldn’t tell hens from roosters in the sun, when another pheasant flushed to my right, that had color and cackled. I hit him at about 35 yards and he tumbled down. Bo ran towards the bird only because I did, but with some resemblance to a proper bird dog she was able to dig him out of a mat of grass. She received the same exaggerated “GOOD GIRL!!” we all give our pups. A little teasing with the bird and then the, “Let’s go get another one!”.
Bo flushed another hen out of the puddle of a wetland in the middle and we were finished with the farmer’s available cover. I’ve hunted the wrong way on public before and found it often confounds birds, so I emptied the lead out of my coat and left the shells on the private side of the boundary fence. Reloaded with a couple of steel 2’s that I hate but always carry, and crossed the fence.
There was a plum thicket in the fence line and before I could struggle to the outside, I saw Bo chasing a rooster through the tangle. I was just about able to fully stand when he attempted to flush but couldn’t get through the branches. He tried again but faltered and I shot over him. Then he just made it out of the thicket and successfully flushed but I was still tangled a bit. I finally got on him and he tumbled down in adjacent tall willows.
I have to say I was kind of disappointed. I had been driving 10 hours and then spent more time walking across the plowing then hunting. I know there are a lot of guys who would love to have that problem, but if it weren’t for planning to hunt North Dakota as well, I would have been looking at another several hours of driving to get into ruffed grouse timber, to finish out the day. I left Bo to figure out how to get to that bird without leaving half her hide in the thicket and re-crossed the fence to pick up my shells and double the distance of her retrieve. It would be a total of about 20 yards.
The walk back to the truck felt considerably shorter with my limit of pheasants and the realization I would be hunting in North Dakota in just a couple of hours.
I kenneled Bo up right away as there was a car approaching on the road and an older gentleman stopped as I stowed the birds. He said if I wanted to shoot some pheasants I should hunt the minimum maintenance road right across from where I was parked. He said he lived on the corner but only had an acreage. However, the county abandoned the road just that summer so I could hunt it and he hadn’t seen anyone there all season. Said he heard roosters crowing in the ditches every mourning and evening. I thanked him and let him know I might be back again in the next couple of days.
Then I stopped to thank the farmer, who welcomed me back, and headed for Nodak.
I fueled up and purchased the non-resident North Dakota license at a casino on the border and headed west. I had talked to Stan Kohn, head of the North Dakota Upland Bird program a few days earlier explaining that I would be attempting to take a double limit of pheasants in Minnesota and North Dakota. He suggested I travel at least two counties west along the South Dakota border and three would be better. As all state employees, save one in Nebraska, have reacted when I explain my goals, Kohn was helpful and encouraging. As I recall, he asked me to let him know if I was successful. Let this chapter be a shout to Stan.
Driving through the first two counties was easy if you know good pheasant habitat. After about 50 miles, the cover started looking better. As I was wandering aimlessly heading west, I spotted a farmer out mending fence.
He was a nice guy and said that he saved his ground for his grandkids, but he really didn’t have many pheasants anyway. But he did offer to locate a place for me if I had a map. I produced the North Dakota Plots guide and he pointed out the property. He said, “It’s the minimum maintenance road a mile south of the correction line on the west.”. I told him I always wondered if there was a name for the little squiggly that longitudinal roads make every so often. Correction lines.
He pointed out a section road a half mile north of the South Dakota border. “The ground on the north side belongs to a friend of mine. He lives out of state. The crops are out, no livestock and it isn’t posted so you can hunt it. He’d let you anyway, but you don’t need to ask. We hunted it opening day without dogs and didn’t get any birds. But they’re in there”. “After you finish, my best friend lives across the road. He has 1,200 acres and quite a few pheasants. You tell him Dave sent you and you’ll find all the birds you want on his place.” Dave wished me luck, I thanked him sincerely trying not to drool over the prospects and he waved me off.
The place was only 15 miles away and the ground was just as he described. There were two smallish CRP fields on the north side with corn and bean stubble surrounding them. I made certain I had enough lead shells in my coat and turned Bo loose. Being a pup, she was excited but not too bold. I’ve often felt that one of the best seasons you’ll have with a flusher is it’s puppy season. They’re still timid enough that they don’t want to run into the next county and it takes them long enough to sort out scent that if there are birds around, you’ll be close when they flush.
This was about a 40 acre field covering most of a hill and then some flat ending with a marsh on the far side. I decided to hunt the heavy grass along the base of the hill where the moisture collects and then circle into the cattails and plum thickets along the stubble.
Bo got birdy in the first couple hundred yards and did a good job of tracking the runner. Fortunately, the rooster was a zig-zagger instead of a head long sprinter, and held tight until she nudged him into the air. I hung back 20 yards behind Bo to allow for the pattern to open up knowing I could still kill a bird another 20 yards in front of her.
He was a cackling, defiant guy all full of piss and vinegar and I hit him well at about 30 yards. I’m sure Bo was thinking this was easy stuff. Like following the smell of grilled steak to a free food bank. I sat in the grass with her for a couple of minutes letting her mouth the bird. Unless I got incredibly sloppy with my shooting this was looking to be another short hunt.
There were no more flushes until we doubled back to the marsh and plum thicket. This thicket was tall enough and thick enough that it would be tough to see and shoot through. So as soon as Bo was committed to working through it, I hustled to the far side and the end to be certain to get a shot. Instead, Bo cut back the way we came and was on a runner going the other way!
I ran straight towards the cattails to gain as much vision as I could when she put the juvenile rooster up at about 30 yards. Fortunately, he was angling toward me and the marsh and just then several more pheasants flushed behind me. Some of them cackling!
I shot quickly at Bo’s bird which fell in the cattails and then turned and knocked down another behind me that fell with another "splat", into cattails as well. This was a good deal that I already had my three bird limit on the ground but a bad deal for where these two fell. I started into the marsh ahead of Bo, but in about three steps I was in knee-high, freezing water, wearing ankle high boots. I decided to give Bo an opportunity to work this out herself.
What do you know, my 7-month old Lab had the rooster she flushed and was splashing back with it! She was so happy she’d forgotten about the other bird, but with a little encouragement she puppy splashed around, somewhat believing that there might be something out there for her. Once I pretended I was coming out to help her, she turned a little deeper into the cattails and I could tell by her tail she was close. Fortunately this bird fell dead too, making him an easy find, and Bo was slogging back with her third rooster in 30 minutes.
That was five roosters in two states and areas I had never hunted before. All in less than two total hours of hunting!
Trying to explain the hero shot process to a 7 month old puppy with fiver roosters around her, is a difficult thing. After about 25 trips to reposition her, I finally just snapped a couple of pics and called that good enough. I couldn’t wait to call my wife at home and nephew in Illinois to let them know that Bo and I were all finished with North Dakota and Minnesota in just five hours of our first day.
Now, where’s Dave’s friend with the 1,200 acres?
You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear the culmination of this unbelievable, three day hunt. The following day, is a triple limit, and the final day another double limit. I'm back home in Iowa after 72 hours with 19 roosters!