Midwestern Pheasant Hunting

I recount pheasant hunts from Kansas to North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. I've hunted pheasants from 1970 thru today, taking dual limits of pheasants all the way through the 2019 season. All self-made, self-planned hunts on public (and a little bit a private) land.

Every dual limit hunt that I talk, is or was available to any of you without owning land, paying a fee, a guide or engaging in a swap hunt. My message is just go!     

Transcript

PHEASANT & PHEASANT

Hopefully, you’ve been following along with the development of Critter and Woogs. This is the third dual limit taken over that pair before either was 8 months old. Critter was my liver & white female Springer Spaniel and Woogs my female, yellow Lab. 

I know that most bird dog owners feel that the mid-life years with their dogs are the best. But not me. I would hunt with a first year puppy every year if I could. And I think the list of dual limits that I’ve taken over pups that weren’t yet a year old would make a believer out of many fellow hunters. This is the spring of 2020 and to date, I’ve taken four double limits, three combination limits and one triple limit all over pups less than a year old. And no, I wasn’t hunting them with older dogs. That’s seven of the nineteen dual limits that I’ve taken, over three different pups in just a two year period. And all three pups were less than 9 months old at the time of take, with no preseason bird exposure and certainly no professional training. As you may have noticed in the preceding podcasts, my dogs train themselves. And apparently, they did a pretty good job of it.   


This podcast could be hours long. Like most of you, I’ve probably spent more days and walked more miles after pheasants, than any other game bird. I’m not sure what I love most above pheasant hunting but I think it’s the bird itself. 

Opening weekend can be so ridiculously easy and then just a few days later they can be impossible to find in any numbers and even more difficult to flush in range. Yes, it is the bird. 

Like many of you, the most distasteful part of bird hunting for me is crippling birds. And the second is having to dispatch a live bird in my hands. Wringing a birds neck or suffocating it with your bare hands feels almost criminal. There isn’t a single time that I must do this that I don’t wish for just a moment that I had completely missed the bird. Always quick clean kills or maddening misses make for the best upland days.

And that’s the thing about pheasants. They always seem defiant and indifferent at the same time. Grouse, quail and partridge evoke a sympathy that pheasants just don’t. Pheasants make you feel like, “if you weren’t doing it to me, I’d be doing it to you.” 

Anyone who has shot more than a few pheasants and hasn’t had their hands and wrists slashed by claws, and arms and face beaten by pounding wings, has missed much of what pheasants give to toughen us up.  


The first Monday of Iowa’s pheasant season found me searching for a place to hunt too near the Minnesota border. There were hunters everywhere and they all seemed to have Minnesota or Wisconsin plates. I was visiting my parents in Waterloo on this hunt so I decided to drop back south 50 miles. I found better cover closer to home cooked meals, evening Pinnochle games and free showers, albeit all private. 

Back in those days, it was still acceptable to hunt railroad tracks, and I found a doozey. It was a short piece of track cutting through the southeastern corner of a partially wooded section. The tracks were only about 3/8 of a mile long, and the pups and I, had our three roosters in the first 200 yards. I let the dogs run the rest of the section and they put up eight or ten more roosters. I received permission to hunt the quarter section just north of the tracks for the next morning and was confident of another early limit of roosters.   

The thing about me is when one dual limit seems assured, I complicate things. I had taken a combination limit of five ruffed grouse and two rooster pheasants in Minnesota just a few days earlier. It was still early in my dual limit days and I didn’t think that there were all that many possibilities at the time. I even believed that if I wrote a book or conducted seminars and had only shot a dozen or so dual limits, guys would say, “So what, the guy had a few lucky days“. So, when I could duplicate a previous dual limit in another state or states, I did. I don’t believe in luck. 

That’s my excuse for not just sticking with a double limit of pheasants, two in Minnesota and three in Iowa in the same day. Instead, I headed to my Iowa ruffed grouse grounds and tried to take a second combination limit of pheasants and ruffed grouse, this time, three of each in Iowa. 

Critter and I were just south of Dorchester, Iowa at sunrise the following mourning, hopeful for a limit of ’ruffs before noon. We got into grouse before we were even to the good stuff. It was a longer walk across the pasture to the cover, than the walk in cover. I shot four shells before 8:00 a.m. and had the three bird limit of Iowa ’ruffs. With good private pheasant land secured, who wouldn’t be confident of repeating the combination limit?

The distance to the pheasant ground was shorter on the map than in driving. I wasn’t pheasant hunting until 10:00 a.m. I started out walking some uncut hay ground surrounded by good grass and on the far end, the railroad tracks. Along the gravel road side, Critter flushed a small covey of Huns and I dropped a single. It was the first partridge I had shot in Iowa. We walked the rest of the hay ground, only flushing a couple of hen pheasants. 

I switched dogs at the truck and soon Woogs flushed a lone rooster from a small woods on the opposite side of the quarter. I hit him well and Woogs made a big deal of an easy retrieve. She pranced with that bird, like a race horse at the starting gate. You have to love that puppy year. 

It took me two shots to drop another rooster that flushed amidst a group of hens, and with some trailing, Woogs brought the meatier part of him to….well, my side. She left most of his tail feathers and a good portion of breast feathers in the field. Even as a pup, Woogs was a bone crusher on a crippled bird. She didn’t chew them and I’m sure it was as humane as a neck wringing, but the sounds of crunching bone were straight out of a horror movie. Truthfully, I was thankful that I didn’t have to clean up my own mess. 

She trotted around with that rooster held high, occasionally tossing it in the air and scooping it back up, practically daring me to try to take it from her. A guy learns after a few pups, that there are some things that they’ll come around to on their own. Once they realize you aren’t going to chase them for the bird, and if all they want to do is parade around with a dead bird, you are perfectly happy to keep hunting without them, they’ll mend the situation and give you the bird. After the first couple of pups I got tired of fighting with them about style and grace and saved the arguments for more important matters, like safety. All the rest is just to impress your friends. I’ve said it before, nearly every training problem that you encounter with a dog can be settled by shooting more birds. 

Finally back at the truck, Woogs agreed to a pheasant for luncheon meat, exchange. But after hearing all the shooting, I think Critter would have traded her soul for that rooster.

Before I started hunting the tracks I drove to a farm house on the far side of the section to seek permission to also hunt a large CRP field on the south side of the tracks. They were an old German husband and wife all about work and no play, but they wished me luck and said I was even welcome to stop back. 

I was much more confident about finishing this limit and returning later in the week to try that double limit of pheasants that any sane guy would have been doing in the first place. I still started on the tracks. There were hens flushing near the road, on both sides as I parked. When I was loaded up and loosed Woogs, another bird caught my eye. Near some trees, far down the tracks I saw several pheasants flushing and I’d swear I saw a white on one. 

I had opportunities as a teenager to hunt off colored roosters. There was a pair that hung out together throughout the entire season. One was a full albino and the other a partial. They were close to Waterloo on private, river bottom land that I had permission to hunt. I don’t think anyone else was aware of the birds as I flushed them consistently right up to the last day of the season. Back then, I was young and hell on rabbits and squirrels but the only pheasants that I could hit would have to have been road kill or buried in the snow. Needless to say after much effort, a box of shells and nighttime agonizing, I never shot either of those birds. Back then, white pheasants were fairly common in our area. I knew of several mounts and a lot of the guys I knew had at least seen a partial albino pheasant. And no. No one in the vicinity of Waterloo was releasing pheasants. 

I have seen several mounted albinos and although the idea of having one is pretty cool, they are not a magnificent mount, unless you like domestic chickens. This may be hard to believe, but I knew a farmer who had shot four partial and one full albino himself. I hunted with him once, as a young man when he was in his 50’s. We each limited out, myself with just four shells and I was still humbled by him. “Buss” was not someone you wanted to hunt beside if he was in a selfish mood. He was a real shooter.

This also reminds me of one Thanksgiving morning when my brothers and I were driving to our rural high school for a wrestling weigh-in when I saw a black, bird, in a short waterway. It was not a crow. I was certain that it was a black pheasant! My brothers were not hunters, not interested in their brother as a hunter and just kept driving. I mentioned this incident to “Buss” when we were talking about albinos and he said that he too had seen a black rooster. Said he was picking corn when he thought there was a black cat running down the row in front of the combine. He saw it again on another pass and realized it was a rooster pheasant. He went back to the house for his shotgun and walked the few standing rows left, but never saw the bird again. 

Critter and I passed on several easy shots at roosters that afternoon hoping to get the partial albino. She flushed him twice within range in the CRP field, but I didn’t shoot because the bird didn’t cackle and both times it was flying straight away. I just couldn’t be sure if it was a rooster. Friends said that’s the kind of bird you sex after the shot. And later, so did a taxidermist. 

He was considered the best pheasant taxidermist in the area at the time, Casey Jones from Winthrop, Iowa, and had mounted a bunch of albino pheasants. The Dunkerton, Dewer, Jesup and Independence area of northeast Iowa gave up a lot of white birds and Casey saw most of them. He told me, “You should have shot it. I don’t tell the hunters, but many of the white birds brought in are hens. I call the game warden and he gives me a tag to mount a hen and no one is the wiser”. 

I had Casey mount the first Nebraska pheasant that I shot and it was over Critter. Not because of it being a state first for me and Critter, but it just struck me as a very pretty bird. Probably the prettiest rooster that I had ever shot. At first I didn’t understand what it was about the bird that made it so striking. It wasn’t particularly large and had just average tail feathers. 

Maybe it was the memory. I was quail hunting at the time and I shot him with 7/8 oz of 8’s out of a cylinder bore 20 gauge, at 30 yards. I was planning to hit him at least twice if not three times when I pulled the trigger. But instead, he coasted to the ground, dead at the first shot. I can still picture that bird lying in the grass, on the side of a hill, with it’s wings and tail outstretched as if were still airborne. I was happy that I had soft mouthed Critter with me, rather than Woogs. 30 years later, that rooster is still flying across my wall. 

Over the years, I’ve realized what it is about that bird and others like it, that make them so striking. It’s the two prominent white slashes on either side of the bird’s head. A few roosters have bold, white slashes, but most do not. Some don’t have any noticeable slashes while others have faint to obvious markings. But only a few are bold. 

I don’t think it’s a regional thing as I’ve shot pheasants from Kansas to North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Idaho and I’ve always found bold white slashes to be uncommon. I’m sure that some will respond that you shoot roosters like that all the time. I think that by the end of this series of podcasts, you’ll agree that I’ve shot a lot of roosters and you might expect that I’ve paid some attention to coloration. And I can tell you that I have shot few roosters with similar markings. 
  

I can’t say that three ruffed grouse, two pheasants and a Hun are a bad day, but a whole lot worse than it could have been. For most of that afternoon, I was convinced that I would not only retake a previous dual limit in a different state, but that that dual limit, would also include an albino. Sometimes I wish I would have just surrendered and shot one of several ordinary roosters that Critter put up that afternoon. But I’m always looking for that truly unique experience, that inherently leads to a few disappointments. 

I hunted those same fields several times throughout the season and never saw that white bird again.


I widened my search of a good pocket of pheasants in Iowa, but closer to the Minnesota border and after a few days, realized the pups were wore out and it was time to return to Minneapolis and work. 

The following morning it was raining and I slept in for a late start home. Once I was north of Highway 18, I took back roads still searching. Around noon I decided to knock on doors just to let the pups run a little. A nice lady gave me permission to hunt their slough on the north side of the road and said to watch her husband combining on the south. He would be coming in for lunch soon and I could hunt that side until he came back out to finish. 

Is there any other recreational activity that a guy asks for so much from complete strangers and gets it? And with a smile and a good luck wish?

I took Critter through the creek slough. It ended in the middle of the section in a block of marsh grass. She flushed a couple of hens and once we reached the end, I sat on a rock pile and watched the combine turn for anther pass. There was no hurry back to the truck as it took him about half an hour to make a round. 

Soon, in the distance, I could hear cackling. Then two roosters far out, were sailing towards our slough. I ducked down and watched as they flew directly at us. When the lead rooster was about 30 yards out, I stood and shot him. The lagging rooster immediately dove into the grass. I reloaded and I hustled directly toward the live rooster.  Critter joined me with a mouthful of colorful rooster and was whirling around and I was sure she could smell the other pheasant when suddenly he burst into the air spitting cackles and crap. I rode him out and dropped him hard as well. 

Now, this was unexpected. We had two roosters within a half hour and I was only an hour and a half from some great Minnesota ground that I was invited to return to. Just a week earlier I was attempting a combination limit of pheasants and ruffed grouse in Minnesota and scored on hundreds of acres of hard posted CRP in South-central Minnesota. The owner even invited me to return if I had an opportunity at another dual limit. He said he only let me hunt because I promised I would only return for another dual limit and I would never, ever bring anyone with me. You guys who never hunt alone could learn something from that. The biggest peeve I hear from landowners is against the guy who returns with friends. In these hard cases, you will only get on in the first place if you’re alone. 

Critter and I reworked the slough all the way back to the truck determined to find our third Iowa rooster. I’m giving a dog credit for understanding that I’m sure she lacked. But she did have prey drive. She would quarter through a parking lot if I was carrying a gun.

At the truck the farmer was just leaving the combine and I offered to give him a ride to his house for lunch. He was very friendly and said I was welcome to continue hunting even when he was combining as long as I was careful. This was a pleasant surprise when for the last few days I felt like I had to guilt wrestle to get permission and it had mostly been declared “no contest”.

I reloaded before turning Woogs loose. When it’s legal and safe to shoot from the road, I always load up before I turn the dog loose. I can’t say that I’ve shot a lot of birds from the ditch, as I refuse most of them, but it’s nice to be ready. Before I cross the fence, I have the dog thoroughly work all the cover within range, then call her in before I cross the fence. This practice works well as I’ve seldom been caught with my crotch hung up on barbed wire when a rooster flushes. 

Woogie and I were only about 50 yards along the high creek bank when she got birdy. There was a mix of trees along the creek so I stepped back into the picked corn to give myself some sight advantage. I do this a lot. The further you are from large trees the better you can see and shoot around them . For most of us, there is no advantage to being right on top of your dog when a bird flushes. With even a cylinder choke, shooting is best, beyond 20 yards. 

I noticed the heavy brush and vines along the bank and Woogs seemed to sense that she would have a tough time fighting through them. She started in, backed out with her ears above her head and then with a “Hell with it” attitude, she dove in. 

One of the many things I love about rooster pheasants is their defiance. In the air and in your hand. His tail was whipping as he cackled and clamored through the trees on the far side of the creek. I couldn’t shoot early as he was flying at the parked combine. He slowly turned toward the standing corn, but then I was worried about how my shot might appear from the house. The angle was clear, they told me to hunt, so I was hunting. The rooster was at 45 yards by now so I shot both barrels as fast as I could. 

This third rooster fell hard just inside the standing corn. Fortunately, the anxiety was short lived. Woogie had her bird and was doing the playful puppy march mostly in my direction. Just as she reached my outstretched hand she jerked her head away like a marching band baton girl. Yeah, you’ve seen it and tolerated it too.  

I always allow a pup to carry a bird till they get tired and then play the back and forth with them till they trust me to take care of it for them. There’s no, ”Here! Here! Give it to me, Hold! Hold!” crap I used to preach. Really, what’s the hurry? Once you’ve shot a few birds over them they’ll be more interested in hunting up another bird than carrying a dead one anyway.

I hesitated to, but I waited at the lane for the farmer to return from lunch. I was thankful that he didn’t take a nap or I wouldn’t have made it to Minnesota before dark. I wanted to thank him again and be sure he would remember me if I ever returned.  

In a few minutes I was on Highway 63 north. My turn off was deep inside Minnesota and I knew it was going to be close. I had a lot more excitement than I was planning for the day and would be content but disappointed even if I didn’t get in any more hunting. 

The farmer was home but he seemed reticent about my return. His first words were, “Well how many birds did you shoot today?” He remembered me!

I showed him my Iowa birds and he said I could again hunt the ground directly across from the house. That wasn’t what I wanted. He had another larger field across the deep creek that looked to hold more birds than the small one that I hunted last. Besides, every bird that I flushed before, flew across the creek and it was too deep to wade. I was afraid that if my young dogs needed help with a retrieve on the far side, I’d be swimming. Pups are funny that way. I wasn’t sure mine had the confidence to hunt across heavy barriers without me close.

It’s not easy to ask permission from a reluctant host and then ask for more than they offer. But this situation was rare and I had to make the most of it. He said I could drive around and hunt it, but he didn’t even let his hired hand hunt that field. I offered that I wouldn’t be hunting much of it as I only had an hour of legal shooting time left.

I left the truck with both pups, determined to shoot any rooster that flushed within 50 yards. The cover was huge by Minnesota standards and most lone hunters would have avoided it instead of requesting it over a smaller, more manageable field. I have always done really well hunting big fields. Late in the day, I’ll start by hunting any perimeter edge bordering a feeding field. Then if that fails, I hit every dark colored spot that I can, as fast as I can. The darkest areas are usually the tallest and most weedy. Pheasants like weeds because the ground is usually more open making it easier for them to run and there are plenty of seeds to eat.

We hunted about 300 yards bordering cut corn, but the dogs didn’t get birdy at all. With two of them out there, it was tough for me to keep up. I actually wished that they would play a little more tag so I could better keep in range. 

I cut across the field towards the creek and they followed. I was getting nervous. A few minutes along the trees and brush without even a hesitation from the pups and it was dark spot time with about 12 minutes of shooting time left. The dogs passed me and barreled into a few hens deeper in the field as I slid to a stop. I then circled around in front of them hoping to cut off a rooster who might be trying to slip away, but nothing. There was another larger dark spot, near the center of the field, about 300 yards away. I jogged towards it knowing that would be my last chance for two roosters. The pups soon passed me again thinking this was great fun. They had no idea just how anxious I was. I had about five minutes to find and shoot two roosters. I know it was only two, but in Minnesota it was also a limit. That makes just two sound much harder. 

An unexpected opportunity after four hard days of hunting and it would be all over in three minutes. That’s all I had left to make it happen.

I could be writing a lead for my next attempt at a double limit of pheasants in Iowa and Minnesota right here, but if a guy hunts hard enough, and smart enough, for long enough, good things happen. If they didn’t, I would have quit this dual limit stuff a long time ago.

I lost the pups in the tall weeds and just a few seconds later, they flushed a rooster at about 25 yards. I hit him hard as he curved to my right. The pups were caught between racing for the retrieve or being smothered in pheasant scent. I seemed to be the only one concerned about the bird I knocked down over there, and reloading. Sure that if I broke my gun I’d miss an opportunity and if I didn’t I’d miss a bird that I could have hit with two shots. Then a pair of roosters cackled and clawed their way out of the tall weeds about 20 yards away. You can now imagine the unnecessary stress I put on myself carrying a two shooter. I swung on the rooster to the right and a refreshing cloud of feathers burst from his mid-body and he appeared to be falling dead.

Now, I reloaded. I did have the two bird Minnesota limit of roosters in the grass. But neither of them were in my game bag. The Labrador in Woogs forced her to retrieve the bird I just shot and the Springer in Critter kept her hunting for more birds. Critter flushed two more single roosters well within range that I semi-confidently watched sail towards the creek and out of range. God I hoped they would find both birds. “Please be good puppies and do that for me.” Soon, Woogs was parading in front of Critter with her find and as they tussled for position, they both smelled the first bird I shot. Woogs spit hers out and dove into the grass clump with Critter, but Critter got there first. 

Woogs trampled around Critter knowing she could out run her, as Critter maintained a wide arc that eventually got her back to me. 

You’ve seen that puppy expression when they suddenly realize that they left their favorite toy behind? Woogs went bounding back to that bird she had dropped at Critter’s feet a few moments ago.

I rechecked my watch. I wanted to be certain that I had not cheated. Thankfully, there was still one minute of shooting time remaining. As we walked the quarter mile back to the truck I heard several shots in the distance. Either my watch was right, or someone else was flexing the shooting hours. 


At this time in my bird hunting career, I had traveled enough to realize that there were a lot more possible dual limits than I originally thought there were, but I still believed that I could get to all of them in the mid-west and many in the other regions of the county if I continued to hunt hard.

Those thoughts reminded me of a saying, “Something isn’t interesting just because it happened to you“. 

I was determined that I would shoot as many dual limits as I had to, to make my bird hunting, more interesting.