Back To Reality

12/26/2008 Friday

The last 4 hunts I have fortunate enough to limit out or even take a few more to help our group hit its limit.

I hunted my favorite farm south of Hutchinson. It had gotten a fair amount of snow since the previous time that I had hunted it. Just to get into the hunt-able portion of the farm I had to climb through a snow drift that was over my knees.

I put Tina and Marge on the ground and as we worked the edge of the field 2 roosters and a hen got up a ways out and flew to the cattails. Oddly none got up off of the hot corner, we’ve seen a few there the last couple of times.

We worked the heavy willow area and got a nice point in there and were able to take a large rooster. After the willows we worked the edge of the field towards the highway. As we got towards the end of the field a few hens got up and we watched them fly towards one of the smaller cattail sections. We turned and cut across the open CRP area towards their landing area thinking that maybe one would have turned out to be a rooster. We waded through the cattails and put up another 3 or 4 hens. Going through the cattails was a wet process as they held a lot of snow up high and I was getting soaked. We worked the edge of the cattails towards a second area of willows and put up another 5 or 6 hens there.

It was fun to see so many hens but it was getting nerve wracking not seeing any roosters.

I took the dogs back around to some of the thicker areas of cover hoping that perhaps a rooster had moved back in after we left. More hens.

After 3 hours of hunting we called it a day. All 3 dogs and I were getting wet and tired of working through the snow. All in all it wasn’t a bad day. 1 bird in the bag and over 20 more hens moved. Probably a little more realistic of a late December day of Pheasant hunting in Minnesota then some of the bountiful days I have been having.