Great Ending - Upland Game Hunting – Pheasants, Quail & Grouse - Upland Game Hunting – Pheasants, Quail & Grouse

I hunted Tuesday and Wednesday this week for my last pheasant trip of the year. My friend and I hunted Lincoln and Yellow Medicine counties. I scouted for 3 hours on Tuesday mourning and put together a game plan. It paid off huge. We started on a 300 acre WMA only a mile from the S. Dakota border. We had two rooster in the bag in no time and we flushed a ton more out of range. My gun was not working right so we called it a day. Wednesday morning we started at on a WMA near Hendricks. As soon as we shut the doors, the sky lit up with birds. We flushed 50 birds before we got our first shot. My friend dropped a rooster that held tight in the cattails. We walked for another hour, flushing many birds, but we only got a couple shots at them. Spot number two was a mile away and I saw birds all over there on Tues. morning. We walked half way around a pond before we flushed a bird. From then on it was a bird or two every few minutes. I went 0/10 in the shooting deptartment right away. When my friend caught up, he fired a shot and dropped one. The next bird came to us unleaded. The dog chased it under a snow drift and came out with it. 100 feet from the car, the last bird got up. My buddy winged it and it dropped pretty good. We spotted it many times and chased it for over 500 yds. We never found it. We called that our 4th bird and headed home. Over two day, I saw a lot of things. Over 500 pheasants, 50 partridge, and a dozen turkeys. I also saw some dogs disappear in seconds. Standing on the top of 6 ft drifts one second, and burried the next. One dog even found a culvert and disappeared right off the side of the road.

I am kicking myself for not getting into the upland game a lot more last year. I go to school in SW MN and the hunting is great. I watched my dog grow this year and get better and better. I have to thank the wily roosters for some great times, great meals, and some much needed exercise. I worked my off this year and got skunked many times. These last two day, I cut and bruised my chins on the icy crust on top of the grass. I won’t be living here next year, but I have already planned a few trips back.