And lots of ’em! Last year I made my first trip to ND and I told myself that I was going to make it an annual thing. This year we had a group of 6 hunters and 5 dogs. A little different ratio than the 3 hunters and 10 dogs we had last year. 
We hit the ND border at 8 am Friday and were flushing our first bird by 9am. I dropped it too. 
All day Friday we hunted cattails along the edges of ponds. The birds held tight for the most part and we ended up with 6 birds for our shortened group of 3. We flushed 3 times that many, but lets just say there were some mishaps.
Saturday was similar to Friday with walking the cattails and some CRP nearby. I think we ended up with another 6 and many more flushes. We did a ton of walking, the dogs hunted very hard, but I still wasn’t impressed with the number of birds we were seeing. 
On Sunday I did some begging and arm twisting and finally convinced the guys to try a whole new area. We headed 2 miles North to a couple more sections we had permission on. This proved to be the decision that made the trip. We found a CRP field that was loaded with untouched birds. My dog Jazzi and the others were going crazy. We had roosters and hens popping up everywhere within shooting range. Again the guns were blazin, but very few birds were dropping. All the scent and excitement made the retrieves a little harder, but we did find all of our downed birds. After a long lunch break and another push through this same field, we ended up with 11 roosters. 
Much better day!
On Monday we decided to hunt some public land closer to the hotel and MN. The rest of the group was a little reluctant because private land is always better than public, right? What they didn’t know was that my brother and I flushed a ton of birds when we drove through there early in the morning while the rest of the group was duck hunting. We walked the CRP grass and around the many scattered sloughs. There were plenty of birds jumping early, but a lot that held tight too. My lab even had a few points. I have never seen her do that, but each time a bird popped up right off the end of her nose. We loaded up at noon on Sunday with 6 more birds and waved goodbye to ND for a few weeks.
Overall, the hunt was great. I think we wasted a little too much time hunting OK spots, when we knew it had to be better somewhere else. We flushed way more birds than we shot. Three of the hunters were pretty new to the sport, so we spent a lot of time setting up shots for them which didn’t pan out in birds in the bag very often. If I shot 10 birds, I bet I shot at 20 and had another 20 get up just out of range. (Note:get on a trap league next summer 
) As always, the dog work made the hunt a lot more enjoyable. It was really neat because my friend Travus and I both had a hand in training all 5 of the dogs we had with. For the first time ever, I can say that I have no complaints about the way Jazzi hunted. Its been a long two years of ups and downs, but there were no downs for 4 days. By Sunday and Monday, she was putting the other dogs to shame. I don’t know why, but I think she gained a lot of confidence and the Top Dog sticks paid off. I’ll be back out there in a few weeks to give it another shot.
