South West MN Pheasant Opener Report

I opened the season down at the “honey hole” around the Lake Crystal area. After having the best sit yet on this farm and getting out of my deer stand @ 9 am I was greeted by a few buddies at the truck. With a gorgeous sunny morning, we were PUMPED to hit the field. This piece of property has agricultural crops on 3 of the 4 sides of it with the remainder side bring CRP. The 3 sides that were crops had corn on them and 2 of them were already combined. So I was pretty excited to see most of the corn gone. Thus meaning less places for the birds to hide and more likely to be in the 160 acres of cover we were hunting. The weather was a little warm for both the hunters and the dogs, but it was manageable. It was definitely short sleeve and light vest weather and good thing for all the rain as we were able to let the dogs swim in the tile run off periodically to cool them down.

The day started with about 8-10 hen flushes as warm up before we hit infamous draw. This draw has always held a ton of birds in it and this day would be no different as we tried to make sure we corralled the birds down into the draw. Well we did jus that as we got down into the bowl of the draw and pandemonium let loose as flush after flush happened for the next 20-30 minutes. Flushes were happening near and far as the bowl was absolutely loaded with birds. Two roosters went down quickly, but we struggled after that as many shots were being fired but no birds dropping. So after the chaos the bowl usually brings we did not fair as well as I was hoping. Oh well I guess that is why they call it hunting. We took a break and ground out some more walks and found the birds were still not holding very well. We had seen plenty of birds the first day, got our fair share, but did lose one that hit the ground running.

The second day of bird hunting was cut short due to the crappy rainy, windy weather. You can see the results in the pictures as the cold, wet, tired dogs were ready to call it a short day as so was the sopping hunters. Looking forward to hunting this piece and others this year. I’m thinking I will be back down to the “Honey Hole” this coming weekend for another double dose of Birds and Deer. Then the last weekend of October Rufus and I are packing up the truck and heading West on our 2nd trip ever to South Dakota for those World renown birds. We are picking up Stacie at the airport on that Friday in Aberdeen, SD and heading to Hoven and hitting the Frost Farm for some of those sly South Dakota roosters.

I have been hunting this old Farm for around 5 years now and boy has this grown into one awesome piece of property to hunt deer and pheasants. The first year I hunted this property it was still be used agriculturally and had very little cover like most farms down there once the crops came off. Well since then it was put in CRP program and man has the wild life population erupted on it. Now as we speak they are constructing new water sheds and making waterfowl ponds on it also. The pheasant population has gone through the roof. I think I will be back down there next weekend to chase some more of those roosters and continue my chess game with that big buck that has eluded my arrow the last 2 years. I hope everyone had a safe opening weekend and saw some birds and great dog work like I did. Until next week, LIP is out!

**CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE**