2021 Pheasant Reports

I went today for a couple hours and took home a pair of roosters. I found a nice covey of about 15 birds in one spot. It’s drier than a cork out there. Every time I step, the dust flies up.

Nice!

Life hasn’t allowed me much free time this fall, so yesterday was actually my first time out. It was definitely the warmest December hunt I’ve ever been on.
I hit a WMA that I got a short hunt on last year, but I ran out of daylight and wanted to explore it more.
We bagged our first rooster not too long after arriving. I then whiffed on a golden hour bird as it got up in the setting sun, and it took me a bit to confirm it was a rooster. By then, it had a full head of steam, and it lived to see another day.

Fantastic. I’m gonna try it again on Saturday if there isn’t too much wind. Time to start making a dent now that the limit is 3 instead of 2.

Nice. I have the rare weekend alone with both my dogs and nothing to do so contemplating a day trip to Iowa on Sat.

Also thought about a trip to IA but, I tend to stay away when it is deer hunting season down there. Saturday looks good, really windy Sunday.

Gerty wrote:

Also thought about a trip to IA but, I tend to stay away when it is deer hunting season down there. Saturday looks good, really windy Sunday.

I hear you on Deer season but honestly we never even notice it when they overlap. Most of the time the WMA’s are wide open and you never run into Deer Hunters in the ditches.

Suzuki good point. I’ve got several questions for you if you don’t mind. What ditches do you prefer to walk? By corn stubble, by bean stubble? What makes it a “good” ditch. Do you see birds before you start walking or just stop and take off down the ditch? Last one, is there a time of day that makes ditches better? After their done feeding and moving back to some cover, etc.

Curious as to how you target your ditches!

suzuki wrote:

I hear you on Deer season but honestly we never even notice it when they overlap

Do they require additional blaze orange during their deer season like MN does? Its been many years since I hunted in Iowa and it was not during their deer season.

Not sure what they require in IA. I just always have an orange hat on as well as my solid orange vest. That is usually over top of a solid orange long sleeve shirt. So I am pretty much solid orange from the waist up every time I am hunting down there all season long.

Good idea Gerty

Gerty wrote:

Suzuki good point. I’ve got several questions for you if you don’t mind. What ditches do you prefer to walk? By corn stubble, by bean stubble? What makes it a “good” ditch. Do you see birds before you start walking or just stop and take off down the ditch? Last one, is there a time of day that makes ditches better? After their done feeding and moving back to some cover, etc.

Curious as to how you target your ditches!

HA. What makes a good ditch? The perpetual and perplexing question.
So many factors and so many opinions. Usually next to fields that held corn. Usually better if there are grass fields nearby for production. I dont like hunting areas that are 100% agriculture and no buffers within a mile or so. Obviously good thick cover. Then winter comes and most of them get filled in by snow so we look for snakegrass and cattails. About the only thing you can do is walk a lot of it and the odds will finally catch up. Or your done in minutes!

Heading down this afternoon for a few hours and plan on walking some of those ditches. I’ll let you know how I do!

Gerty wrote:

Heading down this afternoon for a few hours and plan on walking some of those ditches. I’ll let you know how I do!

Sweet. I need a good report to give me that final nudge to do it tomorrow.
GOOD LUCK!!!!!

Im packed up, alarm set for 0500 and a game plan thanks to my buddies that explored some new area.

Sorry I didn’t get this report up earlier. My Friday afternoon was not very good. Only seen 2 roosters and they got out ahead of me. Walked what I thought were some pretty good areas. I think part of what hurt me was that it was really nice out Friday afternoon. Birds were probably standing out in the fields and not around any of the ditches that I walked.

Suzuki – how did you end up? What general areas of IA are you hunting?

I got a couple on Saturday. Couldn’t get a third. Didn’t see as many as the first couple times. My dog tracked a wounded one for 15 minutes before she finally found it.

Looking forward to hunting in the fresh snow next time.

I have Wednesday off and plan to hunt–I hope the winds calm a bit!

Went out Saturday morning only about 1 hour south of the metro with pretty low expectations. Only kicked up 1 hen in the back of a WPA back in some cattails, but not that surprised seeing I am sure this place gets hit pretty hard. Hope some snow comes soon to help condense the birds a bit more.

Gerty wrote:

Sorry I didn’t get this report up earlier. My Friday afternoon was not very good. Only seen 2 roosters and they got out ahead of me. Walked what I thought were some pretty good areas. I think part of what hurt me was that it was really nice out Friday afternoon. Birds were probably standing out in the fields and not around any of the ditches that I walked.

Suzuki – how did you end up? What general areas of IA are you hunting?

I flushed approx 7 hens. One rooster that got up too far ahead. Never fired my gun. I tried a new area (east of 35) and houses were too close together, good ditches I could hunt were harder to find and I never seen so much abandoned barbed wire. I wouldn’t run my fireball of a pup where that stuff was slinky’d through the ditch. WMA’s were exceptionally rare as well. I bumped into one driving all around 2 or 3 counties. I did have to stay away from wooded areas because of deer hunters so I likely wouldnt have hunted any public even if I ran into it. Yes I did have maps showing me were it was but I am used to running into it frequently other places I hunt Iowa. I think Im done for the year. Ice fishing here I come.

Suzuki that is what also surprised me a lot. With all the driving I did between ditches, etc. only saw one other rooster – standing under a no trespassing sign!

South Dakota and Iowa have been good to me this year. WI and MN not so much.

I went to north central Iowa on Friday, really nice weather. On the day me and puppy flushed 4 roosters and 12 hens. The roosters were flushing just out of range! I did get a crack at one, and he wobbled and a pile of feathers knocked off him, but he still flew away. As I was packing up another hunter drove by to chat. He said he hunts ditches and it was just like was Suzuki said, He preferred cut corn nearby for food, and some decent grass for production. He also liked it because he told me you can shoot lead in ditches.

Hunted MN on saturday and I finally got a rooster after a few trips getting skunked. I brought a young kid with and he got his first ever wild bird, he was pretty excited.

Would really like to get down to IA on Saturday. Supposed to get 6.5″ of snow Friday night into very early Saturday morning. That sounds awesome, however the 15-19mph winds that are coming with it I’m not so excited about. Not sure I’ll even be able to get down there, the roads might be pretty tricky with that much snow and wind.

I still feel done with pheasants for 2021 although I’m sad that my dogs wont see them anymore for a long time. Its gun doe weekend in Wis so I plan to chase them a bit and do some ice fishing. Im mostly excited about ice fishing. At least with that I have a reasonable chance of harvesting a meal!
Getting at least one deer this year would be super duper good but I am not confident.

I had an awesome hunt in the fresh snow today. Raised over 40 pheasants in about 3 hours and bagged 3 roosters. Luckily the area I hunt only got about 2 inches of snow, so walking was still easy.

Nice work gimruis. It can be tough sledding this time of year. The guys I hunt with say every bird in December is a trophy.

Dennis Williams wrote:

Nice work gimruis. It can be tough sledding this time of year. The guys I hunt with say every bird in December is a trophy.

Hey thanks Dennis. Hopefully the snow depth doesn’t get much worse there. Hunting in deep snow really drains my energy quickly and some areas become completely unhuntable. The snow was like powder too so I could get in quietly. If it melts and then re-freezes, they’ll hear me coming.

Busted Cattails for a few hours and stumbled into a PILE.

Wish I could say I limited out in a single volley, but that was not the case. I’m sure my dogs were unimpressed with my shooting after all of that work.

My batting percentage on birds flying away from me is LOW.

Anyone else concerned about what this volatile weather could do to the pheasants? Heavy rains turned to ice in a flash freeze, according to Accuweather. That spells a lot of dead pheasants to me.