Our NW Iowa Pheasant Trip November 2009

Tuesday November 17th

We head out at 3:30 PM with a truck topper full of hunting gear and dog supplies, a bumper-pull camper for our living quarters, and three dogs in the cab...which includes my two GSPs and my 12.5 year old lab. We make one potty/fuel stop along the way, and thank goodness for keeping a spare key under the engine. Brandi likes to lock doors, and proceeded to lock each one as I approached to open them to get the next dog out. We arrive at 9:30 PM at the campground, drive our tie-out stakes in the ground, and set up the camper. By 10:30 PM, the five of us are out like a light, with the dogs crowding us into the corners of the bed.

Wednesday November 18th

We get to a recommended public site at 9:30 AM. We are the only ones in the parking lot, and start gearing up. I ask my husband to take a few photos of me and the girls, since I never find myself on that end of the camera. So with rosy cheeks and watering eyes on that 28 degree morning, he takes a couple photos for me. We head out around the north side of the WMA.

1. At close to two hours, a hen flushes wild on a hill far ahead of us. We continue on, trying to figure out our next move. Even though we’re only 1/3 around the lake, I convince Clint to finish circling it. This is no easy task for him, considering the potholed topography and his current back injury.


2. After another 30 minutes or so, I head the dogs to the lake for water. We discover a cut bean field on the way down, and a hen shoots out of a grassy border.


3. Roxi gets her drink, but Brandi is afraid to navigate the drop off slope, so I start to head further around. Roxi starts baying and takes off on a track. Next thing I know, a rooster flushes in front of her, and I spot a hunter not far in front of the scene. Then I hear a shot, but can’t see if he downed the bird, and Roxi is in too much cover to see. My heart is racing, I yell her name, and a 2nd rooster busts out of the grass 15’ in front of me. Brandi is scenting the first bird at the time, and thankfully Roxi is now coming back.


4. So we push forward, following a distance behind the other hunter. A rooster comes up in front of him, in the cattails we’re walking.


5. He then breaks off to the south for a weedy patch bordered by clover on one side and cut beans on the other. Eventually, we see 3 roosters and 1 hen flush some distance in front of him and fly across the prairie vista in front of us.


6. We head through the prairie, and turn around to hear a shot, as he fires at another rooster.


7. We follow an access road towards the lake again, and Brandi goes into a small tight search for some seconds and a hen flushes near her.


8. We continue on towards the lake, and somehow Roxi misses a huge rooster that flushes maybe 40’ in front of Clint. She sure took notice when it went airborne.


9. We ahead around the lake, and see 4 birds take flight from a clover field maybe 200 yards ahead. When we get into that field, Roxi locks up solid on the fresh scent, with little Brandi doing a 30 yard back—but no birds remain. Not far from there, Roxi starts baying again and heads into a brush row. She proceeds to retrieve back with a rabbit. Pretty cool.


10. We follow a tree line around the lake and a hen and rooster bust from the weedy edge, while the dogs are farther out in the neighboring clover.


11. And as we near the parking lot, Brandi goes into her small tight search again, and a hen flushes right next to her.

18 BIRDS SEEN DURING 5 HOURS AND ROXI LOGS 22 MILES ON THE GARMIN

Thursday November 19th

The next morning, we choose a landlocked WMA. So we hike down a 1/3 mile access trail, in hopes that this site has had less traffic due to its accessibility issues.

1. First rooster flushes at the beginning of the trail, in the adjoining unpicked corn.


2. After 1.5 hours of heavy cover and wet marsh ground, we walk some standing corn, hoping to push some birds out into the grass. No such luck on the first plot, and Clint sends me down to work a skinny stand of maybe some 40 rows wide. As I’m walking down some cut rows, to get to my starting point, a hen pushes out. Then I start walking down the standing corn, with the GSPs running in and around me. I get about half way and a young rooster takes to the air. Just as I’m nearing the end, I swear I see a little blur run across the ground, some 50' in front of me. Seconds later, I hear Clint take the shot, and the rooster lands in the field we had previously walked. The GSP girls were still in the current corn patch at the time, so Clint walks with them into the corn to find the bird. The girls arrive to it at the same time and are given a chance to check it out.

4 BIRDS SEEN DURING 2 HOURS

Then it’s off to a large WMA near the Minnesota border.

1. We follow some evergreens down to a grass field not far from another lake. As we enter the field, two hens flush ahead of us.


2. As they fly towards the cattails, they disturb two roosters another 100 yards out under a shrub tree, which also proceed to fly into the marsh ground. After covering the ground where the birds had broke from, we head back to some easier cover.


3. Roxi locks up on the edge of a cut bean field. She was flagging a little, so we weren’t sure how serious her point was. Clint closes in on the 50 yards that separates him from her. Before he gets halfway, a hen comes up in front of Roxi.


4. Meanwhile, Brandi gets all excited and birdy and flushes another hen.
5. So Clint and I are stopped and talking while the dogs are reworking the areas of their recent finds, and a hen busts 15’ from us. We continue to walk for another hour or two, with no further success.

7 BIRDS SEEN DURING 2 HOURS

November 20th

We head to a WMA that we’ve been driving by everyday. My husband suggests we take the old lab out and do a corn drive. If any roosters flush, he’ll shoot and maybe we’ll follow up with the GSPs to work the cover around the corn edges. He goes ahead on the outside edge, and I enter a minute later with Sammy.

1. As we enter, it seems I’ve already lost the old girl. I back up to find her working the grass edge. We reenter, and then she’s off again, but at least in the right direction this time. One rooster flushes at the end, but Clint didn’t get his safety off quickly enough for a good shot.


2. We cross a road and enter another corn plot, losing the dog from time to time. A hen flushes and then Sammy decides yet again to hunt for herself and heads from the corn to a pond edge and flushes two roosters. We continue on and have a lost dog for 15 minutes. Decided that we were spending more time looking for the dog than looking for birds, and Sams goes back to the camper.

4 BIRDS SEEN DURING 1 HOUR

We bring the GSPs back to this same roadside WMA to work a large milo plot and the surrounding prairie with no success. All is frontage to a major highway, so it has probably been hit regularly.

0 BIRDS SEEN DURING 1 HOUR

We head to another WMA that we scoped out the day prior. As we pull into the lot, a large barking mutt from a neighboring farmstead starts heading our way through the cut bean field. I can just imagine that this loose farm dog feels he owns the whole place and has been a problem before. We sit in the truck, hoping he’ll head back home, which he eventually does. We start unloading, and here comes the mongrel again. I rush the GSP girls into the field, while Clint yells at the dog to go home, which works to some extent. This is too perfect of a place to leave—two ponds with a few acres of grass around them with a giant cut bean field in the middle, and then more grass land and a standing corn plot. Roxi has two unproductive points in the first grass land by the pond.

1. We then cross the bean field and enter another grass land. Roxi slams on point and Clint heads her way. The hen holds for maybe 30 seconds and takes flight.
   
2. We head around a dry pond and the edge of the corn and another hen busts up from farther in the rows. We continue a little farther, and Roxi goes into tracking mode and has an unproductive point.
3. We start walking the corn and another bird flushes wild.
   
4. As we’re heading back to the parking lot, we walk the grass fringe of yet another pond. Brandi crosses the 20’ of grass and heads into the expansive cattails. All we see is a wave of cattails moving as she searches. Bam, 4 ducks and a hen pheasant burst forth from the area the cattails had stopped moving...and then 2 more ducks follow. She probably never saw them in that dense environment, but she comes out a birdy little girl, with all that scenting.

4 BIRDS AND 6 DUCKS SEEN IN 2 HOURS

We head back for a quick run through on the WMA we visited the first day, where we saw the 18 birds. The birds are definitely not in the same areas as two days ago.

1. One rooster comes up in front of Roxi, but neither of us had our eyes on her, so we don’t know if it was a bust or a point.

ONE BIRD SEEN IN 1 HOUR

November 21st

We get to our 6th WMA during this trip. We work the edge of a grass field surrounded by cut beans.

1. Less than 10 minutes in, Brandi gets all birdy and goes into her tight search, and a hen busts forth.


2. Later, we are working the edge of a corn field and 2 hens flush wild from a corn patch corner 150 yards ahead of us.
   
3. Then the girls are in the open grasslands and a hen takes flight due to an upwind bump by the dogs.
   
4. 20 minutes later Roxi goes into tracking/baying mode, gets too close, and bumps a hen.

5 BIRDS SEEN IN 2 HOURS

As we leave that WMA, we start to see motorists in orange everywhere. It is the weekend now, and they are coming out of their work week hibernation. We’d like to find one more spot, before we call it a trip. We find our 7th and final spot, with one car of hunters in the field. They are easily visible, so we head the opposite direction, working some grass along a bean edge.

1. As we near the edge of the grass/bean union, a rooster flushes a hundred yards ahead of us and disappears over the ridge line in a downward glide towards the marsh.
   
2. We follow the grass ridge line and pick up a farm drive. For about 100’ along the grass edge, the dogs keep getting birdy. Then Brandi goes into her little search mode, and a hen busts in front of her.
   
3. We head out into some more grasslands, and as we near a marshy edge, Roxi has an upwind bump on a rooster.
   
4. We stop a hundred yards later and water the dogs and are talking for a few minutes. We move no more than 30’ forward and Brandi locks up tight on point right at the farm drive grass edge. Roxi, who needs some backing skills, comes up...and a beautiful big rooster flushes. The bird had been maybe only 5’ in front of Brandi and maybe 10’ in front of Clint. He shoots his first shot too soon out of excitement and surprise, and his second shot too late and Brandi’s first rooster is gone. In playing with my camera, I completely missed the point, and only saw the bird flush—so no photos. It took a minute of Clint relaying the scenario, for me to figure out it had been Brandi’s point and not Roxi’s. We are both kicking selves for our misses.
   
5. On the final leg to the truck, a hen busts up in the thick grass to our east, so we decide to head that way.
   
6. A few minutes later Roxi starts tracking/baying and a hen busts at the cattail edge of a pond. It may or may not have been the same hen.

6 BIRDS SEEN IN TWO HOURS

In Summary

While we had intentions of bagging a lot of birds when we left on the trip, it wasn’t to be. Factoring in a lot of hens, some nervous running birds, and my two GSPs first big experience with pheasants—it was much more of a learning trip for all. Roxi proved she had a keen nose and an awesome point on birds that held tight...but needs work on knowing when to stop short when tracking a running bird...and we need to break her steady to wing for our own purposes. We also learned over the course of the 4 days a field, that the tracking with baying that we thought was exclusive to fur, is also a trait she carries over on running birds. So instead of thinking, “Darn it, that dang dog is running deer tracks again!” we had the realization that we better catch up to her, as she’s behind a pheasant. And whether she marks a birds fall or not, she can track the birds flight by air scent, with the greatest of ease. Brandi proved time again that she has everything it takes, but just needs to learn to point at first scent. Despite her little tight 10’ diameter searches, when she gets on the scent, it is truly amazing how the birds hold for her. I think she confuses the heck out of them. I think if Clint had gotten her first pointed rooster shot on Saturday, that I would’ve ran it to a taxidermist, as I was so proud! Sometimes a lesson was lost, as she gets her head down in the tall grass obsessed with scent, and totally missed the pheasant taking flight. But with a little launcher work and some more wild birds, this pup will bring it all together. Thankfully, she doesn’t appear to have the natural desire to chase to the ends of the earth, like Roxi does. And despite running the two GSPs together, which we usually run them separately at home, Brandi was working independently for the most part and giving beautiful backs at 7 months old. Both dogs showed that they had the heart of lions, ending the days with bloody toes, chapped lips, and abraded noses...but ready for more. Clint and I learned, which hopefully rings true at other locations, where to look for the birds without wasting our dog’s ground time and energy. We also were able to see the dogs shortcomings and strong points on these cagey wild birds, and know what we need to work on and strategized on how we will get to the end result. So while the bird bag came home nearly empty, the experience for the dogs and us was well worth the trip.

PHOTO SLIDESHOW CLICKABLE LINK:

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