Pheasant Hunting in North Dakota

Just got back from a pheasant hunting trip to Ellendale, North Dakota.  Davey, Re-Phil and I drove 14 hours overnight Wednesday, 29 OCT.  We hunted Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and then drove home Sunday, 02 NOV.  This was our 10 year anniversary, as we first started hunting pheasants in North Dakota in 2005.

We hunted private land W of Ellendale, just the three of us, with no dogs.  We bagged 75% of the roosters that got up within range.  We saw somewhere between 100 - 150 birds total.  Not near as many as we saw 10 years ago.  The wet summers and harsh winters have really put a dent into the population.  Well that, and all the loss of habitat.  There were almost no public lands in Dickey County where we hunted.

We ended up with 8 birds in the bag and only lost 1 (downed buy could not find).  According to the other hunters that we ran into up there - that's fantastic!  They also gave us props for hunting without dogs - which is at least 10X more difficult than with a dog.  One feller told us he couldn't believe we got any birds at all!  The averages we heard out of Aberdeen, SD (the self-proclaimed pheasant capital of the US) was that they were averaging 1 bird per hunter per day with dogs.  We did that well, and we did it without any dogs.

The weather was not quite as cooperative.  We had anywhere from 10 degrees to 54 degrees F and 7 to 40 mph winds.  Yes, it was cold and windy.  Windy, windy, windy!

We had a great time and wish to thank our spouses for letting us take off without them.  Now I've got birds, guns, and clothes to clean.  The plan is to smoke the pheasants and have them for Christmas dinner when the families are back in town.


A bouquet of North Dakota pheasants, Friday, October 31, 2014

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil.  All of that bakes in the son
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down into a channel in the housing."  Bam. 
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The two little "
Read more