29 Nov DucksDuck hunter reports range from zero in the bag to great days of multiple species limits. Water continues to be good on the northern wetlands and lacking on the southern wetlands. The recent cold front and earlier rains have not been enough to make any difference in water levels and this current cold wave is greatly anticipated as shown by increasing duck hunter reservations.
Form a well experience duck hunter.
Jon, Photos from a productive pond duck hunt that was discovered while scouting for deer and turkey. Opening weekend in Missouri we saw a lot of ducks and enjoyed a lot of shooting. This weekend was fantastic. Two days hunting yielded limits of ducks for the three of us. Your management of the properties of this club keep it an outstanding organization that offer quality opportunities to its members. Thanks a lot for all you and your staff do. Mark, Sam and Steve
QuailThe current cold weather has motivated the dedicated quail hunters that avoid early season warmer weather hunts. This weekend appears to be the first for many of the quail only hunters. To date, quail reports have been as many birds or more encountered compared to last year and inverse to pheasant hunter experience. The caveat is most of these reports are from mixed bag hunters with most being predominately pheasant hunters. This is a category of where more detailed accounts are yet to come.
PheasantPheasant hunter reports are similar to that of duck hunters with the range from poor habitat to poor bird counts to great habitat to done by early morning. If we were to post the recent reports they would mirror that posted back in early November. One observation is that the dry summer weather produced a lower quality tall grass cover that will not concentrate the easier to hunt birds. The habitat being spotty and diffused requires better dog power than that required on good rain years and that one element seems to distinguish the bad from good hunts. This is illustrated by the bird dog hunters that always seem to do well on hunts continue to do so while those dependent on the easier to hunt tall grass less so.
27 Nov Traveling Bird HuntersNovember 2006 Hunt Trip Our trip to [location deleted] this year had the added pleasure of taking our son Josh (10-years old). He was up early and eager to get started. However, the birds were not eager to be found. We covered quite a bit of territory and had only managed to find one small covey of quail. We had flushed 25-30 pheasants, but most were not in gun range. We were not sure if it was the windy conditions or the fact pheasant season opened a week early this year. I have to admit that we were a little concerned about the bird population at the end of the first day.
Outlook improved considerably on the second day. We found three coveys and Josh was able to take his first wild quail and his first pheasant. Then, on the next day, we found four coveys and several pheasants. Josh and I had killed 2 pheasants each and teamed up on another. Josh was excited at the thought of possibly getting a limit on his first trip, but came up just short.
Day 4 was one of the highlights of the trip. We managed to find a record tying 7 coveys in one day. It seemed that every field we visited had a covey near where we parked just waiting for our arrival. We were literally in birds from morning until dark finding coveys and working singles. It’s funny how your feet don’t hurt as much when you are chasing after birds instead of just walking and hoping for the dogs to find something.
The fifth day brought high winds (25-30 mph) and tougher conditions. No matter how many trips we make to [location deleted], I’m not sure we’ll ever get used to the windy days. Being from WV, we rarely ever have the wind that seems so common in [location deleted]. While it was an added experience for Josh, we didn’t push too hard and took more than our usual amount of breaks and called it a day earlier than usual. The tally for the day was 2 coveys and only one pheasant and 2 quail to be cleaned.
The final day was the other highlight of the trip and perhaps our best final day of any of our trips. We found 5 coveys, but the highlight was all the singles that the dogs managed to locate. John manned the camera and we got some great footage of Josh going after one single after another. We had 10-12 singles on one covey alone that was perhaps the largest covey of birds we’ve ever found. It turned into over 1 hour of some great points and backs as well as the emptying of just about every shell that we’d carried with us into the field. While not many were taken, it was a memory that Josh, nor John or I, will not soon forget.
John took it easy on the birds this year and Josh and I did most of the shooting. We tallied 22 coveys in about 5 ½ days of hunting and bagged 14 pheasants. John seemed to enjoy watching the two of us go at it and getting some good pictures and video footage.
This makes our 8th year with the club. We didn’t find as many birds as we have in some of the past years. We didn’t come close to our records of kills. But, we’ll likely remember this trip more than any past trip because we now have a third hunting partner with which to make and recall the memories.
WV Hunting Partners, John, Karen and Josh
Summary of pictures:
PIC2 – Josh and John taking a break between fields
PIC3 – Josh and Karen at the end of good day
PIC4 – Josh and Karen teamed up for 10 quail and 1 pheasant on best day
PIC5 – Duke points a single for Josh
PIC6 – Beautiful point/back by Dot/Buster on one of the numerous singles on final day of hunting
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