Pheasants in Potter, Wallworth, Faulk, Edmunds Co. area?

[Wild Thing]

We've received some advice to try this area for pheasants in a couple weeks. It's farther west than I've ever hunted before.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Really appreciate any advice.

Thanks in advance!!!

[Jarrod32]

Coming out of Aberdeen, we tend to go west to hunt pheasant. Edmunds and Faulk Counties have been excellent in past years, and are still very good. Potter and Walworth should be good, as well.

Going further west will probably be worth it for you...

[Wild Thing]

Hey thanks a ton for the info! Appreciate all the input everyone has offered. 11 days and we're off! Hope we don't hit any blizzards!

[scott-z]

I was just looking at this area also. Are you familar with the school/public land out in this area? What kind of cover is it? My son and I had plans to go with a group of guy's and I found out this morning it fell through. He went for his first time last year and is really looking forward to going again. Is there snow in that area yet? I considered hunting ditches, but if there is snow I would like to find more cat tail sloughs and CRP.

[Wild Thing]

Scott-Z,

Sorry I have no clue about this area. We are going in blind and hoping for the best. I also had a trip fall through and, as I looked for a backup, was told not even to try in another area I'm familiar with in NE part of the state where the winter really knocked them down.

So we are going to go and give it a try farther west.

Supposed to warm up to near 50 this week so any snow might melt.

I don't do ditches per se, we are going to do walk in areas and hope some waterfowl management areas are frozen.

Good luck. See you in the field?

[MuleShack]

I drove by a few of those (blue) public areas on the map and found them to be very sparse in vegetation and didn't even consider them for holding birds. Like I said I only drove by a few of them west of Aberdeen.

In my experience there were more birds west of Aberdeen, but more roosters east...mostly younger birds though.

[carpshooterdeluxe]

a lot of the school land I've seen is leased for grazing. Probably a better bet for sharptails than roosters.

[scott-z]

Thanks for the replies guy's. Still trying to figure out what to do.

[hockeybc69]

Just got back from Faulk county area.

We only hunted private land and did good. We got 59 for 6 guys.

I wasnt at all impressed with some of the WPA's we drove by. All were very sparse in cover.

There are a lot of acres of the public accessible private lands based on the maps. NW of Hoven was loaded with acreage open to hunting, but we didnt look at any of it, so I have no clue if its good or not.

[Johnnie15]

We hunt private land out there every year and the bird numbers seem to be better this year than last. It is true that a good amount of the walk in areas have cattle in them, so it's difficult to find good spots some times. Look for even the smallest of low spots or tree lines with and you will generally find birds. The trick this time of year is getting up on them. Many times we have watched countless numbers of birds pouring out of an area before we could even get our guns loaded.