Tight Sitting Snowbirds

[Mike Walerak]

We had a great day in Eastern South Dakota with Rick and my buddy Tim Swank. These are only nine of the thousands of birds we saw.

We recently had an ice storm, but it didn't seem to hurt the bird numbers at all. It might even help them out because it's holding the snow up creating plenty of little tunnels and pockets for the birds to hide in to keep warm.

These birds were sitting extremly tight in both light and heavy cover which made for an extemely exciting hunt.

Sometimes it paid off letting Paris slowly work the the areas we expected were holding a birds. Sometimes we erred and watched tons a birds busting out of cover behind us because we cruised through too fast..

The birds that were in cover held extremely tight today and you either had a good dog like Paris to root them out or you got lucky and had to almost step on them before they busted cover cackling upset with you for disturbing them.

It was a great day and we're looking forward to more of the same tomorrow unless we decide to do a little ice fishing chasing some walleyes.

Are any of you still hunting pheasants? If so how did the storm affect them and how has your hunting been?

mw

[Mike Walerak]

Shown here is Wade Jensen (the land owner), Paul Waldowski and I with todays limit of roosters. Rick was along on the hunt but opted for the photographer position in this photo.

Today we took full advantage of the balmy weather to find the birds hunkered down near the edges of cover. They were not sitting as tight as they have been the last few days but they are still holding pretty tight for being late season birds.

Today we targeted smaller groups of birds in small patches of cover and as you can see it paid off for us! Today the dogs were crucial more for the retreiving aspect as we had quite a few runners which made for some exciting moments.

mw

[Mike Walerak]

Another great day was added to the books as we had some fast gunning on rather flighty roosters. With the temps below zero and a stiff breeze made conditions far less than ideal.

Birds that were normally our sunning themselves in the middle of the day were tucked into shelterbelts and treelines to hide from the blistering weather.

With the cold at our backs we had to work extra hard to keep up with the birds that kept running ahead and flushing out of range. As you can see nine of them made the fatal mistake of holding tight for the dogs to root them out.

There is warm weather in the forcast so my suggestion is to get out and chase these late season roosters I don't think you will be dissapointed.

mw