By Jennifer L.S. Pearsall
When I left off in the last installment, I advised hunting the middle of the week when there’s less pressure. Of course, arranging for weekday afternoon hunts is a complicated issue for many. So, say you’re stuck with just Saturday. In general, the afternoons will still be a better choice to hunt, especially late. Birds have been pushed around and shoved around throughout the day, expending energy. They’ll need to feed before roost, so the last couple hours before legal light will find them moving from cover to feeding plots and then back to cover again, the most unforced movement you’ll see all day. Find a vantage point where you can view possible food sources, such as corn or milo fields, that are interspersed with cover, such as CRP plots, and see if the birds fly as the sun makes its way to the western horizon. When you spot the birds dashing or flying across the road to feed, you can then tackle the food plot for a while. The birds will, of course, head back to cover eventually, either because you’ve pushed them there or they’ve had their fill, so you can spend your last legal minutes in the cover spots.
You can also use this same watch-and-see approach during the day, any day, as an approach to dealing with other fellow pheasant killers. I call this tactic “Scouting for Hunters.”
It’s nearly a given that, as a pheasant hunter, you’re going to encounter others of the same ilk. In good pheasant habitat, the company is fairly inescapable. You don’t have to join ’em to beat ’em, but you can learn a thing or two by being a roadside observer.
When I see others working a field I was gunning for, I’ll park the truck and watch a while, taking mental notes. How many hunters are there? How many dogs do they have? Did they work the entire area? Did they shoot anything or did they flush everything onto the next property? If I’ve witnessed a field full of hunters and dogs and birds flying hither, nither, and yon, I’ll save this field for tomorrow. If they did well but didn’t cover the entire area, I might tackle it right then or later in the day, when flushed and missed birds will have returned. And, if the group had a good balance of dogs and hunters who worked the area correctly without a single flush, well, then, they’ve just done the hard part for me and I can move on.
Aside from the scouting other hunters and being more selective about what days and times you choose to hunt, there’s one more tactical consideration to hold in check. After opening week, drop the army approach. Keep your hunting parties to just a couple of you to maybe half a dozen, depending on the size of the habitat you’re hunting. There is no question that pheasants quickly associate slamming truck doors, yapping dogs with clanging bells and beeping e-collars, and the chatter of a dozen men, with an immediate threat to their longevity. Keep the ruckus down. The fewer of you there are the better, dogs and man alike.
Not that a partner or two can’t be a bonus; with a small group, you’ll each put up birds the others would walk past, increasing everyone’s chance for a shot. I often liken the situation to a dove field. It’s really hard, sometimes, to shoot a limit of doves unless you’ve got help pushing them down the line of other shooters in the field. Same for pheasants on some level, it’s just that when using the buddy approach during the middle-stretch of the season, it’s best to keep in mind that a little help can go a long way, but a lot can push them into states that have never seen a pheasant. Indeed, I’ve actually had more success hunting by myself with a pointer and a Lab during the middle of the season and combing small, out-of-the-way cover strips, roadside ditches, and tree lines, than I’ve ever had with extra company.
Speaking of dogs, it nearly goes without saying that pheasant hunting is a sport for flushing dogs. Labs run supreme in rooster country, sometimes, it seems, if for no other reason than everyone seems to have one or two of these delightful, eager mutts. But pheasant fields are also a good place for versatile dogs like Griffons, with their tough coats, methodical way of hunting, and excellent retrieving skills. For thick places, as I mentioned elsewhere, smaller breeds like cockers can be a godsend—I’ve even seen more than a couple folks put the tenacity of a beagle to good use.
The lure of flushing dogs is readily apparent. When trained correctly, they work within gun range, putting birds into the air that you on your own two feet would only cause to run, run, run. A dog also covers more ground than you could hope to by yourself, and the mere fact that he’s working a different section of ground than you, even if it’s 30 to 40 yards out, can make all the difference in the world between a field that appears empty and one that holds birds.
As for pointing breeds, well, they get a bad rap when it comes to pheasants. They are pooh-poohed by many who say one, the dogs range too far, and two, that pheasants don’t hold for pointing dogs. To these naysayers, I say they have never seen a well-trained pointing dog.
Yes, the field-trial speed breeds—traditionally setters, pointers (English), and, to some degree, German shorthairs—can definitely cover some ground. This is a good thing, in that they’ve taken the burden off you (that’s why horseback hunts are a popular way of working prairie birds over pointing breeds). No, pheasants don’t hold particularly well compared to other game birds. But that doesn’t mean they don’t hold at all. Ask yourself how many times a bird’s gotten up after you quietly and slowly walked past it. I assure you, it wasn’t running toward you before it decided to take flight.
What turns a lot of hunters off of running pointers over pheasants is that they’ve never seen well-trained pointers. All they’ve witnessed were dogs running amuck and putting birds randomly to air, or dogs relocating birds on their own until they’ve essentially moved each cock and hen well beyond gun range. Yes, a pointing dog running his fool head off is, of course, no use to anyone, but as I’ve seen plenty of so-called “perfect” Labs do the same thing, I think it’s hard to justify blaming the pointers for their big run, when this kind of behavior is a training issue across all upland gundog breeds. When a dog’s in control, he’s in control, period.
One final note. It’s common, especially with young, inexperienced dogs and dogs that are used to birds that hold better, such as grouse and quail, for the dog to relocate pheasants on its own. But in my experience, give a pointing dog that’s solid in his basic handling skills a full season with pheasants under his nose, and you’ll see a transformation. With steady exposure, he will learn to hold his birds to the side or opposite of the scent cone, essentially pinching the bird between you and him—no different than what you did with your contingent of human partners on opening day. Again, this may take a season of regular hunting (and, to be sure, not all dogs “get it”), but since you didn’t learn to kill pheasants in a single hunt, is one season of patience on your part too much to ask in return for nine or ten years of staunch, stylish, and productive points?
Author’s Bio
Jennifer L.S. Pearsall is an outdoor writer, photographer, and editor, who has been a professional in the hunting and shooting industries for nearly 20 years. She began her career by selling guns in a retail establishment in Northern Virginia in the early 1990s, before being recruited by the NRA to join its editorial staff. She has long been a dedicated sporting clays competitor, and has also dabbled in IPSC and metallic blackpowder cartridge competitions. Ms. Pearsall is a practiced and dedicated hunter, with her fair share of big-game trophies decorating her home, but her deepest passions are bird dogs and upland bird and waterfowl hunting.
Since her tenure with the NRA, Ms. Pearsall’s freelance writings and editing work have appeared in dozens of outdoors print and online publications, including Gun Dog, Wildfowl, Whitetail Journal, Petersen’s Hunting, Waterfowl & Retriever, and various publications of the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International, among others. She has also written under the pen name C. Fergus Covey as a gun test and evaluation expert for Gun Tests magazine. Currently she is authoring the blog www.HuntingTheTruth.com.
Ms. Pearsall currently resides in San Antonio, Texas, with her two dogs, an aging Lab named Noah, and a squirrel-obsessed English pointer called Highway.
