Not living in an area with much for the way of wild birds, especially those that I like to chase (pheasants, grouse), I take trips each year with Hank to hunt. My fall schedule is largely determined by what big game tags I do or do not draw. Then I had somewhat of a series of big game backup plans for western hunts. Now I'm mostly interested in just taking Hank and looking for some birds if I don't draw certain tags. That's a change I did not see coming...

Am I alone on this?? I suspect not, but am curious.

I've decided I'd rather hunt birds and coyotes than just about anything else.



Travis

I'm getting to be that way. Surprising to me.

It's called getting old. Happens to most of us...

Excuse me..."maturing"...

Although I usually kill 5-10 head of big game each fall.. Mostly on the 5-7 head now, I still like birds and coyotes best.. You can put birds in you coat and move on, and coyotes no need to gut, tag, and almost everyone wants them shot.. !!!!!

I take time for both big game and birds,
but I get to spend MANY more days on birds
because I have 5 months of it to hunt.
Never shot a planter.....but I do live in a stellar bird area.
It's totally about the dog for me.
Without a hound I would fish, call dogs and rv more.

Of course my lab goes to work everyday with me,
steelhead fishing in the boat with me and RVing, so he drives with me either way.

Getting old?
You ever been on a river break, wild chukar hunt?

HA! And I remember being one of the young guys at this place...

Wage- If I lived where you do I'd not hunt any planters either. I've shot a few huns up your way. My pard slaughtered them between tubs at the Corner Club for 5 years. I'd love to get back to that country with the pooch. Might have to see what it takes to fly with a dog as its too farking far to drive. 'Twould love a change of address to a more bird friendly locale, but that's not in the cards for the foreseeable forever.

Northern Wisconsin or Minnesota around October 10.

Bird hunting with a good dog is addicting. No comparing packing a mule deer or elk out of mountains with bird hunting but have to be in pretty decent shape to climb for Huns and chukars out west. Takes me at least an hour of steady climbing, sometimes on lose basalt, just to get up to the birds then up and down the big hills all day. 3000 or more vertical feet a day is common .


Be out again this year in WA ID MT ND and back to WI for grouse and hopefully and elk tag or two plus deer and lope

STAY OFF MY LAWN.........

JK.

P.S. And leave those NF cutts alone.....

Thinking of retiring in N or central ID end of this year💩

Beats Washington although I'll miss the great quail and duck hunting there

Big game seasons there suck now

Hunted Montana many times as a big game license included upland birds. The dogs always came with. We'd fill our deer and antelope tags with the first legal animals we saw and then put the dogs on the ground to add some birds. In 10 days of hunting one could bring home a fair bit of game.

I love my time in the field with my dogs and nice, old shotguns. I also enjoy having guys out to my house in SD for fall hunts. I get in 30 days of pheasant hunting each year then it's nice to come home to hunt waterfowl. I get a big game hunt in each year but it's now birds and dogs I really look forward to.

I think I need to put a stay at your place for 3-5 days on Hanks 'wish list'!

I do a lot more bird hunting nowadays myself. I still do about the same amount of big game hunting that I have always done, but, since the bird season here (Utah) runs from September 1st to February 15th, it really expands my hunting season. I buy licenses for Idaho and Arizona each year, and sometimes Montana and Oregon as well.

In something of a reverse migration to what most of you do, I typically spend the middle two weeks of October in Northwest Wisconsin chasing grouse and woodcock. It has become one of my favorite annual trips. Nothing like 1300 miles of freeway with four high-strung bird dogs in the back seat.

The ticks are terrible, and it is hard to find places to hunt there though, so you probably want to stay away......

Reverse migration! I like it! Hank and I hunted grouse in the UP of MI last September. Neat country. Those birds sure act different than the ones I chased around on the Wellsvilles! Much smarter and more apt to run. By day 3 he was starting to get the hang of it and had a couple of very good track and points. Ticks scare me more than any grizzly!

I'm hoping to get him to Rich Co some year for some sage grouse. I have a couple of points so should be able to draw pretty easy, just need to see if I can pair it with something else as that's a long drive for 2 birds. Then again, I really like that country and have a lot of memories there.

Have you ever went to the southern part of the state for band tailed pigeons? I meant to, just never gave it a try.

I have not. I first got a hankering to hunt Band Tailed pigeons about four years ago. I have planned to spend September 1st in the Abajo's every year since, but a conflict always seems to come up. I will try again this year.

Hope it works out for you! If you ever need someone to meet you in WI...

Bane and I are entering our second year hunting together. He is coming along nicely. If anyone wants to meet in KS, NE, WY, MT, ND, or SD, let me know. I only have the one dog and it might be nice to let one rest while hunting another. In a few years, I'll back him up with another to be able to rotate. Last year was bobwhites and pheasants for us. Need to get up in the hills for grouse and ptarmigan this year too.

I might take you up on that. Hank's been whipped by a few DD in the field and near the food bowl so they should get along well enough. I realize it's not on your list, but I'll definitely be hunting IA for roosters a couple times this year. Other plans are too tentative at this time.

Bane has never shown aggression in the field other than to small furry things. I'd kick his butt if he did around other dogs but so far so good and he has been around a lot of dogs on training days and outlet malls etc. Do think running alone is one way to not have any issues and one could rest up while one works. Iowa may be too far east but if your plans take you farther west let me know. Just don't make fun of my wingshooting ability.

Iowa has pheasants? I thought they went out with the rise in corn prices a few years back.

I hunted a fair bit in the northeast and north central parts of Iowa plus the southwest corner but lost a lot of ground to the plow. It isn't much different than MN now so isn't worth the extra cost of license and driving, especially to the south. That is a definite shame as the woods, windrows, and CRP of the properties we had in the SW held bobwhites as well as pheasants which made a nice addition to the bag.

My and my not so well trained dog found enough to make the 6hr drive worth it. We didn't see as many as I did in ND the year before, but we put up birds everyday and in most places we tried. All public accessible lands. Not saying it's "good" hunting there, but it sure beats the access to wild birds I have in IN. Plus it's close enough for a weekend trip; leave Friday after work and home by Sunday night. I've heard the quail are somewhat on the rebound in the southern part of the state, but we didn't venture down that way.

DSCN2300 by Tyler Staggs, on Flickr

Looks like a great day Pointer. Here is to good broods across the midwest this year.

Thanks. It was. I had a few more hours to hunt, but the last bird we put up and got was too perfect not to end on. He tracked it through the cover about 75yds before locking up on point. He held point for the time it took me to get over there, held while I walked past him to flush the bird, which I shot and he retrieved to hand. Everything exactly how it's supposed to be. The duck was a bonus. We were working along a steep banked ditch when Mrs. Mallard decided to leave. Took him a bit of coaxing to get back across the ditch once he found it, but he did it. Like I've said, most all of his shortcomings are my fault, but we have fun!

I can understand the difference in bird numbers between Indiana and Iowa, it was pretty similar between MN and IA for many years. I hunted Iowa a lot back when they were the pheasant capital, not South Dakota. 2-3 of us would start at 8:00 AM in the first tier of counties across the MN border, generally bag a limit by noon, eat lunch in the car heading back to MN to hunt the afternoon. Two limits of pheasants and a couple of Huns each were typical for a long one day trip. Now it's hunt hard all day long in either state and if one does not miss any opportunity one might fill their bag. That is if you hunt alone as 3-4 good opportunities is a decent day with 2-3 more likely. I can expect that less than an hour from my door and I often have the opportunity to hunt grouse and woodcock in addition to pheasants.

Those were the days justifying the 3-4 hour drive to go hunting for just a day. High crop prices drove farmers to plow under CRP and the loss of habitat affected both private and public lands greatly. We would make the trip to the southwest but stopped that when the farms we had access to tore out and plowed under their windrows, CRP, and any other bit of cover around. The public lands then got hit continually by hunters of all types. The birds left just couldn't handle the pressure and in three years we went from full possession limits for 3 guys over 3 days to four birds total. And we missed only two roosters.

I can see how that happened. $8/bu corn was hard on a lot of critters... One of these times I hope to hit it right and have to tell the stories about what it was like "back in the day".

If you getting the hankering, feel free to bring your fancy shotguns down to IA this fall and show me how to shoot!

you guys are making me antsy,,,,I'm in the planning of a couple of "bird boondoggles" for this fall,,,my dog will be 18 months and we need to hit it hard,,,

I don't have any "fancy" shotguns but I do have utilitarian ones.

What I described was the best hunting I experienced but I saw even better when I was a kid and too young to tote a shotgun. This was back before Earle Butz ended the Soil and Water Bank programs which were the blueprints for CRP. He also advocated for fence line to fence line plowing. Coupled with advances in herbicides and fertilizers, it was no longer necessary to leave some fields fallow and the fair number of weeds which grew among the corn disappeared. Corporate farming became the trend which removed even more cover which had previously delineated property boundaries.

In those days 20-30 hunters would drive a cornfield towarwds 6-10 other hunters blocking the end. The last 50 yards would see enough birds flushing it could be tough to shoot a rooster and not hit a hen. 2 bird limits for all were not uncommon and some would "double dip" and drop off their birds and go out again. That was illegal but not uncommon. Only once have I seen numbers reminding me of that and it was a isolated occasion. It would be terrible on the dogs but I wouldn't mind experiencing a drive like that involving family and friends again.

I understand. The few times I’d gone waterfowling before this past season, I enjoyed myself but didn’t care all that much, I was still focused on deer. This year having my own dog made all the difference, I wish I hadn’t waited till deer season ended to start hinting waterfowl. I believe deer hunting is still my favorite, but next season I won’t hesitate to take the dog and go hunt ducks during some of the earlier splits.

I've only seen a couple of drives like that. Two buddies and I were hunting pheasants and prairie chickens in SD. Knocked on a door to ask about hunting a smallish, unpicked milo field. Permission granted. Turned the dogs loose and the birds started coming up like popcorn! Quickly gathered the two dogs and leashed them. Did a push to one corner and once we got with in 40yds of it the birds just kept coming out. I bet that final jump put 200 birds in the air in just a couple of minutes! Crazy good fun!

JJ- You seem to know where I'm coming from! I think this fall will see big game hunts, particularly deer, taking a backseat to taking the dog out for some type of birds, somewhere!

Idaho is THE quintessential upland bird state....though eastern Montana and Wyoming isn't bad. Parts of western Wyoming sucks ass except for a 12 or so day sage grouse season and forest grouse in the mountains. Chukar are becoming more established though, so that's a glimmer of light.

I myself am finding a desire for more and more upland bird hunting every year, though I take full advantage of what I have left of my lungs and legs for big game...that ratio does lean more towards upland birds a little bit more each year. If I absolutely had to choose one or the other right now, I'd say sayonara big game....it's been fun.

T my thoughts exactly! In fact we are considering getting a 3rd golden.. But they are such kids! But it is more fun to shoot a grouse than a buck, I am not sure why I do it.. Elk, ugh!!!

Elk are a lot of work, even with horses, no doubt. The exercise is one reason why I do still hunt them though (kind of like chukar in that regard). One day if I could get permission to whack elk down on a private ranch where we could get a loader right to him I sure wouldn't turn the opportunity down with my pinky sticking straight up in the air. For poor public land me though, pheasants and grouse are the shizzle, plus you don't have to stop shooting once one goes down.

The one exception to this deal is snowcock...the actual hunting aspect of them is much more like big game and the terrain is dangerous. I've took a couple shots at them but they were just too long...

Snowcocks are in some sporty country to say the least...

Now I'm thinking either SD or KS for birds in Oct/Nov...

That could change tomorrow...