Wednesday November 19, 2003
Click on images to enlarge them
On the return walk back down the tree line Jake suddenly got very birdy. Sure enough, the rooster
who fled the crick line was still hiding in the tree line and Jim got him as he flushed into
the woods. It happened too fast for me to shoot a picture.
The camera lens caught the sun just right to give this weird picture. Nice sun effect, plus
a little lens rainbow on the right hand side.
Jim and Mark and Jake walk down the road after the Huns, who have flushed a short distance and
sat down again. I will walk off in the opposite direction to get the truck.
Here I am in Minnesota in the fall of 2003 hunting with two of my friends. I have known Jim
and Mark since high school. Here we are at a farm that we try to hunt every year.
We took a long look down this tree line, then decided to load Jake back up and approach the
front of this farm by driving down the road, turning right, walk another tree line to the center
of the section, and then come up this tree line to the road. The pheasants were here in this
tree line the whole time, and flew off as we approached.
We hunted another of our regular farms. Mark and Jim started in the farmyard and walked
a creek line, trying to push the birds out to the road where I stood guard. Jim quickly got
a rooster. Several flew from the creek line down to the next tree line. We walked that, and
continued out into the section. I had Jim stop and show me his bird.
Jake the dog.
Look at this setup. Picked corn on both sides plus a heavy tree line. It's getting late in
a glorious fall afternoon. Just about this time Jim's truck transmission began to act up.
He would end up driving home in 2nd gear. This coming January, while we are hunting in Iowa with
40 below windchill, we will get his truck stuck in a drift on an unimproved road and have
to wait 3 hours to get pulled out. We hunted where we got stuck and Jim bagged a rooster.
Mark and I pose for the camera before we start our walk.
We are walking in cornfields following a crick line/drainage ditch as it winds out into the middle
of the section. The picture on the left shows Jim and mark with some picked corn behind them.
The ears are picked but the cornstalks are still standing. The picture on the right shows the
corn field I am in. Note how closely the cornstalks are chopped in this field. Most likely
these stalks have been chopped and turned into silage to feed to pigs or cows. Many pheasants
could be out in either kind of field feeding - they would just run away into the horizon
as we approach.
As usual, just when you think the walk is over things get interesting. We were walking back from
the middle of the section on a two rut path when Jake flushed some Hungarian partridge. I shot at
them and missed. A covey of six or so flushed. They landed short of the road we drove in
on. They flushed again and this time I made a long shot on one. I have never got a Hun
before. You do see them infrequently in southern Minnesota.
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