This is the week 5 recap of the 2023 pheasant hunting season. Based on the weather forecast, it looked like week 5 was going to be too warm and we would not get out at all. As it turned out, I went out four time this week. Weather was still a factor but we caught a couple breaks.
November 11th
Kevin, Bill and I spent most of the afternoon helping a friend and land owner clean, repair and replace wood duck houses. He has about 100 around his and a neighbor’s property. Every fall, we inspect each house. If it was used, we replace the wood shavings or if other birds or mice used it we then clean it out. Finally, we inspect the house and if it is damaged we repair or replace it. We completed the project in about 3 hours. That left a little less than an hour before the sunset.
We geared up and walked out to the fields. Starting with a couple of food plots that were empty we next started walking along the property line. Stella was birdy and a rooster flushed. Bill missed one shot but the bird landed in a treeline about 100-150 yards away.
We continued along the tracks for another quarter mile. At that point we had about 11 minutes left so we headed back towards where the rooster that Bill had missed, had set down. Kevin worked over the the north side of the tree line, I took the south and we positioned Bill at the East end as a blocker. Stella got birdy pretty quickly and she alternated between pointing and creeping. Kevin and I tried to find her but the brush was too thick. Eventually, the bird flushed and flew right over Bill. He dropped it with his second shot into another dense thicket. Stella dove in and came out a couple minutes later with the bird.
November 13th
The forecast changed slightly and now it looked like Monday morning would be cool enough for a short hunt. We went to local private land for a short hunt before it got too warm and before some of the prairies were to be burned. Starting with the usual spots we did not see anything. As we were walking back to the farm site, we heard a cackle in a wind break. We quickly setup and pushed away from the buildings. Stella was birdy and started tracking. The rooster eventually flushed wild and flew towards a smaller prairie. We walked that but did not see any more birds.
November 14th
After missing the last two hunts, Willow was not happy. She can handle warmer temperatures so I took her out to a local WMA. Willow got to run and did point a hen. She ran well, stayed with a reasonable distance and covered a lot of ground.
November 17th
The forecast for the 17th was good so we headed over to the south central part of Minnesota. Bill, Stella and I started at a WPA that we hunted earlier in the year. As we left the truck there was a smell of burnt grass in the wind. It turns out that a significant part of the WPA had be burned, including the area that we had planned on hunting. We walked the remaining grass areas and did see a hen and a rooster. Both of these birds are included in the video.
We moved to the other side of the WPA and hunted with Willow. She did a good job of covering ground and was reasonably well controlled. Unfortunately, we did not see any birds.
It was starting to get warm . We decided to try walking through a cattail slough at another WMA using Stella. She did track and find two hens, also included in the video.
When we got back to the truck we put stuff away in preparation for the drive home. I wanted to show Bill a couple nearby WPAs so we started driving alongside a WPA. Two pheasants flushed from the ditch and landed a hundred yards from the road, including at least one rooster. After parking and quickly gearing up we walked to where they landed but did not find any birds. Continuing on, we did a loop through the WPA and while Stella did get birdy several times, we never flushed a bird.
This week’s video contains some tracking and flushes. A couple pretty close to the camera.
Video
Here is the week 5 recap video with some bird action.
Summary
Week 5 recap summary. For a week that I thought was going to be a bust, I ended up going out four times. We did not see a lot of birds but at least we did have one rooster.
