The pheasants were THICK and many people stated it was the best year for pheasant (number wise) they had seen in a very long time. Just driving to the property there were pheasants all over. Lots in the trees, sitting on hay bales, all over the road. Just pheasants all over! Course hunting them was a different thing as it took all day of walking/hunting to finish limits of 3 roosters apiece for 6 guys. Pheasant hunting has always been my favorite type of bird hunting and it brought back a ton of memories of Wisconsin pheasants.
The scenery was just beautiful and we had outstanding weather with only one day seeing a bit of rain and temps in the lower 70s. During our 5 day trip the norm was upper 20 degree mornings warming up in the 50s. Perfect temps. This is more of a pictorial summary than a day-by-day account but I’ve added a few notable events.
The North Dakota cornfields were just loaded with pheasants and by walking the cornrows the “drivers” were able to push them towards the “posters” and the birds would hold up (in theory) as everyone merged together.
Tom & Johnny
CRP Land (Conservation Resource Program)
All six of us
More CRP land
Evan, Frank, & Noel (our guide) at the end of a long walk
Classic out west shot (windmill, CRP, & old junked car)
Now a trip like this is a perfect excuse to get a new gun and with that three new guns were bought at the beginning of this trip (I always wanted a Benelli SBE II……) as were a couple pair of new boots. Of course, with all that walking there were bound to be foot problems. After two days of walking three of the guys were developing hot spots and the mole skin wasn’t working as good as hoped. Out came the “100 MPH tape” (duct tape).
Despite having an on-call Podiatrist (Dr. Berens pictured in the photo) there were some hurting dawgs here.
Now not just feet were hurting. One of the new guns, a brand new double barrel (never shot before) took a liking to hurting Tom’s hands with Express loads. On one of the first shots with the new gun, Tom suffered a pretty bad split to his thumbnail from the recoil. Within ten minutes Frank was sporting a split thumbnail too due to recoil collision of the barrel opener tang on his O/U & on Tom’s double barrel. Course that just opened the door for a lot of dawgin’ of the newly named “Digit Twins”.
By the last day there was some noticeable limping going on account of some hurting dawgs.
Some ugly blister action!!!
I strongly recommend taking an occasional Guys Trip! The testosterone bonding made for a lot of fun!! The awesome hunting was just icing on the cake.
Last hunt of the trip
Hoo Yah!!
Brian
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