Wild birds in North Dakota

[Flyin40]

Just got back from hunting in North Dakota, and all I can say is wild bird hunting takes alot of footwork. The wild pheasants absolutely refuse to fly or if they would flush it would be at 100 yds on a wild flush. With one guy the pheasants can roll out to the right or left and circle back around you. I ended up only upland hunting 4 days and ended up with 10 pheasants, 2 hungarian partridge and 12 sharptails. Theres so many sharptails up there, the last night in 2 hrs I flushed over 100 grouse. They are everywhere. The pheasants were tough, all they want to do is run. The dogs would work them for 1/2 mile or more sometimes, they just wouldn't fly unless there was a break in cover otherwise they would run and run and run. All in all I had a good time and the dogs did great. I ended up renting a room and property to hunt but it was all unguided. I think next yr I will go to South Dakota for pheasants, North Dakota loses alot to harsh winters so the numbers there are low. They are there but you really have to work for them. There are more in the western part of the state but I was in the north cental and south central, the prarie pothole region to duck hunting.

Flyin

[Lance]

Cool, sounds like a great trip! I'd love a chance to get into a bunch of sharptail and huns. How long of a drive is it up there?

[Flyin40]

18hrs and it would of been nice to have someone to share the drive up. Tons of sharptails but huns are harder to come by in the cental part of the state. The farther west you go in ND the better the Hun hunting. Plus the huns like different cover than the sharptails and pheasants. They seem to be in shorter, less thick cover.

Flyin

[3006]

Just got back Sunday from hunting south eastern ND(Ashely). Pheasants were all over the place. Didn't get much time to hunt them though. Your right about them running, roosters that is. The hens would flush but couldn't get a rooster to go for the life of me. All in all, flushed about 30 birds in about 4 hours of upland hunting. Pheasant numbers were at record levels in ND. At least in the SE section. They had 2 hatches this year.

Could tell the dog was used to hunting the preserve as well. Would really work the field edges good, but seemed confused oncen we got into the middle of the big fields. Much of the land that looked like great pheasant cover was posted where we were. Got permission to hunt waterfowl, but wouldn;t let us hunt the pheasants. Kinda hard not to shoot when you have cock birds landing next to you in the cattails.

Ducks were not the good. 3 of us ended up with 35 birds. They just were not there yet.