dougdelite: pheasants without a dog? is it possible?

[Aqhreiner]

Gotta disagree on that - it depends who you go with. The school bus full of hunters is a group of life-long friends and family I've been hunting with for 15 years. The guides we hunt with are dialed on safety. No shooting each other, no shooting dogs. No yahoos. We're quiet when we get out of said bus (we hunt wild birds that will spook if you're a jackass).

The 'operation' (pushing the birds, watching the dogs work, working a field and shelter belts) is a load of fun and a great way to spend time with people you love. It's one of my favorite weekends every year and sure beats the heck out of watching the boobtube in the midwest on the couch with my dad eating cheesy poofs.

The dogs love it too.

“School bus of hunters”… “the guides we hunt ”… does not equal wild birds.

Hunting phesants without a dog is like dating your best friends wife,,,,
It can be done but the outcome can be bad...

nicely said !

 

[DouglasR]

My tip for a beginner…get a dog or stay home.

Those are some good looking dogs you’ve got.
How much you want for them?

 

[ammo]

As a dog owner, I think this is a ridiculous take.

Uh yes this is literally the worst take. Go with people that have dogs, offer to pay for beer and gas. Be a good teammate. See if a hunting dog is something you'd want to invest in.

Also just because your outfit hunts in a school bus doesn't make the birds less wild. I've hunted planted birds and these are not that.

 

[OntarioHunter]

For some (many it seems), hunting is a social thing. Deer camp, pheasant bus, etc. Never been my forte. I have more than enough of the social life the rest of the year. I hunt alone as much as possible. Being in a crowd of paying customers is what I do at Walmart ... because I have to. Yes, I have been on the group guided gig but it didn't do much for me. Shot a pile of geese but worries about what to do when to avoid stepping on someone's toes really made it anything but a charming memory. One guy had a mean dog so mine had to stay in the vehicle. Another guy and his daughter (grown up) wouldn't stop shooting when hours ended. I was expected to help clean her birds afterwards. I regularly shoot honker triples every year ... because I hunt alone. Very hard to do if hunting with others, but I did manage it once that trip. On the bright side, if I'd been hunting alone, I probably would have been done with my limit of twenty in a half hour. Instead I got to spend all morning "hunting" as I lay on snow covered ground in subzero cold watching everyone shoot the sky full of holes.

 

[Aqhreiner]

My tip for a beginner…get a dog or stay home.

Long story short, my cat checked the search history on my new personal at home computer and caught me looking at beagles and Brittanys and threatened to move out if I brought one home so it looks like if I want to become a gentlemanly smallgamesman I'm gonna have to do it without a dog for at least this season.

Have any of you guys ever had success doing this?
I don't think our pheasant hunting's all that great here in Il, but there's a few killed in the public hunting areas every year according to the stats sheets so it's gotta be possible.
They also do these controlled hunts that you have to apply for where I think they release the birds before you go out?
Maybe they just stock it once a year like a pond? Not really sure.
I've never seen pheasant on any of my previous hunting endeavors over the past few years, but last year while pursuing deer I stumbled into some area that looked like they could be pheasant/rabbit habitat and when I went back and checked the stats, sure enough some birds and rabbits had been harvested there.

Does anybody have any tips for the hunter without a dog they'd like to share.
I guess my first plan is to find some public hunting areas that have a lot of tall grass/prairie and just start walking.
I guess through YouTube I've learned about "linear habitat" ie. narrow strips of grass that haven't been mowed and finding those seems like it would be a good bet for a guy without a dog because the dumbass bird is more likely to run out the side or the end into the open as opposed to a big prairie where they can just run or hide anywhere.
I think I saw an area that was mowed like this on my last deer hunting trip last fall.

If I go to one of the controlled hunts without a dog will I look like a horses ass?

Have any of y'all ever been on a trip somewhere just to bird hunt?

Do any factors such as weather or mating season effect the best time to hunt pheasants?
Like do they move more on colder days or anything like that or does that not matter because you're just trying to jump them?

as always, thanks for any tips or help!

I retract my initial advice on staying home without a dog. My apologies for being blunt. I grew up hunting without a dog from 1998-2015. Yes it can be done. Now saying that, I live in a state that has ample opportunity, western Illinois is much different.

You hinted on edge cover and yes that is a big big part. Roosters loves edges and not even defined edges like a fence row but just the merging off different grass patches and weeds that produce a natural edge.

As far as weather… yes it makes all the difference!! A fresh 4 inches of snow the first time of the year, you don’t need a dog. Yearling pheasants are dumbfounded by the first snowfall and makes for great hunting. If they have ventured out of their nest, fresh snow makes for easy tracking. Hunt the snow !

 

[DouglasR]

@Nick87 @Dave N
When you guys say you don't see any pheasants anymore do you mean you don't see as many as you used to, or any at all?
I'm just south of champaign and I prob see 3-6 every year out in the country around my house.
Just had one run out of some tall grass right by the sportsman's club tonight.
No they don't release birds there.

I've never seen any on any of the public land I bike, run and hunt on though.
But its like I see enough around here to at least give me hope.
I should prob start scouring onx and sending calling farmers about walking rain ways.
It just sucks how everything is broken into small parcels so you'd have to call a million people.

 

[DouglasR]

@Nick87 @Dave N
When you guys say you don't see any pheasants anymore do you mean you don't see as many as you used to, or any at all?
I'm just south of champaign and I prob see 3-6 every year out in the country around my house.
Just had one run out of some tall grass right by the sportsman's club tonight.
No they don't release birds there.

I've never seen any on any of the public land I bike, run and hunt on though.
But its like I see enough around here to at least give me hope.
I should prob start scouring onx and sending calling farmers about walking rain ways.
It just sucks how everything is broken into small parcels so you'd have to call a million people.

Also, there a little natural area with some bike trails just north of mahomet that doesn't allow hunting that's absolutely infested with them.
and a gross amount of whitetails that you can pet.

 

[Dave N]

I don't remember the last time I saw one. Fence lines are gone and no waterways nearby. Used to be a small amount here and there and I hunted them as a kid but no more.

 

[Nick87]

I've seen 1 wild pheasant here in the last 20 years and I'm skeptical on how "wild" it was. Huntley where I grew up was a prime destination for pheasants for people from near Chicago in the 70's and 80's not so much as a trace now.

 

[Aqhreiner]

my hunting partner and I harvested 70+ WILD roosters this year. Missed countless…. Flushed hundreds and hundreds. And I don’t live in South Dakota. We average 10-12 miles a hunt… dogs average twice that. Takes a lot of boot leather and dog paws.

 

[Aqhreiner]

 

[OntarioHunter]

my hunting partner and I harvested 70+ WILD roosters this year. Missed countless…. Flushed hundreds and hundreds. And I don’t live in South Dakota. We average 10-12 miles a hunt… dogs average twice that. Takes a lot of boot leather and dog paws.

Ten years ago I would stop hunting when I shot fifty roosters. I shoot a fraction of that many these days. I think the golden age of pheasant hunting is gone for good.

 

[Aqhreiner]

Ten years ago I would stop hunting when I shot fifty roosters. I shoot a fraction of that many these days. I think the golden age of pheasant hunting is gone for good.

Unfortunately your 100% correct. Annual loss of habitat is great, beyond an alarming level… crp and open access initiatives do not come close to providing landowners with financial incentives to idle their grounds. We must feed the ethanol machine of America even though it’s a energy negative endeavor. Add a lot of pesticides to keep the crop healthy… it’s amazing there are any birds left

 

[DouglasR]

I'm just glad I got into squirrel hunting before it went to complete and absolute hell like elk hunting, Colorado skiing and Bozeman.

I wonder if I can get permission from a doctor or a lawyer to hunt their land that skirts a nice little drainage slough by my house?
There's a couple of these sloughs in my area and I'm concocting a theory that because you just can't quite farm all the way down into the water, it provides just enough habitat to keep a few birds around.

 

[Nick87]

Sounds like a good place for ducks when it rains and floods....

 

[DouglasR]

Flushed a rooster out of the ditch about a mile up the road from my house this morning.
Must get access!

 

[Horse]

Like others hsve said, definitely capable of shooting birds without a dog. Just wont be as fun, not being anle to watch your dogs play.

 

[roostermaster]

I have heard of it being done. One option would be to glass / watch grass fields near grain fields the last couple of hours of the day. You might see a few roosters fly into the grass. Mark there spot and slowly walk in and try and flush them.

Personally I would not want to hunt birds without my dogs. My dogs take me hunting. If you have a Pheasants Forever chapter near you you could become active with them. You would probably make some buddies that have bird dogs.