Okay, I've blurted out on this blog that I'm taking a pheasant hunting trip next fall from Michigan to Kansas. Now what?
So many decisions to make. For starters, I'll need to find a hunting partner to rope into going with me (and splitting costs).
Here are some more offhand considerations I'll need to address before making the road trip a reality, in no particular order:
Approval from my wife.
Vacation time. I can purchase additional vacation where I work. Will I have enough days to fulfill family vacations without purchasing extra days?
Kansas? How do I know Kansas is where I want to go... I may want to research to see if Kansas is the best choice.
If Kansas is the place, where in Kansas?... More research...
Start saving for the trip. The boys will need college cash in the future that keeps increasing its pace in my face. Maybe Killian's can be replaced by Red Dog without much sacrifice.
Pray for continued health.
Brush up wing shooting skills. It would stink to save up dimes and vacation days only to crumble like generic brand saltines in the face of pressure in the form of flushing roosters.
Make sure the dogs are prepared. Sure my two wirehairs did fairly well with very little prep before the Michigan woodcock season. But what happens when they're out of their normal routine? A little more exercise and some off-season bird work are in order.
I'm sure I'll come up with more things to consider as time progresses. In the meantime, I'll keep you posted here on my blog on how I'm doing getting ready for my trip to Kansas. Or Iowa, or North Dakota. . .
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Running Out of Pheasant Shot, or The Story of the Snipe in my Twitter Photograph
When I mention snipe hunting to friends, even fellow bird hunters, most look as if they're anticipating a punch line.
Even though I don't know one person who has ever been duped into going into the deep woods and trying to call fictitious critters into a burlap bag, everyone seems to have that exact image in their head of snipe hunting.
Just so we're clear, snipe, or common snipe is a bird that looks a lot like a woodcock. The best way to tell them apart in the hand is by looking at the stripes on the head. The stripes on a snipe go front to back; the stripes on the head of a woodcock go from "ear" to "ear." In the air, the snipe's wings have a bent shape that remind one of the flight of a killdeer.
I look at the Michigan hunting regulations every year and see the daily bag limit of eight birds and think "I'd like to get a piece of that action." I spent several days with Andy Ammann, a man who came as close to achieving rock star status as any wildlife biologist, when he was in his 80s in the early 1990s. We were trying to locate broods of snipe so he could band the chicks. Since passed to happier hunting grounds, no doubt filled with young aspen coverts, Dr. Ammann is credited with getting a December grouse hunting season in Michigan, and for developing the technique to locate and band woodcock chicks using pointing dogs as a way of gathering important life cycle information to help in regulating the hunting of the secretive birds. I believe there is a Ruffed Grouse Society chapter named after Dr. Ammann. (I should check online to see if any of his books titled A Guide to Capturing and Banding American Woodcock Using Pointing Dogs are available.) We never found any chicks together, but he did assure me the birds are sporty hunting and plentiful in Michigan, especially along certain shorelines of the Great Lakes.
Finally, last season, approximately 18 years after my conversations with Dr. Ammann, I bagged my first snipe. Regrettably I never have targeted the species, or even tried to find those shorelines where they are plentiful. (It's still my intention to do so some year.) However, I couldn't have been happier than that fortuitousness moment last season when pheasant hunting a farm near my home when my dogs bumped a snipe that flew in front of me.
Normally when pheasant hunting you can't pull the trigger on a snipe. They are a migratory bird and you cannot hunt them with a gun capable of holding more than three shells. No problem for me, as I usually tote an over/under on pheasant hunts. Like ducks, snipe require the use of non-tox shot loads. Luckily, I had run out of my normal lead pheasant shells. On this tromp through the small farm marsh, I happened to be loaded up with steel shot duck loads which I have found to be effective on the big, long-tailed upland birds. The loads were No. 4 steel shot, which would not be recommended for the diminutive snipe, but legal nonetheless.
So my first snipe got posed with one of my dogs and a rooster pheasant I also took on that hunt. It's the photo posted on my Bird Country Reports blog and Twitter account. In order to see it you would need to click to view the larger version of the photo, and even then you would be doing great if you spotted the little bird in the photo next to the gaudy ring-neck. If you look closely at the photo I put below here you may notice part of the bill missing and hole about the size of a No. 4 steel shot pellet on the remaining portion of the bill.
Close up photo of common snipe:
Here are woodcock in a photo for comparison to the snipe:
Even though I don't know one person who has ever been duped into going into the deep woods and trying to call fictitious critters into a burlap bag, everyone seems to have that exact image in their head of snipe hunting.
Just so we're clear, snipe, or common snipe is a bird that looks a lot like a woodcock. The best way to tell them apart in the hand is by looking at the stripes on the head. The stripes on a snipe go front to back; the stripes on the head of a woodcock go from "ear" to "ear." In the air, the snipe's wings have a bent shape that remind one of the flight of a killdeer.
I look at the Michigan hunting regulations every year and see the daily bag limit of eight birds and think "I'd like to get a piece of that action." I spent several days with Andy Ammann, a man who came as close to achieving rock star status as any wildlife biologist, when he was in his 80s in the early 1990s. We were trying to locate broods of snipe so he could band the chicks. Since passed to happier hunting grounds, no doubt filled with young aspen coverts, Dr. Ammann is credited with getting a December grouse hunting season in Michigan, and for developing the technique to locate and band woodcock chicks using pointing dogs as a way of gathering important life cycle information to help in regulating the hunting of the secretive birds. I believe there is a Ruffed Grouse Society chapter named after Dr. Ammann. (I should check online to see if any of his books titled A Guide to Capturing and Banding American Woodcock Using Pointing Dogs are available.) We never found any chicks together, but he did assure me the birds are sporty hunting and plentiful in Michigan, especially along certain shorelines of the Great Lakes.
Finally, last season, approximately 18 years after my conversations with Dr. Ammann, I bagged my first snipe. Regrettably I never have targeted the species, or even tried to find those shorelines where they are plentiful. (It's still my intention to do so some year.) However, I couldn't have been happier than that fortuitousness moment last season when pheasant hunting a farm near my home when my dogs bumped a snipe that flew in front of me.
Normally when pheasant hunting you can't pull the trigger on a snipe. They are a migratory bird and you cannot hunt them with a gun capable of holding more than three shells. No problem for me, as I usually tote an over/under on pheasant hunts. Like ducks, snipe require the use of non-tox shot loads. Luckily, I had run out of my normal lead pheasant shells. On this tromp through the small farm marsh, I happened to be loaded up with steel shot duck loads which I have found to be effective on the big, long-tailed upland birds. The loads were No. 4 steel shot, which would not be recommended for the diminutive snipe, but legal nonetheless.
So my first snipe got posed with one of my dogs and a rooster pheasant I also took on that hunt. It's the photo posted on my Bird Country Reports blog and Twitter account. In order to see it you would need to click to view the larger version of the photo, and even then you would be doing great if you spotted the little bird in the photo next to the gaudy ring-neck. If you look closely at the photo I put below here you may notice part of the bill missing and hole about the size of a No. 4 steel shot pellet on the remaining portion of the bill.
Close up photo of common snipe:
Here are woodcock in a photo for comparison to the snipe:
Friday, November 13, 2009
Breaking In the Kennel on Wheels
So that they'd associate their new "kennel on wheels" with a postive experience from their first time riding in it, I took the dogs this past weekend to one of their favorite places: The Ringneck Ranch in Hanover, Mich. The dogs and I have done some guiding at "the Ranch" so we have privileges to run there after the customers have left for the day. (See video of when I picked up the dog trailer here.)
My 14-year-old son and 10-year-old son went too. In fact, dad didn't even take his gun from the case. I'm not saying it was easy walking away from the truck without the over/under. When the first bird flushed, going up behind us, I had to suppress my instinct to grab the single-shot out of the hands of my 10-year old who happened to be closest to me. The pheasant sailed unscathed into the field in front of us. A few minutes later, it held momentarily for a point and presented a fairly long shot opportunity for my 14-year-old son. I watched as he kept the barrel moving through his shot, sending the hen on a fluttering trajectory into a patch of foxtail between sorghum rows.
The dogs worked well, there were plenty of leftover birds and the boys ended up bagging two pheasants that were dutifully retrieved by the wirehairs.
The dogs enjoyed their first outing in the new trailer.
Watching the boys develop bird hunting skills, and more importantly, sensing them developing an appreciation of dog work and a love of bird hunting, made this one of dad's all-time favorite hunts.
After-hunt photo:
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
We're Going to Kansas!
My Brittany, Scoop, never made it from Michigan out to one of the pheasant-rich states of Iowa, Kansas or South Dakota. Despite many good intentions and the fact she lived 16 years -- through my final college year, getting married, the birth of my two sons, and even the name of her breed changing from Brittany Spaniel -- our fantasy road trip never materialized.
We did enjoy bagging our share of ring-necks in a state where old timers swore there were none left. "I guess it'd be ok if you want to hunt pheasants if you want," would say the farmer in stained coveralls when I would inquire about hunting privileges where I'd find him working in the barn across a dirt drive from a sagging, paint chipped house. "But don't expect much."
Oh, I wondered how good it would be to follow that tenacious orange dog as she quartered a field where we could expect much.
I've heard stories from hunters who have gone to the promised land of pheasant hunting. "Just drive up and knock on doors where the cover looks good -- it's easy to get permission to hunt," they've told me. Pheasant and quail, limits on both if you want to walk that much.
Sage, my 9-year-old German Wirehaired Pointer, has seen far fewer wild pheasants than her predecessor. Sparty her two-year old "little brother," they're from the same kennel but not siblings, has had more experience with woodcock and ruffed grouse during trips to the large tracts of public woodlands in northern Michigan than with wild pheasants around his southern Michigan home.
That's all about to change: Next fall, we're going to Kansas!
We did enjoy bagging our share of ring-necks in a state where old timers swore there were none left. "I guess it'd be ok if you want to hunt pheasants if you want," would say the farmer in stained coveralls when I would inquire about hunting privileges where I'd find him working in the barn across a dirt drive from a sagging, paint chipped house. "But don't expect much."
Oh, I wondered how good it would be to follow that tenacious orange dog as she quartered a field where we could expect much.
I've heard stories from hunters who have gone to the promised land of pheasant hunting. "Just drive up and knock on doors where the cover looks good -- it's easy to get permission to hunt," they've told me. Pheasant and quail, limits on both if you want to walk that much.
Sage, my 9-year-old German Wirehaired Pointer, has seen far fewer wild pheasants than her predecessor. Sparty her two-year old "little brother," they're from the same kennel but not siblings, has had more experience with woodcock and ruffed grouse during trips to the large tracts of public woodlands in northern Michigan than with wild pheasants around his southern Michigan home.
That's all about to change: Next fall, we're going to Kansas!
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