Hunts
| Reasonable pheasant hunting expectations within Mid-America Hunting Association is to recognize our wild pheasant hunting is on natural terrain. That also means the hunter must travel to where the pheasants are, as the best pheasant hunting habitat is not distributed statewide in Kansas, Missouri or Iowa. When recommending to the first year member where to go pheasant hunting his choice is along a range from the best pheasant hunting that we have that exists within the tall grass where quail are limited, to draws of mixed quail and pheasants in limited numbers, to quail predominate areas of thinner crop edge. The tall grass will concentrate the easiest to hunt birds and in the most dense numbers. These are the easy hunts where when 10, 20 to 50 birds get up within seconds and there are always a few that allow for blue sky shooting. Mixed bag pheasant and quail hunting in draws and crop edge is the next most likely location to find pheasants. These will be overgrown in plum thickets and grasses typically bringing the cover habitat to grain field edge. Shooting is tougher as much of the cover is higher than the hunter. Limited pheasant hunting opportunity will be found in the better quail regions of largely grain fields with thin to thick edge along woody cover. These are the larger watersheds within heavy agricultural land use regions. To know what is reasonable is to examine some of the unrealistic expectations of some. What is unreasonable is for the hunter to state he seeks the best pheasant hunting we have, typically meaning the most dense concentrations, but does not want to hunt the tall grass. Some hunters seek ideals that do not exists such as easy pheasant habitat and plenty of birds. We have heard from some hunters that the tall grass is too hard to hunt for either the hunter or his dog. If that is the case then that hunter must settle for different habitat that will yield less pheasant density. Another unreasonable expectation is for all dogs to do well at pointing pheasants. Pheasants, from those that have hunted grouse, pheasants and quail will tell that pheasants are in-between ruffed grouse and quail for tolerance of a dog on point. Pheasants while more tolerant than ruffed grouse are far less so compared to bobwhite quail. While a particular dog may have proficiency at one type of bird and hunting condition that proficiency will not always translate to pheasant hunting, in spite of the hunter's expectations. A common hunter statement that indicates dog to pheasant issues is a hunter that says he has seen many pheasants and they must be pressured birds as they will not hold for point. Typically, when we drill down on this type of statement we find a dog with limited wild bird hunting experience and any wild bird experience is likely not on pressure sensitive birds or is on released birds. In this example the problem with the pheasant hunting is not the presence of pheasants, it is a dog that does not have sufficient point standoff to prevent the pheasant from run or flush. What is reasonable pheasant hunting expectations is to be able to hunt wild pheasants on a variety of cover conditions where both hunter and dog will quickly find out just how good they are at wild pheasant hunting. |
