Greek mythology has it that pheasants were present to greet the Argonauts when Jason led them in search of the golden fleece. I suppose this means that I shouldn't be surprised when I hear 20th-century pheasant hunters, many with a fair amount of experience pursuing wild ringnecks, repeating the modern myths that surround the bird.
There's a long history of myth-making about pheasants.
The pheasant is a particularly hard bird to pigeonhole. You can make the general statement that bobwhites will hold for a point, and most of the time you'll be right. Or you can say that ruffed grouse live in thick cover and seldom present open shots, and not many partridge hunters will dispute you. But many popular generalizations about pheasants, although they might hold a grain of truth, contain more fiction than fact.
I'll readily admit that I once took a number of these myths on faith myself. But in the course of the last 30 years or so, and especially since 1973, when I began keeping detailed notes of every pheasant hunt I made, I've learned to become more and more of a skeptic. And perhaps the most important thing I've learned about pheasant behavior is that the bird is only easy to predict in certain very specific circumstances.
Let's examine several of the more popular myths and see if we can sort out fact from fiction.
Myth No. 1:
Pheasants aren't sporting because they're such easy targets.
This myth does have a significant grain of truth to it. A rooster pheasant, if you have advance warning of his flush and if the cover is open, is indeed an easy target--or at least he should be.
My first shot of a recent season, however, shows what can happen even on a "gimme" opportunity. Iowa shooting hours start at 8:00 a.m., and a couple of minutes before then my partner Mike Carroll and I positioned ourselves on either side of a tennis-court-size patch of horseweeds. At 8:00 sharp, I sent Heidi, my German shorthair, into the cover. We were actually hoping that a bird would try to sneak out, because walking in behind a point in weeds that are 10 feet tall and have the diameter of a pool cue is not a winning proposition.
The patch produced one rooster, flushing as the dog crunched through the cane. The bird obligingly exited my side, presenting about a 20-yard crossing shot. I missed clean with both barrels.
I hunt Iowa pheasants hard, some 30 to 40 times per season. Even before pheasants are legal game, I powder my share of clays and spend a lot of time hunting woodcock and grouse. The pheasant should have been duck soup. Yet that season-opening miss was not an isolated case. Nearly every year, I miss at least a couple of roosters--over points, right out in the open, where there are no excuses. I've seen several of my companions, excellent shots all, do the same.
If you miss an easy shot at a pheasant, console yourself with the following rationalization: Grouse and woodcock in the thick stuff require classic snap shooting. A pheasant rising out of ankle-high cover at 10 yards gives you plenty of time, but most hunters hurry their shot anyway. Many misses come from shooting too fast. Take your time.
A couple of other good alibis are that you lifted your head to look at the big, pretty bird or that you shot behind because of the deceptively long tail.
Nevertheless, one should do fairly well on these easy shots. And if you want to build a good pheasant-shooting average, you'd better not miss the easy ones. Hunt them throughout the season, in all kinds of cover and weather, and I guarantee that you'll have your share of tough days--like when the birds are jumping at the fringe of range, or when scenting conditions are poor and the roosters are surprising even your radar-nosed companion.
Pheasants easy target? They can be, but they can also make you wish you were in grouse cover so that you had a better excuse for missing. They almost always look easier than they are.
Myth No. 2:
Opening day hunting is the best
Once again, this myth has a basis in fact. Opening day birds usually do present easier than average shots. Unfortunately, getting at the birds can be the tough part.
There are two problems with opening day hunting. The first is that just finding a place to hunt in good pheasant country is difficult unless you have contacts. The pheasant relates closely to agriculture, which means private land, most of which is spoken for well in advance of opening day. Public areas in pheasant country will often hold birds but will also hold crowds of other hunters on opening day.
Another problem is the harvest. Given a wet fall in corn country, opening day is likely to find you face to face with those amber waves of grain, which, to a pheasant hunter, are much more beautiful in a song than in a field.
I've found that the ideal situation for pheasant hunters in smaller groups is when crops throughout the region have been harvested, forcing the pheasants into unplanted fields with thick cover. The birds hold tight in dense cover, making it easy for smaller groups of hunters with dogs to kick up pheasants within range. Otherwise, most of the birds will be in the uncut corn or other uncut grainfields to start the season. The rest of the birds will go there very quickly once the shooting starts. Pheasants love to run down the clean paths between corn rows. Without a big group of hunters, the birds can run back and forth without flying.
During one recent opener, my partners and I didn't fire a shot, and I only got one shot on the second day. We were fortunate enough to have permission to hunt a half-dozen farms in three different counties, but the harvest was late, and our small group had a devil of a time getting the birds to fly.
Following that episode. I learned not only to reserve ground well in advance, but also to check on the progress of the harvest.
In summary, the opener can be great, or it can be a disaster. If you're planning a long trip to ringneck country, my suggestion is to shoot for two or three weeks after opening day after the crops are cut when the hunting is more manageable. Which leads us to the next myth.
Myth No. 3:
Most of the roosters have been shot after the first couple of weeks of the season.
This myth is usually expounded by the once-a-year hunter--of which we have many in my part of the country. They do their hunting on opening day and watch football the rest of the season, thinking that there will be few or no birds in the field.
A few seasons back, Miles Tratchel and his Drahthaar, Franz, joined me for a couple of hunts that shot holes in this myth. We took two-man limits on December 1 and December 14, about four and six weeks, respectively, after the Iowa season had opened. Each time it took us about two hours to get our birds, and each time we were on ground that had received a fair amount of hunting pressure.
The dog is a great help this late in the season. Once crops are harvested, pheasants tend to head for cover, where they can hide from humans quite effectively. It's much tougher to hide from a good canine.
My notebooks are filled with many other entries which debunk the notion that the birds are shot out after opening day. My favorite time to hunt is mid-November, after the harvest and before harsh weather sets in. But even later in the year, there will still be plenty of birds for the hunter with a decent dog who is willing to beat the brush. The birds may be harder to find, however.
Myth No. 4:
You need a 12-gauge with a tight choke.
This "shotgun myth," as I like to call it, may have been true back in the days when pheasant hunters rarely used dogs and when many birds were bagged as a result of quasi-military cornfield drives. Shots were often long under those conditions, and without a dog to retrieve cripples, you wanted to be as certain as possible that hit birds stayed put.
I'm happy to say that times have changed. Under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a government-subsidized agricultural plan, millions of acres of farmland have been taken out of crop product and seeded with native grasses. The CRP field often provide excellent pheasant cover, and the birds often hold tight. Over the course of the last four seasons, I've had at least 10 shots at 20 yards for every one that required a 40-yard shot.
Gauge is really of little consequence in choosing the proper gun and load. Simply determine what shot charge will do the job for you, then match it up to a gun that will handle that load effectively.
This can lead to a wide range of choices. Steve Grooms, a hard-core pheasant hunter of many years and the author of a couple of good books on the subject, sticks with a 12-gauge. My friend Tom Huggler has crisscrossed the country chasing quail, grouse, and pheasants. He uses the same gun for each species--a 28-gauge. I choose the middle road. I've bagged most of my birds over the last 15 years with a 16-gauge, although these days I find myself shooting a 20 almost as frequently.
A 2-3/4 inch 20-gauge shell loaded with one ounce of No. 6 shot through an improved cylinder choke should produce a lethal pattern on pheasants out to about 40 yards. This is the standard "high power" load for the 20-gauge, and it's even available from Winchester for the 28.
If you want a little margin for error, go to a 1-1/8 ounce load. This is a standard "high power" load for a 16-gauge and is also available as a 2-3/4 inch "short magnum" load for the 20-gauge in shells such as the Winchester XX Magnum or the Federal Premium Magnum.
Mind you, I have nothing against the 12-gauge, even though I don't happen to own one. It's just that I prefer the handling characteristics of a 16 or a 20. So go ahead and use your 12 if you don't mind a slightly heavier gun, but try screwing in an improved cylinder choke, especially over dogs or when birds are holding tight, and stick to the standard 1-1/4 ounce load of No. 6.
You might even try No. 5 shot. With the 12-gauge's heavier shot charge, the pattern will still be dense enough, but the birds won't be shot up as badly as with No. 6 shot, and the No. 5s will give you a few yards extra range in case you want to show off.
Myth No. 5:
Pointing dogs can't handle pheasants.
Two kinds of hunters are behind this myth. The first is the guy who grew up chasing birds in standing corn without the help of a dog. No dog does well in that situation. The second is the guy with the field-trial ethic who expects Rover to range out a couple of hundred yards, then point and hold rooster pheasants consistently. But wild pheasants are not planted quail. It won't work that way very often.
Of course pointing dogs do have a couple of major disadvantages where pheasants are concerned. One is that the birds run a lot when compared to the more civilized woodcock or bobwhite. The second is that your dogs are going to point a lot of birds which you can't shoot--hens. But even given these problems, pointing dogs can do the job.
I've owned five pointing dogs since I started keeping my notebooks. The first, a Brittany, was good on quail and woodcock but never quite figured out pheasants. The second, an Irish setter, was only good to look at. The last three, two English pointers and a shorthair, all have done quite nicely on ringnecks.
In fact, over the course of the last 10 seasons, I've bagged better than 40 percent of my birds over points. You'll certainly be disappointed if you expect to shoot all of your roosters over point, because there will be days when they just will not hold. On other occasions, you'll find every bird sitting tight right under your dog's nose. Most days will be somewhere in between.
Perhaps most important, my dogs seldom flush birds out of range. The key here is control. Unless the birds are really sitting tight, I like my dogs to work within gun range. When the roosters are wearing their Nikes, I try to keep my dogs within about 30 yards. Birds intent on running will usually run harder and flush out of range if pushed by a dog. Why not slow the dog down? The bird may decide to sit it out, or you may at least get close enough for a long shot--and that's better than no shot at all.
Because pheasants, especially roosters, will run or flush at least as often as they hold for a point, why not use one of the flushing breeds? My answer is that it's a matter of personal choice and also of where you hunt. I like big CRP fields, and outside of a really hard-charging springer spaniel, most flushing dogs just won't cover enough ground to suit me. On the other hand, in narrow, thick strips of cover, such as creeks, drainage ditches and fencerows, a flushing dog has definite advantages.
Myth No. 6:
Don't bother marking where birds land after being flushed because they'll just run away.
This is true if they land in light cover. But when pheasants drop into heavier stuff, they often won't move at all.
Hunting in western Iowa recently, we pushed about 15 birds out of a creek bed. We weren't quite close enough to shoot, nor did we actually see them land, but we did get a good line on them. They sailed straight out over the middle of a large field of knee-high grass and weeds. Because of the length of the field, we were almost certain that they did not fly clear across it.
We followed their line of flight as best we could. About a quarter-mile from where they'd flushed, my shorthair made a series of rapid-fire points on five hens. No indication she was making game, just slam-bang and there would be another bird. We had the wind in our favor, and I'm sure the dog would have gone birdy before locking up if that quintet had not just dropped into the grass and stayed put.
Our line of march took us back to our vehicles, where my three companions decided to call it quits. I kenneled the shorthair and unloaded my English pointer hoping to locate at least one of the three or four roosters we'd seen in the original bunch.
We continued working the same general line, and within about 15 minutes I had my rooster. The pointer didn't even wind that bird--I happened to stop at the right time and startle him into flight. I'm quite sure that the bird had simply hit the ground and had frozen.
Contrary to what this myth would lead you to believe, the best thing that can happen to nervous birds that jump en masse out of range is to scatter into heavy cover. The group will break up, and singles are much more likely to sit tight than are groups.
Myth No. 7:
Snow makes for good pheasant hunting.
The grain of truth here is that the first snow of the year, especially if it's heavy, is about the closest thing you can get to a guaranteed fantastic hunt. I'll do just about anything to make sure that I'm out hunting the day after the year's first significant snowfall.
For pheasant hunters, the problem with snow comes when it's been around for a while. Under those circumstances, I probably hate it as much as I love it when it first arrives.
Snow came early for us a few years back, right after Thanksgiving. It stayed around for most of the season. The birds were bunched, and the experiences I had with one of those gangs will show clearly why I have ambivalent feelings about snow.
I first spotted this group of birds picking around on the edge of a river. They were below a high bank, and I figured that if I went around and past them and then slinked back from above and behind, they wouldn't hear me coming.
The snow was fluffy that day, and my plan worked to perfection. Five minutes later, I was standing on top of the bank, looking down on an unsuspecting flock of pheasants. They flushed, and I proceeded to miss with both barrels.
I dubbed this covey "The Bear Creek Bunch," in honor of the stream they called home, and I chased them for the remainder of the season. I soon found that their favorite hangouts were a couple of little, willow-choked peninsulas, not even as big as the average backyard, that jutted into the stream. I also found that knowledge to be almost useless.
I tried all sorts of devious approaches--walking along the bank of the creek, walking across the ice, cutting across an adjacent field. I almost invariably caught the birds at home, but with the exception of one foolish rooster that didn't flush with the bunch, I had nothing to show for a half-dozen attempts.
One of the little peninsulas was about a quarter-mile west of the road. Tiring of crunchy snow and tough going, I walked the frozen creek to reach it on my last hunt of the season. The birds weren't there.
I retraced my steps to my vehicle, resigned to a birdless finale. But I was reluctant to give up so easily and elected to try the other willow pocket. It was located just east of where I had first seen the pheasants on the riverbank.
When I got to within 10 yards of the willows without result, I began to suspect that I'd caught the birds out feeding. Then I spotted tracks in the fresh skiff of snow covering the ice. I stepped into the willows and a dozen birds erupted. I caught the first rooster and sent him tumbling to the frozen creek. I picked out a second, but he'd already caught the howling westerly wind, and my shot was only a farewell salute.
Someone who stumbled on those birds by accident might have blessed the snow for bunching them. But with all of my previous failures, that hunt only reinforced my belief in the unpredictability of pheasants and the unreliability of pheasant hunting myths.
Copyright (c) 1996 Larry Brown. All rights reserved.
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