This is a year much like last in that there are more hunters afield later into the season than normal. If Mother Nature delivers like she normally does, there are only a few diehards still chasing what by now are the smartest remaining roosters in the state.
This year and last year were very different. This is my hypothesis as to why. In a normal year there are thousands of bird hunters crisscrossing the state in the pursuit of roosters.
This is common for about the first three weeks of the season, and then these bird hunters hang up the shot gun and pick up a deer rifle and muzzleloader for roughly three weeks before moving on to ice fishing.
This transition between different seasons reduces bird hunters by large numbers. This year like the last one, when the deer hunting season ended, there was no ice to stand on.
Twenty years ago I would ice fish three out of every five years on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I have not been able to fish in my favorite spot on that day for the past five years.
So, with no ice to support local anglers and very temperate weather, those same folks keep chasing roosters, which requires a change of tactics.
With mild temperatures and the increased late season hunting pressure, the birds move from public hunting acres to nearby marginal habitats that can support birds in mild weather.
As encounters between the smart survivors increase, the birds also stay out later than they normally would, filling their crops with food, roosting in cover at sunset. When there is little snow and mild temperatures, they do not need dense cover to provide them protection from the elements nearly as much.
What I have seen on almost all public lands with higher than normal hunting pressure is that the birds will not move back into a habitat area where hunters can encounter them until way after the legal shooting time which is sunset.
I normally sit on the tailgate of my dog truck for about a half hour when I am done hunting. I watch the last of the sunset and enjoy a few moments with the dogs at my feet inhaling my favorite outdoor experience.
If there is a bird in the vest, all the better, but successful or not, I take those 30 minutes to enjoy what non-outdoor folks never experience. There might even be a beer in that picture.
As I head for home right at or a little after dark, in the headlights of the truck I very often see pheasants returning to the cover. They stay out far later than legal shooting time and thus my spot might be filled with birds an hour after I left.
No matter how accomplished a bird hunter you might be, there is no way to overcome this obstacle.
If you can get permission on the private lands that are nearby, you might be able to harvest those birds from those private spots. This is by no means automatic.
I did just this on a nearby private spot new to me about two weeks ago. The landowner said “yes” when I asked, and I put to use all of the experience I had to make a successful walk.
I zigzagged the cover and knew the birds were running ahead of me. I finally pinched them into the corner and as I neared the end, they all busted out about 80 yards ahead of me – six roosters and nine hens.
To top off the night, my youngest dog, Ghost, was severely injured when he contacted a galvanized tile outlet pipe covered in reed canary grass. Another quarter inch and we would have been doing tendon reattachment surgery. Luckily, he is set to make a full recovery.
The spot they were in did not have dense cover and they just would not hold – the challenge of every late-season bird.
Every one is a trophy and all require extra effort. There are some hunters who are still shooting limits occasionally, but they are hunting on unpressured spots and these are not public lands.
I have always said the difference between a good day and a bad day is a good spot. Every day walking behind a squad of four finely tuned Labradors is a great day. Too bad there are only a few days left.
Scott Rall, Worthington, is a habitat conservationist, avid hunting and fishing enthusiast and is president of Nobles County Pheasants Forever. He can be reached at scottarall@gmail.com. or on Twitter @habitat champion.