The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

Editors Note: This column was written before Oct. 14

The pheasant hunting season officially kicks off on Saturday, Oct. 14, and by all metrics the forecast looks to be a pretty good one. The DNR roadside counts came in with big increases and overall, some areas were up more then 100%. Let’s not forget though that if you started with two birds and the count went up 100% that would mean there were four birds. So, if you started with a little number, you might still have a pretty little number.

Putting the numbers aside who cannot be excited about watching their dog do the sniff, chase and evade dance that plays out between a dog, his owner and the rooster that might very well have out witted more then a few other hunters in the past?

The early part of the season is where almost all the roosters that end up in a game pouch get taken. I have read more than a few times that 80% of the entire rooster harvest takes place in the first three weeks of the season. It is really not all that hard to believe. The majority of the hunters who chase roosters will only do so for about the first three weeks of the season. The pheasant population is the highest on opening day and is reduced by every bird bagged each day thereafter. As the young and dumb get cropped off in the early days those that remain have gained an entire 4-year college degree in about 21 days. Those who fly get shot and those who run for the hills at the sound of the first truck door live quite a bit longer.

For every rooster that is flushed and then shot at and missed you now have a smarter bird and one that will be much harder to get into gun range after that first encounter. I have no idea how pheasants communicate but when one gets up 100 yards out of range the others almost always follow. I have never seen a pheasant use sign language but a language exists none the less.

After all the fair-weather hunters have moved on the competition for a spot to hunt increases incrementally. Most of the outdoor folks who only hunt for the first three weeks have not quit hunting.  They have taken up chasing deer or other horned animals. Firearms seasons, including the muzzle loader season, run until the end of November. When the horn season closes many of those same folks will take up ice fishing because the ice is now thick enough to drive on.

One thing that is getting more common as of late is that there has not been good ice in December. If the weather is nice many of the would-be ice fishermen will circle back and hunt pheasant until ice conditions improve. The past four-five years there has been as much pressure on public lands in December as there was in October.

I do my level best to help any and all hunters who want to come to my home zone to hunt as I can. Folks from as far away as New York state now make Nobles County, Minnesota their go-to hunting destination. I field calls all fall long with folks looking for information as to where to go, where to stay and where to eat. I get some ribbing from some of the locals who think the birds in their county are “their birds.” Just not the case. When you think about hunting pressure consider these facts. In the year 2000 Minnesota sold 100,000 pheasant stamps. Last year that total had rebounded from a low in 2017 of about 42,000 to last years total of about 58,000.

This is 42,000 less pheasant hunters than approximately 20 years earlier. Granted there are less private land spots as most of them have been drained and converted to row crops, but there is an ever-expanding amount of public land bases over those same 20 years. Between Nobles County and our neighboring Jackson County and Murray County there is over 20,000 acres of public land to chase roosters on. Sounds like a big number but it is still less then 2.5% of the total land base in those three counties. If you want some more information about pheasant hunting in SW Minnesota reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com and I will do my best to help you out.

My final thought: If there are so many roosters you can’t count them all, or if there are so few you hardly see one, it should make little difference. A day in the field with a gun and a dog and all of the creatures that inhabit a grassland ecosystem – there is no better place to spend a day. A pheasant is a bonus but not the measure of a quality outing. See you in the tall grass somewhere soon.

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.