Member
Joined: 06 Nov 2006
Posts: 128
Location: NE
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Season opened Sat. and I got to play guide again. Spent more time and effort helping to get others into the right places, and didn't take many shots myself. To keep it 16 gauge related, I was carrying my M24, and then switched to my A5. One of the other guy uses a Browning o/u he has had for about 5 or 6 years.
Had my brother and his 12 year old son from the western part of the state, a cousin from IL and a couple of his friends, one of them brought his girlfriend and her 15 year old son.
Opening weekend is always fun, but it is probably the worst weekend to hunt due to the large number of hunters out there. Most of the farmers have family and friends coming out, and people are parked at all of the public access areas over an hour before hunting time, so access is tough. The last few years there have also been a lot of crops still standing giving the birds refuge from the hunters, once the leave the fields they roosted in, they don't come out of the corn for the rest of the day.
Luckily, I am always guaranteed a place at my brother-in-law's farm. We weren't 50 yards into the field when the first birds flushed, a couple of hens that came up about 75 yards ahead of us. We worked over the main field, picking up a few birds, then split up and went down the fence rows and met up at another smaller field. After we worked it over, we split up and walked a few terraces across the hillside, back to the road and then back to the vehicles. Came out of there with 9 roosters, a couple were missed because we were trying to get the kids shots rather than just shooting them ourselves, and a couple were just plain missed.
We then drove down to another spot, it is in the public access program, but it is out in the boonies with pretty poor roads in the area, so I thought it might not have been hunted too hard early. This area is the corners of 3 consecutive 1/4 sections with center pivots on them. If you are not familiar with this type of farming, it is a 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile field with a big irrigation system that swings around in a circle, pivoting around the center and leaving triangular shaped patches in the corners. It is used primarily for corn or beans, and most farmers will plant an alternate crop in the corners, such as alfalfa or oats. These corners had been planted to native grasses (though the brome is taking over in parts) and in the corners away from the road the farmer had put in some food plots for the wildlife.
So, we dropped some of them at the east end to let them hunt around the corners and fencelines of two of the fields and we drove around an parked on the south side and went in to circle around the last 1/4. They would have a mile and half walk, we would have a mile, and we would all end up by a vehicle rather than having to walk 4 miles. My cousin, one of the guys from IL and I kicked up two roosters which we got, and then continued on and just as I was hoping busted a big covey of quail in an area that I have found them for several years. Unfortunately, most of them flew across the fence onto some other property. We did end up dropping four of them, two on the initial flush, and 2 more singles.
Finished up around the field, and decided it was lunchtime. Cousin and friends also thought it was time for a nap after some food so they headed for the motel.
Brother, nephew and I headed out and hit another spot picking up one more rooster and a couple more quail.
Sunday, we hunted in another area about 25 miles away, hoping to get in on some public access program CRP fields, but ran into a lot of other hunters, did find one field that nobody was in, and picked up a couple of birds, then spent the rest of the day in fields that had already been hunted. We did find a few more birds, but it was an awful lot of walking for just a little shooting.
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