11/8/2019 Iowa Wild Pheasant Hunt 2019
My best good hunting buddy Austin Holt invited me to Iowa to hunt pheasant a while back. I didn’t want to do a preserve hunt (at least not that far away) but was intrigued when he told me he thought his family member, Jim Moreland, could help us get on some wild birds.
After the stars and calendars aligned, we were set for a 6 day road trip to south and central Iowa to hunt wild ring necked pheasant.
Since the trip was going to be 10+ hours, we foolishly agreed to take the corolla truck.
Friday November 8, 2019
I arrived with a loaded down CT at Austin’s boss Charles Brunetti’s house and loaded up his gear, him, and Cash. We put Ames in the navigation and headed north.
Our plan was to make it to Iowa late Friday, find a place to sleep near a place to hunt on our own Saturday that was yet to be decided, then drive up to Uncle Jim’s house Saturday afternoon.
We stopped at Chick-Fil-A outside Memphis, then set our sights for Bass Pro Shops St. Louis. Austin was looking for a choke for his new shotgun, but ended up just getting a pullover.
Approaching the Iowa border, we studied the 2019 Iowa Department of Natural Resources Small Game Distribution Map and the Iowa DNR Public Hunting Atlas that shows public hunting areas and wildlife management areas. We also looked at Iowa’s mycountyparks.com site that listed maps and county parks, some as small as 5 acres, open to hunting. The thought was to find a smaller public hunting area in the general direction of Ames that had both above average pheasant and quail roadside survey counts.
Greater Ottumwa seemed to fit that definition and we continued north now with a county in the crosshairs and began the search for lodging. After a little more study, we decided to start our day Saturday at North Skunk Wildlife Area and found a $65/night room at the Super 8 Oskaloosa ($10 per pet per night).
Austin suggested I pay for gas and he would get the hotel, which worked out to be perfect as we both ended up spending about $120. We ended up getting in just before midnight, let the dogs run, laid out our clothes and got in bed.
Saturday November 9, 2019
The alarms went off around 6:00 and Pheasant Fest 2019 was underway.
Our first stop was Wal-Mart for licenses. We got there around 6:45 and were told we couldn’t buy licenses until the employee clocked in at 7:00. I pooped and Austin waited and after some confusion we both had our 5-Day non-resident licenses and $15 habitat stamps and were ready to go. Except we didn’t have coffee. So we stopped for coffee and then we were ready to go!
We arrived at North Skunk at 7:55 (legal shooting hours are from 8:00 am - 4:30 pm). We flushed a hen when we pulled into the parking lot and the thrill of the hunt instantly took over. There was a single cut through the prairie restoration project that ended at the barbed wire boundary some 400 yards later. After that, the walking was unlike any other I’ve been through. Waist to thigh high grasses of all types that would grab your feet and not let go. Within ten minutes of hunting the dogs both ran back on me and slapped a thick sharp grass blade under my eyelid scratching my eye and knocking me to the ground in pain. It almost ruined the trip. I stumbled back to the car, put on a pair of sunglasses (to minimize the need to blink) and continued to hunt with Austin.
We flushed a hen without warning from the dogS and later a rooster that got up over the creek that divided the roughly 100 acre tract in half.
After almost two hours of hard walking, we decided to pack up and try another nearby WMA. We parked at the Millgrove Access Wildlife Area and spoke to some local hunters who said they didn’t have any luck on the North Side of the road (Powieshik County). We were looking for the Ever-Tru Natural Wilderness Area that was supposed to be adjacent to Millgrove. After walking up on cut corn and circling back, we verified access permission with the helpful locals who said just follow the signs, they trump the internet.
Once inside the hunting area, we were treated to decent walking, a rooster flush, massive turnips, and not much else. Not knowing what we were doing, we circled back to the car and headed for Chichaqua Bottoms Greenbelt in Polk County. When we parked, a farmer mentioned that he had just taken the corn out and he only saw one already dead pheasant. Bummed but too dumb to be undeterred, we pressed on hiking through frozen marsh, scaring up deer, and eventually busting a covey of quail near the car.
Recharged after unsuccessfully hunting down the quail, we made one more move and hunted another section of Chichaqua Bottoms then headed to Ames to stay with Uncle Jim.
We arrived that evening and were treated to awesome welcome presents in the form of Sitka Jackets and Hats. We then drove downtown and got excellent Great Plains Sauce & Dough Co. Pizza. Back home we ate, told stories, quickly let the dogs out of the crate, and got ready for our 5:30 am departure to hunt with UJ’s former employee and friend Josh on a mix of public and private land.
Sunday November 10, 2019
We left Ames for Clarion and met at Josh’s shop around 6:45 am. We got a tour of his very cool workspace and headed to CRP he had secured permission to hunt. We walked three deep and flushed a few pheasant. We knocked down a rooster that we tried mightily to find but could not. Pheasants are hard to kill became a clear theme of the trip.
We worked a really good area that Josh had lined up and near the end of the walk Cash pointed, flushed and retrieved an absolutely gorgeous rooster and we were on the board for our wild Iowa pheasant hunt! Cash pointed a hen shortly thereafter and Austin and I were convinced we had a bird dog on our hands. I couldn’t have been more proud.
We walked a piece of public land and flushed a few hens. When we got to the truck, our blocker mentioned that several roosters ran across the road. We decided to make one more pass on private land on a former uncle by marriage’s piece of grass. We went three wide with me on the far right side. After flushing a hen, a rooster got up ahead of the dogs not 15 yards from me, I had an improved cylinder with steel shot and blew it out of the sky. My first wild Iowa pheasant was in the books and nothing after that really mattered.
Cash was in a better position than Dublin and made the retrieve, and with that, Josh had accomplished his mission of putting Austin and I on birds. We spotted one more pheasant that we were going to sneak up on but it flushed as soon as I foolishly slammed the truck door.
We took Josh back home and decided to hunt ditches for the last 30 minutes of shooting light. We eased up on a group of roosters and dropped Austin off. Jim and I drove past the group, and walked slower toward Austin and blocked. All of a sudden, a rooster bust 25 yards in front of Austin and he dropped it. Then another. Same result. Then another. And a final rooster flew off toward Jim and he dusted it. Within minutes our two birds became a two man limit.
Monday November 11, 2019
It snowed a good bit overnight and though the temps were only in the 20’s a 25+ MPH wind caused us to change plans a bit. I had to work so I went to the Ames Public Library and Austin and Uncle Jim ate breakfast and drove around and looked at places to hunt.
By 12:30 I was wrapped up, we were treated to Mexican food and continued to drive around gravel roads looking for signs of birds and places to hunt. The dogs and men needed the rest after almost 20 miles on foot the prior two days, but by 4:00 pm we were all good and rested and itching to get out and hunt a bit. We walked one ditch on the edge of a corn field that was so thick with snow it nearly buried the dogs and after 30 minutes in negative wind chill conditions Austin and I were convinced we had made the right decision to take it easy.
Tuesday November 12, 2019
The Tuesday forecast projected record lows Northwest of Ames where we intended to hunt frozen marsh with wind chill of -14. After a day of rest we didn’t give it a second a thought and were pulling up to hunt with 10 minutes of shooting light. We came up on a tree with at least a dozen pheasants, many of them roosters apparently sunning. We tried to hunt them but they flushed when we got within 100 yards. The marsh was frozen solid with thick enough ice to hold a man (in most places). About every 20 steps I would bust through the ice into the 2” to 2’ water below.
We hunted along the edge of the marsh until a rooster got up out of the cattails. Austin smoked it and we were pumped. We walked all the way to the other end of the tract where Jim was waiting on us and said he saw two roosters in a ditch that we had to cross to get on the road. Austin and cash made it no problem, I took two steps and busted through the ice into water up to my groin. I dug myself only to bust through with the other leg soaking my boots and bibs. I was so pissed I just walked off down the ditch when all of a sudden a rooster flushed. I shot and missed three times, with one shell left I hunkered down, took a breath and knocked it out of the sky. Jim laughed and pointed me toward a farm road not 30 yards from where I fell in and I crossed it while keeping an eye on where the bird landed in case the dogs didn’t mark well. To my great joy Dublin saw it flop and run then chased it down and brought it to me. It was a nice big pretty Iowa cornfed rooster with 23” tail feathers.
We hunted til shooting light was up and agreed to return to our secret frozen marsh the next day. We got most of our gear washed and packed up and were treated to another home cooked meal, this time by a member of Jim and Laura’s church congregation.
Wednesday November 12, 2019
Steve Spoon, Jim’s good friend and next door neighbor arrived a little before 7. We loaded the dogs up and headed back out to the marsh. We started our hunt at a CRP patch that Austin had asked for permission to hunt a day prior, we flushed several birds and knocked down a rooster right off the bat.
We then crossed the road to the public land side and worked the public/private boundary. The corn had just been cut on the private land surrounding the public, and we flushed another pheasant or two down the fence line. Austin killed two more birds before Steve knocked down a young rooster. We looked as a team for almost 15 minutes before Dublin caught the injured bird some 150 yards away.
Dublin got too far ahead and flushed a big group of birds and a deer before we circled back to the truck to regroup. I put Dublin in the truck and we kept walking. A rooster flushed between me and the road and I knocked it down on my second shot. After seeing what happened with Steve’s bird and not wanting to loose a rooster on my last day, I walked directly to my mark and began searching for a crippled but not dead bird. Austin had my back and dispatched it on the ground before it could run back into the cattails and likely never be seen again.
Uncle Jim couldn’t stand poor Dublin being in the truck, so we let him hunt for the last pass back through the swamp and to where we had started hunting.
We flushed a couple more birds on the way back, and right before the truck, Cash got birdy and Dublin went on point. I kicked around in the grass seeing if anything would get up. I then told Dublin to go easy. He pounced in the grass and came up with a lively and apparently uninjured hen. I threw it up in the air and it flew off.
It was an epic trip for all four of us, and an incredible formative and learning experience for the dogs and us, respectively. Many thanks are owed to Uncle Jim, Laura, Josh, Steve and everyone else who had a hand in our success.
We left Ames around 2:30 and ended up getting back to New Albany some 12 hours later. We walked nearly 40 miles, drive over 1,400, spent hours in the sub-zero and days in the sub-freezing temps. Our dogs were wore out, beat up, and happy as larks. All for 14 pheasant. But it was one of those trips where we got so much in return, the bird count didn’t matter. I am forever changed as a hunter, and I hope Uncle Jim will have us back.