Yakima slow for everyone???

[fishunt247]

Is Yakima's pheasant season going as slow for everyone else as it is for me. Well...compared to last year. Last season I killed at least one rooster every trip out from the second saturday all the way until the very last day. This year...not so much. I am lucky to see ten roosters a day, not shoot at, but see. If I get a rooster this year, it was a really good day. We haven't started our big group hunts though (some guys are still deer hunting) and there is a lot of corn still standing. But it is nothing like last year. Everyone else's luck the same?

[Bighorse]

Ahummm..........

How in the world do you see 10 roosters and not shoot one?  With a dog and a shot gun you should be in the money with that much activity.

Honestly.....the only time I've seen 10 roosters is when they are dead.  Only a few times I've spotted em before they came up.  Of course my dog knows they are there.

[shorthair-on-point]

Ahummm..........

How in the world do you see 10 roosters and not shoot one?  With a dog and a shot gun you should be in the money with that much activity.

Honestly.....the only time I've seen 10 roosters is when they are dead.  Only a few times I've spotted em before they came up.  Of course my dog knows they are there.

No offense Bighorse but I don't know anyone that has done a lot of pheasant hunting in this state that hasn't scene birds flush way wild. I can't tell you how many times I have stepped 10yds into a field and watched a bunch of birds flush wild out the other side.

[fishunt247]

Yeah, I second that. Unless you can shoot 80 yards you can't kill every rooster you see. Period. These are wild, public land birds, not the pen raised chickens they put at release sites. In years past it wasn't uncommon to see twenty roosters in a field, with five guys pushing and five blockers, and not kill a bird. Especially in the late part of the season. They find holes, double back on dogs and flush behind, run around dogs in cover (thick or sparse), flush when you pull up to a field, and any other of the countless tricks wily wild roosters have.

[Bighorse]

Ok I can eat crow on some of my comment.

At the same time......I'd be willing to say things are a little better than slow if I've flushed 10 roosters.  I would have covered some serious ground and had a great time working the dogs with that level of activity?  This isn't the days of the beet fields anymore.

Hell people hunt Cooke Canyon and pay big money to see that many birds.   

Slow in my experience in WA is only getting up one rooster and that my friends has happened. 

[fishunt247]

I'm still having fun, gonna hit it tomorrow actually. But comparatively, it has been extremely slow.

[shorthair-on-point]

Ok I can eat crow on some of my comment.

At the same time......I'd be willing to say things are a little better than slow if I've flushed 10 roosters.  I would have covered some serious ground and had a great time working the dogs with that level of activity?  This isn't the days of the beet fields anymore.

Hell people hunt Cooke Canyon and pay big money to see that many birds.   

Slow in my experience in WA is only getting up one rooster and that my friends has happened. 

Yes, I have had days where I have thought pheasants might be extinct in WA

[Boom Stick]

We hit the lower valley yesterday.  We felt that with all the snow we would have a successful hunt, but it was just the opposite.  There was about 4” of snow on the ground and it snowed lightly most of the day.  It was beautiful, but that’s about it.  Hunted from sun up to sun down and took one quail home.  We saw maybe 10 hens and two Roosters.  The Roosters flushed way out of range.  We didn’t even see the Rooster till the later part of the day.  It seems like it gets worse and worse every year.  My Lab is new to the sport and I don't think she's going to catch on due to the lack of birds. 

[Thenewguy]

Ya, a couple of buddies and I took a boat across the water in Vantage and hunted all day. The only birds we saw were pigeons...

[fishunt247]

Well I'm back from the three and a half week christmas vacation from school, and I couldn't have asked for better weather. Once I got back from a few days elk hunting, I hit the pheasant and quail spots pretty hard... only didn't hunt 6 days from Dec 15 to Jan 4. The snow stayed light and fluffy, which was great, but the weather was so cold and dry that the dogs had a hard time smelling some time. But the birds were holding, sometimes too tight, and we had some great hunts. I killed 13 roosters, a bunch of quail, and a bunch of ducks. We were seeing more birds once it snowed some of the cover down. And I maybe saw 10 other hunters during the entire break... it was really nice. Still definitely not as many birds as last year, but there will still birds to go around, all the way up to the last day. Hopefully everybody else enjoyed the snow.