good to hear from you brother,
Just got back from 30 days in N.D. two nights ago. Lots of birds but too warm,not enough snow and it turned out to be the hardest bird hunting I've ever been apart of. Check this out. Your dog couldn't wear booties because they were too loud even when the wind was raging; my camo bowhunting saddle cloth like bibs , which I live in, were too noisy. You had to have pile bibs and it was best if they were snowcolored camo. 99% of the birds would not hold for my pointer who has 12 year's experience. The average shot was 40 yards or more and we're shooting 20 gaugeO/Us with 3" #4s. If you didn't start 1/4 mile or more away from your truck just to get into position to start hunting they'd just run off from the noise of the truck engine/tires. No talking ever; no dog beepers to find your dog in the sometimes 5' tall grass and no hitting the dog with enough electricity that it yelped @ all or they were gone. It was pretty standard for me to see sometimes up to 100 birds in a 3 hour walk if I did everything correct but only get 2 or 3 shots and then you still had to hit 'em and your dog had to mark and make the retrieve and almost none of the birds ever hit the ground stone dead. If you didn't follow all of the sneaky rules you could go all day and never see a bird because they all ran off without flying. It was very humbling. I practiced each of the million ways you can screw up and fail several times each, and just to make it even more depressing my buddy who I hunted with everyday can head shoot pheasants @40yds maybe 80% of the time so he'd limit almost every day. He'd do stuff like sneak his 1/4 mile away from the truck to start ,make his dog sit and sneak another 100-300 yards away from it and then call it to him knowing that it would show up right where he believed the birds he'd snuck up on to be holding, and he'd be ready to shoot. Is that way out there or what? I probably need the lessons in humility, but that doesn't mean I like it. Good to see you're out there alive and lovin it. Have a happy holiday and I'll talk to you down the road. ed
