Pheasant hunting can make for a satisfying social outing. Particularly when going after pheasants, hunting in groups of five or more buddies with multiple retrievers isn’t unusual. Considering the massive parcels of cover available in the Dakotas, Nebraska , and Kansas , having a large group is almost never a bad thing.
What’s just as satisfying, in my opinion, is hunting pheasants alone with one dog and looking for roosters in smaller, more manageable areas. Every bird brought to hand without all the noise and chaos that often comes from hunting in a big group makes solo hunting all the more enjoyable.
I get in as many solo pheasant hunts with one dog as time allows every fall in my home state of South Dakota. And just as often, it’s a hunt with my wife, Tina, or a close friend. Strategies for these hunts have very little in common with the way I’d approach a 400-acre section of CRP ground.
Some hunts are easier than others. Late in the season, especially, taking on educated birds with a single dog can be super challenging. Here are some thingsI’ve learned during the past few decades of going one-on-one with ringnecks.
Be Thorough in Your Search for Pheasants The biggest error that I see solo pheasant hunters make is trying to cover too much ground all at once. Approach each piece you want to hunt with a strategy. As an example, let’s say it’s midday, and you’re looking at a square, 40-acre patch of thick grass near a cut cornfield. This could be a great piece of loafing cover that holds birds. Don’t start at the center of it and ramble down the middle. Instead, mentally break it down into sections by asking yourself how many passes you think it will realistically take for you and your dog to properly search it.
In this example, I’d start at a corner on the downwind side, zig-zag my way in 20 to 30 yards from the edge, and then let my dog work from the edge to me and then another 20 to 30 yards inward. This way, we’re covering an approximately 50-yard swath as we move down the field.
Now, we all know that a running rooster can spoil the best plan, so make up your mind ahead of time about what you’re going to do if your retriever’s nose goes down, and it takes off at warp speed on the trail of a runner. You can follow your dog wherever its nose takes it (within control, which I’ll get to shortly), or you can concentrate on staying in the lane you’ve already picked. A bird that runs deeper into the cover might very well be there for you to intercept on the next pass down the field, it might run out the other side and be gone, or it might run 100 yards and fly—in which case you probably didn’t have a chance at that one anyway.
Assuming you didn’t let a psycho rooster drag you and your dog on a dizzying chase all through the cover, when you get to the other end of the square, quietly move over another 50 yards or so and work your way back in the opposite direction.
In this same example, if you have another hunter with you, one hunter should stay on the edge, and the other can take the position deeper into the cover. This will largely depend on how much upland experience your dog has. You might be the hunter on the edge if you’re confident your dog will head into the cover and work back and forth between you and your friend. If being on the edge means that your dog will only hunt the edge, maybe you should put your buddy on the edge while you go inside to ensure your dog covers the area thoroughly.
Look for Pheasants in Fence Rows If you are hunting pheasant alone, a fence line that cuts through an ag field, with cover that extends several yards to each side, provides a great situation for hunting with a single dog. The same goes for meandering creeks in farm country. When it’s too wet on the edges for the plow to reach during spring planting, the result is often a perfect haven for birds to hide before and after they feed.
Hunt these narrow pieces into the wind when possible. If there’sa crosswind, once again, get on the downwind side and let your dog work into the breeze. If you have a hunting partner, you might want to position them on the upwind side. It’s not necessarily a given that flushing birds will head to the downwind side. If your dog is working into the wind, the hunter on the upwind side might very well get the most shooting. A super-windy day might change those odds in favor of the downwind hunter, but with pressured roosters, it’s anyone’s guess which direction they’ll go.
When hunting with a dog, hunt quietly to keep from alerting the birds that you are there. (Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Karls) Maintain Control of Your Dog, and Hunt Quiet None of your solo strategies will mean a thing if you don’t have complete control over your retriever at all times. That’s not something unique to solo hunting, but at least when your dog flushes birds out of range and you’re in a big group, you can blame it on someone else’s dog, right?
Control ties into a huge advantage held by the solo hunter: silence. When you and your dog can approach a patch of cover from the downwind side, and you don’t have to whistle or use voice commands to keep your dog in line, you’re setting yourself up for success.
Before the season, when you’re exercising your dog in cover, turn off the talk. If your dog has hunting desire, there’s no need for constantly shouting, “Hunt ‘em up! Come on, find the bird!” and so on. Time spent zigzagging through cover teaches your dog to take its cues off the direction you’re walking.
I strongly recommend training your dog to respond to the tone feature on an e-collar. Life is so much simpler this way! Ever since tone became a popular feature on modern e-collars, I’ve trained my flushing dogs to understand that a single tone means to visually check back with me. This could be because the dog is getting too far away for my liking, so this is a warning. They quickly learn that ignoring the tone means it will be followed up by an actual correction from the e-collar. A tone could also mean that I’m changing the direction I’m walking. I want the dog to see that and move to the direction in front of me. Finally, I train my dogs that a constant tone means to come all the way in.
For all the fun that comes with hunting amongst a big group of friends and a gang of retrievers, hunting solo has its own set of rewards. Make sure you set some time aside this fall for just you and your bird-crazy retriever to get out and cover some ground.
If you are hunting with someone else's dog, let them do the handling. (Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Karls) Don’t Handle Someone Else’s Dog There will be times when you’re hunting dogless. Maybe you’ve left your dog in the truck for the next walk because your buddy brought his dog, and you’ve agreed to hunt one dog at a time. This is a reminder about the unwritten rule: Don’t try to handle someone else’s dog.
Even if your friend’s dog is a no-good renegade who’s spoiling the hunt, nothing good will happen if you start calling, yelling, or otherwise trying todiscipline someone else’s rogue retriever. Keep your mouth shut and be thankful that on the next walk, it will be your dog’s turn again.
Conversely, if you’ve invited a non-dog owner along and that person starts talking to your dog or trying to tell it what to do, politely ask him to stop. Most likely, your dog won’t listen anyway. Simply explain that all that talk is spooking birds, and that your dog gets confused easily. If the message gets through, problem solved. If not, well, you know who not to invite on your next hunt.
