Ruffed Grouse Opener

Our Outdoors By Nick Simonson Opening day in the northwoods of Minnesota generally isn’t the ideal time to chase after the booming wingbeats of a ruffed grouse.  The weather is hit-or-miss, with some mid-September weekend temperatures climbing into the 80s, limiting the time afield for my lab, Gunnar.  There’s still a great deal of foliage [...]

Late Season Pheasant Hunting

By Doug Leier For those of us who like to spend as much time as possible on the outside of the window, October is a sort of early Christmas present. Hunting seasons for just about everything are open, and fall fishing can be just as hot as summer, but without humidity and mosquitoes. While crunching [...]

CRP – Make the Call

By Nick Simonson Last winter was one of the harshest I can recall since my senior year of high school. That winter of 1996-97 kicked off with a cold and snowy November and weekly storm events occurred straight on through the “Flizzard” in April, which flooded both Fargo and Grand Forks, N.D., ending the most [...]

Cold Weather Pheasants

By Nick Simonson It’s a cold day with clear blue skies following the winter’s first blizzard, which left six inches of snow as an early Christmas present. A group of buntings flits from the shoulder to the field edge as I turn my hard-starting pickup off of the highway. We rumble down the gravel road [...]

Double Down on Pheasants

By Nick Simonson This year’s pheasant opener was unique in a number of ways. It was the first time I had opened the season somewhere other than North Dakota, with kickoff usually held at my grandmother’s farm near Watford City, N.D. in the company of my dad, brother, uncle and cousins. The hunting report from [...]

Late Season Roosters

By Doug Leier For those of us who like to spend as much time as possible on the outside of the window, October is a sort of early Christmas present. Hunting seasons for just about everything are open, and fall fishing can be just as hot as summer, but without humidity and mosquitoes. While crunching [...]

South Dakota Pheasant Hunting

By PJ Maguire My dad said that last weekend was probably the coldest weather he had ever experienced in the field. Even with all the advancements in cold weather clothing, the Midwest winter chill can get you.. These days my dad owns warmer clothing and knows how to dress for the elements. The Friday was [...]

Sense of the Pheasant Season

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson The day is finally here – pheasant opener. Many sportsmen have been counting down since about mid-July. And with good reason, it is a time in the field unlike any other. It is a circus of the senses and the experience is remembered not only by birds put in the bag, [...]

Youth Pheasant Hunting

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson   “I love it when a plan comes together,” is a cult classic phrase said countless times by actor George Peppard in his role as John “Hannibal” Smith on the 1980s action-adventure series, The A-Team. And who doesn’t? When the pieces fall into place for that perfect hunting or fishing trip, [...]

Wiley Winter Roosters

By Nick Simonson I’ve never seen such wild roosters in my life. Between the games of family poker, the opening of stockings, and Christmas dinner there was holiday hunting, although it was more like a track meet with shotguns. Closing the door on the pickup truck caused the end of the tree row, nearly one [...]

Silver Dollar Slough Pheasants

By PJ Maguire With the majority of the waterfowl south of North Dakota, all signs pointed towards a late season pheasant hunt in early winter. The corn was harvested and the sloughs were frozen, providing ideal conditions for late season birds. My good friends Lars and Jason Dyrdahl, had invited me to south eastern North [...]

Late Season Pheasant Hunting

By Doug Leier Hunting season doesn’t end with the close of deer gun season. In fact, for some hunters the fun is just beginning. While traditional pheasant hunting images resonate strongly with a warm October sun and a crisp morning walk with dew-soaked boots, don’t think for a minute that December pheasant hunting is reserved [...]

FLUSH!!! – A Pheasant Hunting Story

By Chris Hustad “Chrissss…it’s time to wake up” were my mother’s calm words that awoke me from my casual slumber. After a couple long stretches and a few scratches on my head, I was rolling out of bed and onto my feet. It was around 5 in the morning on an early October morning, but [...]

Early Season Lesson Learned

By Mike Taddy Every dog owner’s worst nightmare is losing his or her canine friend, especially when you could have prevented an untimely death. As my 2 ½ year-old male black lab, Harley, lay at my side panting deeply and whimpering, I questioned my judgment to take him a field on this warm second day [...]

Tina’s Refuge – Tension Between Hunters and Land Owners

By Perry Thorvig Ike and Tina Marsh took a rare break to sit in their rural North Dakota farmyard on a warm August evening. The sky was blue, but turning to a dust filtered orange as the sun dropped toward the wide western horizon beyond the Missouri River. There was just a whisper of wind. [...]

Snow Birds

By Perry Thorvig What a difference – early season pheasant hunting versus late season! We know that late season pheasants are smart compared to the early season birds. We have experienced the change in pheasant behavior between the early and late season in past years. But, we got our butts kicked by those gaudy flyers [...]

Public Land Roosters

By PJ McQuire “I could have shot that one.” said UND student Nick Anderson, as a Mallard flew over us at the break of dawn, the skyline pink in the East. At that moment there were nine of us sitting on a gravel road just south of Bismarck moments away from the 2004 pheasant season. [...]

Late Season Pheasant Hunting

By Jason Phillips Although the days of tight holding roosters may be behind us, there are still some opportunities for avid upland game hunters. The young of the year birds are now well educated on how to elude hunters and the wily “old” roosters continue to demonstrate how they became old. To this point it [...]

The Grouse Grand Slam

By Doug Leier Recent talk of a possible prairie chicken hunting season in eastern North Dakota has, not surprisingly, given rise to the concept of a “grouse grand slam,” or the opportunity to hunt four different grouse species this fall. The last time this was possible was more than 60 years ago, at the tail-end [...]