Pheasant Hunting

A few years ago I was invited to join my dad on a pheasant hunting trip in South Dakota. It's an annual trip that my uncle puts together and I always look forward to it. This year the group consisted of my uncle Gordy, my dad, their cousin Jeff, Jeff's son Mark, and myself. We also had four dogs to help us chase the birds around.


I decided to only do a half-trip this time around in order to spend less time away from Heather and Brooks. I left Duluth on Thursday afternoon, spent the night in Sioux Falls, SD and arrived at our hunting area on Friday morning.
The weather was perfect. Upper 50's and not much wind. That not only made it more enjoyable from a comfort standpoint, but also made for ideal bird hunting conditions.

I'm not much of a sharp-shooter, but I did manage to do alright this year. I typically don't care if I shoot any pheasants or not. For me, it's more about spending time with my dad and watching Scout (our black lab) have fun running all over the countryside. With that said, I have to admit that it was a bit more fun to be able to contribute to the bird count this trip.





Since this is the only time that Scout and I go hunting, I place even less expectations on her than I do on myself. She had some good canine hunting campanions to learn from though, and I was pleasantly surprised when she retreived several pheasants for me on Saturday. She's far from a perfect hunting dog, but that's more my fault than hers. She's a high energy dog, that's for sure. After eight hours in the field, Scout is more interested in a good game of fetch than taking a well-deserved nap.


This trip is always fun and this year was no exception. Good company, good food, and we got our limit of birds every day with the exception of Sunday when we left early to head back home.

I had a great trip and truly enjoyed spending some quality time with my dad, but I sure missed Heather and our little buddy Brooks. It was my first time away from our new family and it was nice come home to them.