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Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Posts: 1460 Location: Eagle, Nebraska

Off to North Dakota tomorrow with Citori 16ga and Sweet 16 lightning in tow...oh and the small munsterlander, Mayzee

Joined: 08 Feb 2009 Posts: 1307 Location: Western WA

Word from family there is the very dry summer has pushed the birds toward nearby water. Hunt the cattails and edges of sloughs. Numbers are down but still plenty still to be found.

Best of Luck and Shoot Straight,
B.

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2124 Location: Hudson,Wy

I'll be up there in the near future. I've heard good and bad, mostly good (especially the grouse numbers). Good luck!

Joined: 30 Jul 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Central, ND

Pretty disappointed so far. Lots of really young birds that can barely fly

Hooch,

Sense you own a great SM dog, you need a SXS double gun to hunt birds with!
I love my Browning guns, however being a traditional Grouse & Woodcock hunter I use SXS double guns to hunt with. L.C. Smith, Lefever, J.P. Sauer. My brother Kurt is a sinner and uses his O/U Browning guns in the Grouse woods. I have advised him that he will answer to God for hunting Gods Grouse with a stack barrel double gun. Our family runs long on tradition, once you own a fantastic German SM dog, you must hunt with a SXS double gun!

I joke about this will all the modern Grouse hunters all the time. Tradition is a big part of bird hunting, especially Grouse & Woodcock hunting.

all the best,

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

I’m headed to NoDak for Thanksgiving — with two 16 gauges in tow. Main gun will be a RBL 16 with 29-“ barrels. The spare will be a 16 gauge Citori Gran Lightning.

I’ve heard similar reports — very late hatch and state underreported hatch because so many late clutches that were never counted. Heard bird numbers up north near Crosby are off the hook — where they got a lot of moisture. I am primarily hunting the southern parts of the state but thinking of running north if we’re having a hard time finding birds in the south.

Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Posts: 1460 Location: Eagle, Nebraska

weather was terrible, mid to upper 60's everyday except last day.
Lot of birds but were in very thin cover or standing in the stubble, managed to get a few, and on last day, turned colder, killed 3 in 10minutes, what a difference weather makes!
Killed a few huns too.

I usually take a sxs, but had not shot it all summer, so I took Citori and the Sweet 16 lightning,

Joined: 04 Mar 2019 Posts: 1837 Location: Central ND

Well Hootch, it looks like you might have had it a bit warm, but you didn't have to deal with 12" of snow and drifting like you would have if you delayed your hunt by 2 weeks.

It is 14 degrees, 20+ MPH wind with the forecast of snow 12" plus deep depending on where you hunt in No Dak today!!

Gents -- just returned from an epic 7 days of hunting southwestern North Dakota. Hit all the major towns in the area -- Hettinger, Dickinson, Mott, Regent, Gladstone, Bowman, on and on. In seven days only saw one other bird hunter the entire trip.

Sharptails and Huns everywhere. Pheasants, too, but the public land/P.L.O.T.S. birds were very flighty and difficult to get close to. After a week or so of blizzard conditions the temperatures soared into the high 40s and all the roosters came out of the snow and the heavy cover to enjoy the sunshine and feed in the open, harvested crop fields. Had to come to a complete stop on the highway at one point to avoid massacring about 30 pheasants that had congregated on the road. The pleasant weather conditions made the hunting challenging as the birds scattered and had moved out of the heavy cover where we expected to find them.

A few of the roosters we shot were young birds with lots of pinfeathers indicating a very late hatch that so many have talked about. Great fun, beautiful country and lots of wildlife. The nice weather gave the birds a break and will no doubt help them get through tough winter conditions ahead.

All birds killed -- and admittedly we never limited out on any day -- fell to a RBL 16 gauge with 29-inch barrels, IC/Mod chokes using a combination of Kent Tungsten Matrix 5 shot in the IC choke and BOSS 3/5 duplex loads in the Modified choke.