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| Beat The Bush For Ring Necks |
By James Bashline
Scratch any grouse hunter. I mean a real pipe smoking, double-barreled, whistle-carrying grouse hunter, and you'll find a ring neck hater. I know, because I was one of this lot. and when I am around a group of self-anointed partridge chasers I become one of them again. I have to revert to survive.
But I am slowly being forced to admit, as my pheasant education continues, that this bird not only will be, but already is, the salvation of bird shooting in many parts of the United States.
In my home state of Pennsylvania we shoot more pheasants each year than many of the highly touted pheasant states of the Midwest record. The Keystone
State posted an estimated harvest of more than one million birds in 1971 and just a slightly lower figure in 1972, despite Hurricane Agnes. South Dakota came up with about 900,000, California listed 750,000, and Nebraska and Iowa collectively posted over a million birds; hut no other state even came close to that magic million figure. Yet, and here's an amazing fact, Pennsylvania is not really considered by outsiders to be a great pheasant state. Our state is supposed to have lots of deer and lots of wild turkeys, but who would suspect
that pheasants are here in great numbers? Even more amazing is that most of these birds are harvested in less than half of that state's sixty-seven counties, mostly in the south-central and southeastern counties.
There are many theories why pheasants survive in certain locales and do not fare well in others. The Deep South states do not seem to offer the pheasant the right kind of housekeeping quarters. It's not temperature and it's not predators (man included) that are the reasons. I think the answer is the abundance of limestone in the soil, and I'll be no more scientific than to say that the places where pheasant seem to thrive in the East do offer quite a high concentration of limestone.
But even in the areas where they exist in numbers high enough to offer reasonable hunting, I'm convinced that the hunters chasing pheasant do not begin to scratch the surface. Far more birds could be taken, especially where a cocks-only law exists, as it does in most states.
The fact is, my grouse hunting friends, the ringneck is simply too cute to lie tight in front of a beady eyed setter or allow himself to be put up again and again every hundred yards. Maybe he'll run when ever he gets the chance. Maybe he'll
squat tight when he knows he can't get away and let you walk right on by before flying. Or maybe, and this is most often the case, he won't fly at all.
On the opening day of pheasant season, and this holds true in most of the better pheasant states, the birds are mostly young and foolish. They take to the air simply because of the number of hunters and dogs putting them there. Twenty
five or thirty hunters with fifteen dogs will push out just about everything. But
when the smoke clears and the balance of the season unfolds, it takes
more than a casual stroll through the corn- and stubble fields to put a bird or two in the bag. Even a good dog won't raise the score by much
in that sort of cover, since the pheasants usually aren't there. They have gone into the toughest cover they can find and if they have to fly for a mile, they'll find it. There will be some birds in the grain fields at dawn and again during the late afternoon, but they, too, will have to be hunted hard.
The secret to late-season pheasant hunting is to find that patch of briers or tangled woodlot that lies in the middle of good pheasant feeding ground. Hedgerows and abandoned fence lines are also good places to look. Now, I know you've read all this before in hunting stories, but what 1 mean is getting out and really hunting these places. Don't merely take an occasional kick at a brush
pile as you would when hunting rabbits. Get right in the jungles and stomp around. The fast hunter may get his share of game during the first few days of the season, but after that it takes a plodder with a heavy foot to put cock birds into the air.
Just last season I watched a group of four hunters charge through a tiny woodlot consisting of little more than an eighth of an acre. I was in a position to watch and, as they were about to break out into a plowed field, two pheasant, one cock and one hen, bolted out on the ground in front of them. The birds spotted
me and ducked back into the heavy cover. I know that two of the hunters
must have nearly stepped on those birds, and yet they did not fly. The
pheasants rightly guessed that at the speed their pursuers were coming,
the hunters would soon pass them by and they did. Now, I'm not so sure that pheasants think in precisely those terms, but no one in that quartet of distance runners saw those birds. After the hunters were well out of sight I went into the same patch and not only put up one cock bird, which I bagged, but put up
another that I missed. It took twenty minutes of hard stomping but I
finally got those birds into the air. I think I could have done it by myself but, in all fairness, I was aided by Sam, my Labrador.
I'll frankly admit that I've developed a partiality for Labs since I've owned one for six years. But any breed that will smell out the birds
and put them in the air right now, is preferred for late-season hunting over any of the pointing breeds. A number of my friends have the birds in the freezer to prove that a good nosed beagle will work wonders with briar patch Ringneeks. Labs are my favorite because not only will they get the birds out, but they'll retrieve Bob Bell, the editor of Pennsylvania Game News, is one of the most ardent pheasant hunters that I've ever met. I've learned more about pheasant hunting by simply watching him perform for the past half dozen seasons than I ever learned on my own. He literally demolishes a pair of hunting pants each season and the rest of his hunting clothes look as if
they've been through several Indian raids. He walks and stalks the cornfields of southern Pennsylvania on opening day and maybe for a day or so after, like the rest of us do. But when the frosting has been removed from the year's crop, it's into the weeds for Bell.
The first time I ever hunted with Bob, I was convinced that he was completely nuts. Instead of working one field from end to end, he would stop and investigate every little clump of brush and poke around every fence post like a raccoon looking for a bird's nest. If there was a tangled jungle of honeysuckle around, particularly those laced with green briars, he would fling himself into its midst! The not-so-funny thing about his seemingly eccentric antics was that he was kicking out pheasants, and about every third one was a cock bird.
Bell continues his brush-busting act all through the second half of the season and I have learned to emulate him. There are some dogs that can be coaxed to do much of the tough work, but even the dogs have to be encouraged to jump into some of the tangles that harbor the long-spurred smartest.
Flushing a grouse out of a hemlock thicket when the bird's right in front of your nose is a heart-stopping affair in itself, but when a cackling ringneck vaults into the air and the green briers are tugging at both arms, it's triple trauma. The wing shooter who says he very seldom misses a ringneck just hasn't hunted Bob Bell style.
I'll admit that ruffed grouse like the same sort of nasty cover at times that pheasants do, and that they can also be pretty foxy. But the pheasant has many more tricks up his sleeve. Where the grouse will usually fly when just slightly pressured, the pheasant will stick it out to the last. If he has room to run before taking off, he'll get a good start on man or dog and the shot will usually be too long to be effective. He will also use cover to put the nearest available tree or bush between you and him. Or he may elect to crawl into a woodchuck hole. Although it has long been reported that wounded birds will do this, very healthy ones will
too; I've seen them do it on at least two occasions and I'm sure they've done it other times when I wasn't looking.
Watch a ground-trailing dog on a hot pheasant scent some time. The dog is usually running a zigzag pattern. Is the dog having trouble locating the bird? Yes and no. He knows the bird is there all right, but it's no accident that the trail is wandering all over the place. The bird knows full well that the dog is hot after him and, by ducking around, there's a chance that the dog will lose the trail just long enough for the wise cock bird to make a race for it and hit the air fast, again just out of gun range. That bird is thinking, I'll bet on it, and it takes a smart hunter and dog to bag him.
When two hunters are working a small patch, a good, but not foolproof, approach is to hit the patch from two different directions not
opposite directions, but at right angles. You head into the patch from the north side and your buddy hits it from the east or west. This may confuse the bird, or birds, and prevent them from doubling back. With a good flushing dog completing the trio, there's a better than average chance that any bird in that spot of cover will show himself.
Next to the Labs (and in some cases they might be a bit better) a close-ranging Springer spaniel that has been field trial trained can be great on ringnecks. In very dense cover, the tight, figure-eight Springer's are real meat dogs. They will put a fast running ringneck into the air right now, usually within gun range.
I've watched a hunter with a pair of Springer's go through a piece of cover that had been handled by pointing dogs for an hour, and put
up more birds than most hunters see in a week. The pointing dogs were not doing anything terribly wrong, they just couldn't nail those pheasants down. To ward off a flurry of protests from owners of outstanding pointing dogs who do work pheasants well, let me admit that I have seen a handful of dogs who know how to "hunch," both physically and mentally. The ringneck wise pointer, setter, or Brittany has learned through experience that the bird he is after will not freeze on the spot. He "hunches" forward as the bird makes a move and may flash point six, seven, or even more times before he finally gets the bird corralled into a tight spot. This same kind of action would break the heart of a quail or grouse dog handler, but it's the only kind of dog action that can be counted on to put ringnecks in the bag. The cagey pointer also plays his mental hunches and may swing wide to head the pheasant off
in his headlong race to get out of range. I have seen a half dozen dogs do this to perfection.
Bob Parlaman, from Franklin, Pennsylvania, has a setter, Amos,who has learned to hunt with his nose and his head. If Amos suspects that the bird is moving fast on him, he'll circle wide and come in quickly from a different direction. It takes a lot of experience for a dog to develop this knack; I don't think that such craftiness can be taught. Two or three hunters, minus dog, can work the same stunt but they will be doing it blind. After the opening day, it's the unorthodox approach that puts birds in the bag. Don't always hunt a patch of cover from one end to the other. Angle through it one time, then figure-eight through,and if all else fails,station one man in the center and have the other hunter, or hunters, circle around him. The standard hunting techniques have all been seen by the heavily hunted ringneck. The offbeat approach gets the old timers.
For the close, brush-busting sort of hunting I've been talking about,it is absolutely imperative that bright safety orange be worn by all including the dog. An inch-wide orange collar also aids the handler in keeping track of his charge. Bright orange caps and safety orange vests are not only safer for you, but a great courtesy to your companions.There is one fact that shines through any discussion of pheasant hunting; ringnecks would rather run than fly. And, since it is not sporting to shoot them on the ground, the hunter and his dog must be lead footed enough to get them up. THE END
Field & Stream November 1973