Opening Weekend Results?

[hunter94]

seems odd, very quiet here today........anyone with positive results?

[BeirlSetters]

I was looking for the same info. For what it's worth I had a call from my local contact who was on the ground hunting the opener on private ground. The report is there are birds more than he has seen the last few years. That's a great sign! A lot of late hatch roosters minus their head color. Also was told the harvest hasn't stated yet. Could be a great late season this year after the crops come out. Good luck to everyone and be safe!

[haymaker]

About 2 birds per hunter here with all the corn in the area still standing.

[sdviking]

Agree with haymaker, we shot just under 2 birds per hunter mostly due to poor shooting. Only had one dog and it was dry so it was tough to find down birds. Cover was rather thick which was great! We saw plenty of birds. Hunting will get much better as harvest moves forward. SDviking

[hunter94]

Agree with haymaker, we shot just under 2 birds per hunter mostly due to poor shooting. Only had one dog and it was dry so it was tough to find down birds. Cover was rather thick which was great! We saw plenty of birds. Hunting will get much better as harvest moves forward. SDviking

2 per hunter was what i was guessing, for the most part......tons of rains set harvest back, hopefully it stays dry and warm so the beans, flowers and corn get cut......after Thanksgiving should be a better time for a decent "head count". TY.

[A5 Sweet 16]

Same here. Got 2 each day. Hunted a little longer than I usually do most opening weekends. About 2 hours Saturday & 3 yesterday. The breeze totally disappeared for about the last hour plus of each day, making stealth during the "golden hour" difficult. Toward the buzzer each day got into better numbers of hens hunting beside standing corn. After shooting hours closed, heard roosters all over the place, "cuck"ing, still in the corn. Not bad, but tougher hunting than usual just because of the weather, probably 50% standing beans & 99% standing corn. Beautiful weekend to be out though. And the birds are there.

[Woollybob]

Same here. Nearly everyone in the group filled out opening day, but it slowed down after that with the hot weather. Averaged about 2 per person each day.

A lot more crops out around Aberdeen than further to the West. Also, there are a LOT of beans planted - much more beans than corn.

[Goosemaster]

4 birds opening weekend in Montana.

[Birddog23]

We hunted Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Saturday was the best day to hunt with temps in the low 50's. Sunday and Monday were way too warm. It seemed to have an affect on the bird numbers.
Saturday we got 15 birds, should of had 20. Sunday we had trouble finding birds, took a longer break, too warm....... This is by far the wettest I've ever seen it back there. My dog did not retrieve a dry bird the whole weekend.
Monday was also too warm and did not see the birds, only got 3. Tons of corn in where we hunt, to wet to get into fields.
It will be much better when all the corn comes out and temps drop.
It sure did seem like the temperature had an awful lot to do with how many birds we saw.

[PeteRevvv]

Yup, birds are back in small numbers in areas that they had disappeared from last year. In all of central east river last year we only found two pockets of birds in numbers around Huron and Gettysburg. They are still in small pockets but there are many more of those. Found some birds near Redfield/Tulare, Chelsea/Cresbard, Ashton/Frankfort. 3-4 guys with 1-2 dogs over 4 days got 25 birds. Not enough numbers to consistently see birds out of the cover so Mon/Tue where hard hunting after the rest were educated over the weekend. The rest just disappeared into crops and never came back out. Maybe after a cool down period they will be back out but for now it looks like a long wait for crops to get out and/or snow to see success.