sharptail opener

riverview

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Nobody else exited about sharptail season opening on Saturday?
 


Duckslayer100

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Nobody else exited about sharptail season opening on Saturday?

With another down year of sharpie numbers, I have a hard time getting excited. Took me two days to find huntable numbers last year, and then I felt kinda bad when I tripled out of one covey. Wish there were more birds to go around.
 

Ponyroper

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Put on a couple thousand miles in the last month in rough country in Dunn Co. and Grant Co. So far saw 5 sharpies, 3 singles and one pair. Pretty depressing. Have seen only one small covey of pheasants, a couple of lone hens and about half a dozen older roosters. Also very depressing. Should be seeing that many every trip not in a whole month. Will be down in Hettinger Co. next week, will let you know what I see there. Getting pretty tired of playing broken field runner on the highways though with deer everywhere at all hours of the day. They're like sheep this year just standing in the fields and road ditches. Fawns are dumber than rocks, running across the road when they see you getting close. Have had to change underwear mid-trip a couple of times already. Don't see how I'm going to get through this season without replacing at least one pickup front end. Have seen 3 or 4 whitetail bucks and 3 nice mulie bucks so far. All in full velvet yet. They were almost as tame as the does and fawns.
 

SlamminSalmon

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If it makes you guys feel better you can have my share of sharpies I can live without. Fun bird to hunt but I don’t care for the taste so I don’t partake.
 


Bfishn

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Hunting in 80 degrees....Yuck! Way to hard on me and the dog.
 

riverview

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I am hoping to find a few, nothing like opening day sharptails. probably only missed one or two openers over 40 years.
 

fj40

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See damned few sharpies in this area, and only a few pheasants. Huns are up, tho.
 


dean nelson

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All my trips down south west of town over the last three months I have yet to see a grouse. Seen one group of partridge two groups of pheasants both hens with large number of young and 1,467,358,743,642 mosquitoes. I have been in some exceedingly good pheasant country and on a number of occasions very good Grouse grounds so needless to say it doesn't bode overly well. Clearly a large number of them are hiding in the tall grass and the unharvested crops but it surely ain't no bumper crop year for them. It's fairly easy to make 1 into a 2 but it's pretty hard to make a 0 into a 1.
 

( deleted account )

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Yep, grouse numbers are sure down. And pheasant numbers, too! In all my Morton County travels all summer I’ve seen only ONE hatch of pheasants. Seen far more antelope than pheasants this summer.
 

Rowdie

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There are more out there than a guy thinks. I always hear how low the numbers are and then later in the fall I see large coveys of 100+ in multiple areas. This time of year they are scattered in their family groups. They can be found virtually anywhere out there. Next to feed, deep in the draws, or what we call sitting high. This means they will be found on top of hills in little cover cooling off and eating bugs. One year we climbed a butte to make a stalk on the Antelope on the other side. 3 damn coveys of grouse almost blew it for us....talk about sitting high. This time of year it takes miles of hiking and you still might not find many, then at the right time of day you'll see a bunch in the alfalfa driving out.
 

ifish4iz

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IMHO, the change in crops and farming practices has had a huge impact on our early season sharptail hunting. The soybeans and corn are generally not harvested in the central and west central portion of the state in September and even early October, therefore the small coveys of huntable sharpies are just not found. Magically, every year after harvest, about mid November into December, the giant coveys of 50+ birds appear, though getting within a 1/4 mile of them is nearly impossible. I think there are more grouse out there than we think, they just aren't accessible in the time of year that most of us try to hunt them. I'm guessing that not many target sharptails after the first weekend or two, yes we harvest some incidentals when pheasant hunting, but rarely go for a grouse walk in November. 10+ years ago when wheat and barley were still king, sharptail opener was a big thing. I do miss that, like shooting balloons;)
 

Ponyroper

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Just got back from a long road trip south of Dickinson all around New England and over to Regent. Didn't see one Sharpie and only ran into one covey of pheasants the size of partridges. They were way back in a pasture a ways away from any crop land which I thought was unusual. Lots of grasshoppers there though. They are going to be pretty small opening day.
 


Reprobait

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They seem to like soybeans. There are a lot of those on the landscape that were not there 10 years ago.
 

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