My Opening Pheasant Weekend (PHOTOS)

Well, it seems like every pheasant opener there's some kind of challenge.  Drought, fire hazard, rain, thunderstorms and yes, sometimes snow.  However, record setting snow is something I have never seen for an opening pheasant weekend.

Don't get me wrong, I've hunted pheasants many times in snow, even deep snow up to your chest, but not this early.  So with that being said, we ventured out about noon on Saturday, as we figured we would give mother nature some time to settle down.  We headed south of New Salem and worked our way to the Carson area.  The amount of corn, beans and sunflowers standing is astonishing and no doubt devastating for most farmers.  We finally found a couple of pieces of land to work that looked promising.  After walking in snow up to our waste and zero flushes we decided to call it a day.  Never saw a pheasant and the only thing that saved the day were a couple of flocks of grouse we ran across.  I managed to pull the trigger and drop one.

After walking through snow that resembled January, I did realize how comfortable I was in my new Scheels upland pants.  Waterproof and warm.  All you could ask for in sloppy conditions.  My upland jacket from Scheels also passed the test in some nasty conditions as the wind was still gusting over 40 mph.  My dog Callie handled like dream with my new Dogtra e-collar.

So feeling pretty down after day one,  I made a new plan with my son to go a little further west and get away from corn country.  Hopefully, we could find the birds in the cover.  It paid off, as the weather on Sunday was beautiful, less snow and the roosters were flushing.  We shot our 2 man limit in short time and even caught some of the Vikings win over Philadelphia.

A big thank you to Scheels for giving me the gear I needed to survive record snow for opening pheasant.  We're hoping for some more "normal" weather the rest of October.  How about you?