NOTE - Not a fishing report!

Every year I take a three day hunting trip to visit my son Matt and DIL Veronica. Matt and I go hunting pheasants with his dog, Murphy. This year was another three days of Epic shooting and amazing scenery, getting to spent time doing a shared activity we both love.

The first two days we had the good fortune to hunt on private land that had not been hunted on in many years. The ranch was full of prime pheasant holding ground and we got to hunt tall grass, cut fields, marshes, and cattail irrigation ditches. It was an experience of a lifetime as our first two days of hunting we had dozens of birds pointed and flushed by Murphy. He must have been in bird-dog heaven. We were certainly in upland bird hunter paradise. The limit is three birds and each day we took home five per day. Just couldn’t hit that 6th bird… but no worries because it was truly amazing hunting.

The third day we opted to see some public lands and hunted an area called Freeze-out and also a beautiful patch of public land with sweeping views of box butte and the snow-covered Rocky Mountains in the distance. The hunting was tough on the public lands – no birds found until the end of the day at which point I missed an easy set up. Murphy pointing, me getting into position, me scaring the bird up, and me missing three shots. I still don’t know how I missed that bird – the second shot was close as the bird was seen by both Matt and myself as shuttering just a tiny bit – I may have gotten a couple shots in him.

It really didn’t matter though as the memories from this trip will keep me waiting for next October to roll around. If you’re a pheasant hunter I hope you get the opportunity to hunt Montana. The scenery alone is worth the trip!

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