			Pheasant Hunting Season is here. Are you prepared?
			Days are getting shorter. The morning is cool & brisk. It can only mean one thing... Pheasant hunting season is here. Are you ready for the season. Below you will find some great pheasant hunting tips that should make your outings more productive, more fun & safer than ever before. Pheasant are very smart birds, so you will need all the help you can to get the advantage over them. A good Bird Dog is always very helpful. Let's get started on the right foot this season. Have a great hunt!!

Pheasant hunting tips

According to a DNR wildlife research biologist, pheasants follow a schedule as routine as your daily commute to and from work. Understanding the pheasant's daily movements can increase your odds of flushing a rooster.

"Pheasants start their day before sunrise at roost sites, usually in areas of short- to medium-height grass or weeds, where they spend the night." That's the word from Dick Kimmel, research biologist at the DNR Farmland Wildlife Research and Populations Station at Madelia. Kimmel says that at first light, pheasants head for roadsides or similar areas where they can find gravel or grit.

Pheasants usually begin feeding around 8 a.m. When shooting hours begin an hour later, the birds are still feeding, often in grain fields while cautiously making their way toward safe cover. "Look for the edges of picked cornfields," says Kimmel, who regularly hunts southwestern Minnesota with his English setter, Banjo.

By mid-morning, pheasants have left the fields for the densest, thickest cover they can find, such as a standing corn, federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) fields, brush patches, wetlands, or native grasses. Kimmel says the birds will "hunker down here for the day until late afternoon."

It's next to impossible for small hunting groups of two to three hunters to work large fields of standing corn. Pheasants often run to avoid predators, a response that frustrates dogs and hunters working corn, soybean, and alfalfa fields. Groups of two or three hunters usually have better success working grass fields, field edges, or fencerows. Other likely spots during midday are ditch banks and deep into marshes. Remember: The nastier the weather, the deeper into cover the pheasant will go.

But eventually, pheasants have to eat again. During the late afternoon, the birds move from their loafing spots back to the feeding areas. As in the morning, birds now are easier to spot from a distance and are more accessible to hunters. "That's why the first and last shooting hours are consistently the best times to hunt pheasants.dds.

Try hunting in early morning or late afternoon, when pheasants are feeding.
You will find a better shot on the edges of a grain field, than deep in the midst of it.
In mid-day, when the birds have taken deeper cover, walk slowly back and forth to flush them, so that your partner - a blocker stationed at the end of the field - can get a shot.
Wear hunter orange at all times, especially when working with a blocker.
A properly trained pointing or flushing dog help increase hunter success.

We hope you enjoy these great Pheasant hunting tips.

Illinois Pheasant Population down by 25%

As recently as the early 1970s, hunters harvested one million roosters in Illinois. CRP helped recover some of those losses in the late '80s into the mid '90s; however, the conversion of CRP lands to agricultural fields has dropped average harvests to below 200,000. Pheasant numbers could be down by as much as 25% this fall. The Illinois pheasant range went through a significant drought this summer, which likely reduced nest success primarily through increased nest abandonment and lower than normal chick survival. This is unfortunate since the pheasant harvest topped 200,000 birds last year for the first time since 1997.