The Missouri River in North Central South Dakota

We began our hunt for sharptail grouse on Hunter Walk-In Areas around Eagle Butte and Dupree. These are generally grass or small grain stubble fields of several hundred acres. Dog work is viewed easily as the cover is thin and short. The horizon is far away and mostly treeless. The grouse are in small groups spaced a half mile apart. The pointers are perfect for this country and for sharptails, although we began the sharptail hunt using a mix of all three dog breeds. English pointers are tall and skinny with muscular legs. They can work stubble or short grass back and forth in front of four hunters effectively. A pointer will cover a three hundred yard arc effortlessly in seconds, then turn around and do it again. When grouse scent is detected, a pointer stops on a dime, throws his head into the air, and is motionless. If the grouse are close, he stays locked up until the hunters release him. If not, he searches the wind for the strongest scent vector so he can get close enough to hold the birds in place for the hunters. 

The labs and setters tired quickly in the West River grass and stubble. Both tried to keep up with the pointers, and within 20 minutes fell in-step with the hunters. After some recovery time, they went back to their usual closer, slower style of hunting, but were unable to cover enough country to add any value to the pointer work. The English setters were black and whites from “Classic” gun dog hunting stock. The labs were blacks and yellows trained to retrieve waterfowl and to flush and retrieve pheasants.

Jason Gooding and Moxie (English Pointer) after a successful hunt in the sunflowers.

The West River hunting entered the bonanza stage when we found a two section field of unpicked sunflower seeds, enclosed on all four sides with 150 yard-wide strips of harvested millet and dissected down the center with a meandering brushy draw with broken cottonwoods.

The sunflowers were about navel high, and sparse enough to walk easily while keeping track of the more deliberate working labs and setters. The sunflowers held incredible numbers of sharptail grouse and some Hungarian partridge. Many times, we observed grouse perched on the flower pods digging out the seeds; the dead bird craws contained only sunflower seeds. When the coveys were busted over setter points or by lab work, the unshot birds flew about a half mile but generally did not leave the sunflowers. We got up birds the entire day, every time we worked the two sections. The labs and pointers were able to locate and retrieve downed sharptail fairly easily in the sunflower cover. 

Conversely, the sunflower field was not conducive to pointer work. Their natural working distance was beyond the hunter’s visibility in the sunflowers. The rows tended to take the pointers on tangents to distances even farther from the hunters than where the pointers naturally work. Dog points went unobserved and grouse coveys busted without a hunter nearby. 

The brushy draw intersecting the sunflower field held a healthy population of pheasants. The ringnecks were seen feeding in the millet periphery before legal shooting time and again in mid-afternoon. In between feedings and late in the day, they were in the brushy draw. All three dog breeds worked the draw effectively. The pheasants often held for pointer and setter points and did not flush out of range for the labs. We did not need to use hunters posted ahead of the dogs in order to get shooting. Generally, we used two or three shooters and an equal number of dogs, covering both sides of the draw simultaneously.

Elhew Power Stroke "Turbo" working in the South Dakota prairie.

The East River hunt was on a farm near Gettysburg leased for pheasant hunting by John Umiker, a local guide. September and October 2007 were much wetter than usual and most of the corn had not been harvested. The farm had been hunted once in 2007, several days before our arrival. First, we hunted a series of thick brush lots, uncut milo strips, very thick cut millet strips, and six foot high Soudan grass strips. The brush was small lots near the farm buildings. The strips were 20-30 yards wide and half mile in length. The only good dog work in the brush was by the labs that moved through and under the brush methodically until the pheasants were forced to fly. The pointing dogs were not eager to get in the brush, went through or around quickly, and moved nothing.

The strips were thin enough for effective dog work by the flushing labs and by the closer working setters. The labs got their nose to the ground and followed the pheasant’s track in the short, thick grass until it flushed. The setters ranged back and forth along the strip keeping the hunter in sight, got the birds’ scent from the wind, searched out the most intense scent vector, and then went forward until getting close enough to freeze the bird for the hunter. The pheasants held in the strip cover for both kinds of dog work. Few flushed out of shooting range. Much like in the West River sunflower field, the pointers overran the cover, got ahead of the drivers, and quickly ended up with the posted hunters a half mile from the starting place without putting many birds to flight.

GOODGOING TOMMY (English Setter)

Overall, the pheasants were few in both the brush and strips. By legal shooting time, they were feeding in the standing corn, and remained there until the end of the day. The corn was head-high and brushy by South Dakota standards. It held the bulk of the farm’s pheasants. Standing corn is hunted by driving a swath of the field with hunters 20-30 yards apart and additional hunters posted a half mile away at the opposite end of the corn rows. Birddogs accompany the drivers. On this hunt, the pheasants flushed only for the dogs because the brushy field trumped the pheasant’s typical desire to run the field’s length way ahead of drivers and dogs, and flush only when it hits a fence line. As a result, our posters got little shooting, initially. We overcame this by hunting only the cornfield edges using moving posters about 150 yards in front of the drivers and 20 yards away from the field’s edge.

 Getting the pheasants to flush in the standing corn was the result of good lab work. We used at least three labs on every drive. The dogs worked in circles around the hunters in diameters varying from 10 yards to 50 yards. The labs kept good track of the drivers moving through the standing corn, even though line of sight was lost within ten yards of separation. The drivers or the moving posters got shooting on most pheasant flushes.

We did not use the pointers in standing corn. The setters were ineffective. They lost sight of the hunters and tired of their back-and-forth work across the corn rows. This led them to try hunting with the labs and then exit the field by running down the least brushy row. It was a bad training experience because the setter lost all sense of connection to his driver-hunter in the midst of a sea of lab-generated pheasant flushes.

Tom Hayes watering Copper during their quest for Sharptails

Near the end of our two day pheasant hunt at Gettysburg, we stopped in mid-afternoon short of a limit, to work the pointers and setters in a 160 acre CRP field planted in prairie grass. The standing corn had exhausted the five labs. The CRP was surrounded by unpicked cornfields holding thousands of birds. Surprisingly the dogs found 10-15 pheasants in the CRP grass. The setters were able to work back and forth within gun range in 60-70 yard long arcs. The cover was thick enough to hold the birds in place for solid points; yet thin enough for the setter to maintain good connection with his hunter. The same held true for the pointers even though they hunted much longer arcs and were frequently out of gun range. The cover and terrain allowed the hunter-pointer combination to hunt together effectively as a single unit.

The take-away from our Eagle Butte to Gettysburg pheasant-grouse hunt is that a bird dog must be matched to cover and terrain that suits the particular breed’s hunting style. Vast short grass fields require a big running pointing dog. Established prairie grass or brushy draws can be worked well by lab, pointer, or setter. Overgrown feed lots and standing corn are the domain of a flushing dog like a Labrador retriever and are not well suited to pointing dogs. Small grain strips or short thin row crops, like West River sunflowers, can be hunted well by a lab or a careful working setter; these same fields tend to be overrun by a big working pointer.