Heading up east of Dodge (Mullinville/Pratt/Coldwater areas) next weekend - just wondering if anyone has been up recently? We'll be on private lands that have not been hunter, but wondering what to expect. I have not been up since bow season.

Have land 100 miles north of dodge my family says the cold has bunched the birds good. Ron

Bird numbers are way down we hunt private land north of there near Nebraska. The worse I have seen it in 25 years. Good luck you will need it. I have a friend that sold his ranch east of cold water I sure miss the country.

Seems to be the trend most places.

Okay - mixed bag - we'll see and give a report, although it will be pretty much moot for this year I guess.

I went a couple weeks ago and found a ton of hens. Only found 3 roosters. The birds were holding really good. I had to kick them to get them to fly.

Shot a bunch of birds in that area with an outfitter that claimed they were wild last weekend…saw about 100 roosters and 2 hens. These were not wild birds….at least most of them weren’t. Did some research afterwards and I guess this is common with pheasant hunting outfitters (supplementing wild birds with not wild birds and claiming they are wild). Fool me once. Still had fun though. Well run operation…might be an option if you get skunked and want to work dogs.

I was told on my last trip to South Dakota that land owners/outfitters can release birds at a certain time of the year before the hunting season and legally use the word "wild" because X amount of time has passed...I looked into it at the time and found some regulation regarding private preserves that seemed to support what I was told...that particular year the birds needed to a boot-jack on their [censored] to fly...but, by the letter of the regulations, the birds were deemed to be wild...

Well these will be fully wild - my best friend owns about 12,000 acres up there, but haven't been up there since bow season/opening weekend, so focused on deer.

Might be a good amount of snow on the ground and we have another little system coming through the Rockies on Thursday. If it moves east you will see more snow.
Parts of Eastern Colorado just got about 2 feet of snow.

Pass.

If that storm comes in - it ll make for a good hunt, forcing them roosters into thick crp fields. They’ll hold better too I’m sure. Good luck and be safe!

Thanks everyone - apparently going to muddy from the melting snow - they got 8-9"

Very very few birds even seen. Walked areas that have been tremendous the last couple of years and barely saw any birds. I don't know if the predators had a field day during the season or our timing was off hitting CRP, grass, milo, etc., but it was the worst hunting I've seen since the drought in 2007ish. Now, I usually go earlier in the season, but even when I've gone late like this it has been much better than this year. Only good to come from it was bringing back the meat from the deer I shot up there during bow season.

I found all my birds on the edge of CRP next to cut sourgum.

tried a LOT of that

Had a couple of days of great hunting up around Sublette last week.

I have hunted on property next to a CRP field that an outfitter called Upland Inn Outfitters had leased. Had a big trailer setup to do field lunches and vans they hauled hunters around in. Had pen raised birds walking down roads dumb as a box of rocks both days, was good for the young dogs. I heard from a guy in town that they contract to buy 20,000 pheasants each year. If they hunted wild birds, that kind of pressure would wipe them out by the third weekend (and probably does wipe out the roosters)