Ottertail Country

Ottertail Country
Ottertail South

March 1, 2009

Bird brains.....

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We went pheasant hunting this weekend! Ivan, Greg Barr, Tom Lochner and I accompanied Tucker the Wonder Dog to Milford Hills Hunt Club. This is a private hunting area near Watertown, Wi. As you can see, Greg pays the proper respect to Tucker by trading seats with him every once in a while..... When we left Prentice at 6:45 AM on Saturday, it was -20°!!



We met up with Lee Fisher, our benefactor on this excursion. Lee scheduled the hunt and took care of the arrangements. Lee is Ivan's first cousin and the Fishers and Lords are very much in touch with each other and do lots of hunting and fishing together. By the time we connected with Lee and got to the hunt club, it was +20° but quite windy, so we didn't stand around much.



Here is some typical terrain at the club. Four of us hunted the "North Dakota" field and the other three hunted the "South Dakota" field. Fifteen pheasants were available in each location.







Again, Greg knows that his success depends largely on the working of the 'bird dog'. For without a dog to flush the pheasants, we would have probably not seen a single bird. Sometimes the birds would finally flush less than a foot from the dog.



Here is Mike Lord and one of Pat Kelly's dogs. They were on the South Dakota field.



After covering most of the field areas, we got together to plan how to try to get some strays that had flushed and flown into the swamp areas. Luckily the recent rain water was all ice that day and we could get through the low areas. This did produce a few birds.



When we were all done, we had a total of 31 pheasants, with the South Dakotans doing a little better than us in the north field. Oh, well.....



We got out of hunting clothes and went into the Club house for a while. It is a pretty amazing building, lots of wood and stone, and numerous mounts of all types.



Tired hunters wetting their whistles with a brew or two, which in turn whet our appetites for some pheasant poppers, a bit of meat in a jalapeno pepper wrapped in bacon and grilled.... yum.



This mount was particularly cool, a fox trying to nab a pheasant. This place was really awesome, and worth visiting just to see it.



Stories, stories and more stories....



The second room, a really large dining room, had an elevated area with several large full-body mounts. Impressive.



Lee was also our housing coordinator. That means we ate lasagna, chicken wings, mini-franks in sauce, snacks and beverages at his and Karla's house. Then we slept over night there and left at 6:45 Sunday morning. They were awesome hosts. Thanks......



Tucker the Wonder Dog was pretty mellow on the way home. He is 10 years old and did a ton of bird hunting Saturday, so I guess he was tuckered out ;-) Thanks, Tucker....

I gotta go, Carlo


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great pictures of the club and countryside. Does look bleak and cold but glad you got some game. I did not picture Lee Fisher looking like he does. I don't know why but was so surprised with the picture. That looks like a nice doggie.

lucy

Anonymous said...

Regarding previous comment: I do not mean to say Lee is not good looking but I had him pictured as thin and blond. I think he looks like his father's side of the family and I had him pictured more like his mother. Dumb!!!!

Lucy

Unknown said...

Cute dog. The cupcakes look delicious! Happy Birthday!! Linda