Free Press Staff Writer
Iowa’s pheasant season officially ends today at 4:30 p.m.
But the burn in my thighs as I waded out of a snow-clogged cornfield and walked back to my truck yesterday told me that my season was going to end a day early.
Tim Ackarman of Ventura, Iowa, and I had followed our dogs into the unpicked corn an hour earlier and watched in amazement as wave after wave of pheasants flushed, eventually to settle at the end of the field a half-mile distant.
Hopefully, they would sit tight enough as we worked our way through the corn rows.
But first we had to get there — no easy task.
Winter has descended on northern Iowa as savagely as it has southern Minnesota.
Even the gnarliest cover already is clogged with deep, wind-driven snow drifts. Earlier, we discovered the first spot we had hoped to hunt — 10 acres of switch grass so thick a shotgun shell dropped is as good as lost — was virtually buried beneath deep snow.
Ditto for the tangled stands of willows we figured might hold birds. Only a few coyote tracks now meandered through them.
Ackarman suggested we give the cornfield that his neighboring farmer had been unable to harvest and where he had bagged a couple of birds a week earlier.
Apparently, the recent cold weather and latest storm had concentrated even more birds in the unpicked field than Ackarman had seen during his earlier hunt.
And nervous after a season of being hunted, the birds began flushing even as we stood on the road.
But in a section otherwise devoid of any cover, the birds were reluctant to leave. Most only flew a short distance before settling back into the cornfield and offering us at least a chance at bagging a few.
Wading through the deep snow offered us a history lesson of the past several weeks’ weather.
The top eight inches of soft powdery snow was the result of the most recent snowstorm.
Beneath that, our boots found a crusty surface, the result of a freezing rain that fell on Christmas Day. And beneath that lay yet another foot of heavy snow from the same storm.
We didn’t walk so much as wade through the knee-deep snow. Even though the temperature was minus 15 degree, we soon had our hunting coats unzipped. And Junior, Ackarman’s Lab, and Samson, my spaniel, literally had to swim.
Most of the birds flushed wild, but a few lingered in the corn rows long enough to offer a few shots at the fringe of gun range.
Back at the truck, Ackarman had two birds in his game bag; I had none. One bird I managed to knock down was a runner that the dogs were unable to track amidst all of the other tracks and scent.
A shot at a second only drew a few feathers.
Turns out that I ended my Iowa bird season the very same way I began it back on Halloween when Iowa’s pheasant opened.
Skunked.
John Cross is a Free Press staff writer. Contact him at 344-6376 or by e-mail at jcross@mankatofreepress.com.
