There is a cruel irony brought to bear on the countryside of southwestern Minnesota when the snow falls and the wind blows as it did last week.

Six inches of snow driven by 45 mph winds tend to sweep clear from farm fields now largely barren of any vegetation.

Instead, it tends eventually to settle and sift into the slivers of cover — sloughs, old groves, rare overgrown fence lines, remaining CRP acres — that dot the former prairie.

The irony in all of this is that such precious areas are precisely the places that farmland wildlife, pheasants especially, depend on for winter survival.

Even in the best of times and during the mildest of winters, the life of a pheasant is precarious, indeed.

Even beyond the days when hunters hang up their guns, a pheasant is on any fox or coyote’s menu as it scratches out an existence in a countryside tamed by the plow.

The snowdrifts already creeping into the stand of cover we approached last week in Nobles County for a late-season foray suggested that things could get a lot tougher very quickly.

The windward side of the stand of aged cottonwoods and weeds along remnants of the old Rock Island Railroad line was smothered with thigh-deep, wind-sculpted drifts.

Barring any significant thawing, it was clear that successive storms soon would bury the remaining cover, driving any wildlife to seek refuge elsewhere.

Following our two spaniels, Bob Westphal and I quietly approached the leeward side of the oasis of cover where some significant protection still remained.

A few slashing tracks of pheasants amidst hundreds of deer tracks (how farmland deer can produce so many tracks and yet go unseen is amazing) held the promise of some shooting.

Halfway through the thickest part of the cover and as the dogs nosed around in the belly-deep soft snow, there suddenly came a flurry of wing beats.

One, two, then several more roosters boiled out of the weed patch, cackling their protests.

My first shot downed a bird crossing to my right, a second shot at a retreating bird missed. On the other side of the tall grass, Westphal’s old Browning barked once and a bird tumbled.

With an empty shotgun, I watched as yet another pair of roosters flushed and quickly settled into a patch of cattails barely a hundred yards ahead of us.

It was clear these birds had not been hunted. Otherwise, they likely would have sailed to a small slough a quarter-mile away or even sailed over the horizon.

That they were virgin birds likely could be attributed to the lagging corn harvest that plagued southwest Minnesota farmers this fall.

While the corn had been picked around the bit of cover we hunted, no fall tillage had been performed, suggesting the corn had only recently been taken out.

In most years, by mid-December, machinery has long since been parked in the machine shed with the harvest and fieldwork completed.

But this year, while much of the countryside now is devoid of crops, we still drove past several fields where the combine had barely nipped around the edges.

Wind-driven snow already had claimed the first dozen rows of standing corn suggesting that some of it may remain standing all winter.

Bad news for a farmer, perhaps, but any unharvested crops could provide a bonus food sources for wildlife as winter progresses.

We approached the small stand of cattails from both sides, a pincer movement to pin the birds between us.

It took surprisingly long before one rooster clattered into the air. My first shot was behind it, a second sent the coppery bird tumbling against the blue sky.

A minute later, the dogs nosed the second rooster out of the thick grass. A single shot from my partner’s gun sent that one cart-wheeling as well.

When the snow settled and back at the truck, the four birds we bagged, plus a bonus bird Bob collected from a brushy roadside ditch a mile down the road, left us one short of our limit. (Beginning Dec. 1, the daily limit for pheasants increased from two birds to three.)

We contemplated an attempt at the final bird but decided against it.

After slogging our way out of the windward side of the cover where snow was so deep we had to crawl across it, along with dogs, we were spent.

Five birds for a couple of tired, middle-aged guys — not a bad morning’s hunt.

Besides, burgers and a beverage beckoned back in town.



John Cross is a Free Press staff writer. Contact him at 344-6376 or by e-mail at jcross@mankatofreepress.com.