BY ANDREW MCKEAN
Late-season roosters require sneaky tactics, winter weather
Mid October to late
December are spanned by little more than 60 days, but for an upland bird hunter, it’s an eternity.
Early in the fall, when most upland bird seasons open, the weather is mild and naïve birds are distributed across the landscape of Montana. By the last few weeks of the season, though, rooster pheasants and hardy grouse have become savvy veterans, and hunting them can be as
challenging as any big-game hunt.
When you hold a December rooster, with its yard-long tail feathers and chalk-white pate, you’re holding a true trophy, a bird that probably survived plenty of assassination
attempts and learned to either flush wild or hold tight in the densest cover.
If you want to bag a limit of those savvy roosters, here’s what you need to know:
• Hunt Dense Cover: Prepare to hunt different habitats in December than you did back in September or October. Late-season sharptails tend to gang together in flocks of several dozen birds, and they’ll always have a few sentries watching your approach. Figure out which way they’ll flush and post up on these escape routes, then send someone to bust them up and pass-shoot grouse as they take wing. If they scatter in smaller groups, you can also hunt down those singles and pairs in denser cover. Pheasants, too, that may have been available in light grass or thin sagebrush earlier in the fall will tend to hold in dense olive thickets and impenetrable
cattails by December.
• Drive Roosters: Your early-season tactic of pushing cover or sending a pointing dog to range CRP won’t work as well in December. Those savvy birds have lived to Christmas by
running well ahead of the dogs. You can score on these veterans by
hunting with a crew, assigning some of the hunters to block the ends of fields or fencerows, and sending the others to walk the densest cover with rooster-rooting dogs. Chances are the blockers will get most of the action on these wild-flushing birds.
• Wait For Winter Weather: If you have the luxury of timing your upland trip, wait for a winter storm to roll through. Habitat that can seem vacant before a blizzard can suddenly seem thick with pheasants in dense cover that also features plenty to eat:
Russian olive groves, cattail sloughs adjacent to wheat fields, fresh CRP fields. Sharptails, too, will suddenly show up around food sources after a few days of winter weather. If you hunt during the storm itself, you can often walk right up on numbers of
tight-holding birds.
• Trust Your Dog: The late season is the domain of old dogs. These are the bird hounds that don’t range too
widely and seem to want to sleep all the time. They’re the wise elders of their breeds, and you should trust them. If you have a flushing dog, pay attention when their tails wag and they want to follow a trail. That’s a rooster running ahead and you should let your dog go, even if it means running to keep up with them. Same with
pointers that go staunch, then run,
then point again. They’re on the trail
of some smart, experienced bird, and those are the real trophies of the
(late) season.