Originally Posted By: L. Brown
My dad was a factory worker (John Deere), which left weekends for hunting and fishing. Worked out pretty well. And I was lucky enough to grow up in northern Iowa when we had so many pheasants that we had to shoot them to protect the farmers' crops. smile (In 1963, the year I graduated from high school, the Iowa pheasant harvest was just shy of 2 million birds. That was in a season about 3 weeks shorter than our current format.)

We didn't have bird dogs, but that came later.


Larry, after being a blacksmith for 20 years my dad was a pipefitter/steamfitter and one of his first jobs was the big John Deere plant in Waterloo. I remember dad staying down there all week in those days. Anyway, I'm headed down to northern IA this morning for a go at the pheasants. Last year about this time I ran into a big group of huns and pheasants all hanging around a farmer's weedy rock pile on the edge of a drainage in the only heavy cover left in a section. The huns all panic flushed and scattered in the wind, must have been over 50, then a wave of pheasants blew out of it all the while I was mired in thigh-deep snow trying to get in range. Never got a shot! This year less snow, but crunchy... I'm heading for the same spot.