Andrew Schaefer
Active member
I just returned from visiting my family in Iowa for Christmas. Had a great time as always and this year I decided ahead of time that I would lay down the $123 for a nonresident hunting license. I had heard that the pheasant counts were up and my best old hunting buddy reported very positive results early in the season, so we made plans to hunt together at Christmas. On the Friday before Christmas I flew to Cedar Rapids from Orlando. I took a nap once I got to the old home place and then went to farm and fleet and bought a license. When I got back from my errand I gave my old buddy a call. No answer, so I left a message letting him know I was in town and ready to roll. Later that evening I get a text saying that he was at the hospital and his wife was in labor (only a week or two early, everything was fine). My friend has access to some very good hunting land that I do not, so my options became limited to public land and road ditches, without a dog, and no snow on the ground to help me out. To say the least it was tough. I got skunked the first three days on public land, and saw only one rooster in range (plus a bunch of hens) in those three days. It was still great just to be out there kicking around my old haunts and seeing what was going on. I saw lots of other wildlife, including ducks, geese, and several swans feeding out in some sheet water on a recently flooded corn field. It was also the last weekend of shotgun deer season in Iowa so there were a lot of deer that had been pushed out into open fields by hunting pressure, including some dandy bucks.
Christmas Eve we got about 3 inches of snow (Christmas miracle???). In my family, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. Christmas day is pretty low key; my siblings go to their respective in-laws places. I'm not married so I decided to go hunting Christmas morning. The snow had pushed the birds into the heavier cover in draws and deep road ditches, made them less likely to run, and made it easy for me to track them down. I ended the day with two roosters in the bag.
That evening my buddy called and told me that he got a half day pass from his wife, so we went out Saturday morning and had a good hunt together. I pulled a limit and he got two. Would have easily limited out if he had time to stay out.
Sunday I hunted solo again and got another limit even though most of the snow had melted. That evening I was killing some time before I had to be someplace and stopped for a while to watch the geese and ducks flying out to the fields on the edge of town. There was a couple thousand Canadas and maybe a couple hundred mallards using one field. Neat to see and a good way to wrap up the trip. I hope you all had a merry Christmas as I did.
Christmas Eve we got about 3 inches of snow (Christmas miracle???). In my family, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. Christmas day is pretty low key; my siblings go to their respective in-laws places. I'm not married so I decided to go hunting Christmas morning. The snow had pushed the birds into the heavier cover in draws and deep road ditches, made them less likely to run, and made it easy for me to track them down. I ended the day with two roosters in the bag.
That evening my buddy called and told me that he got a half day pass from his wife, so we went out Saturday morning and had a good hunt together. I pulled a limit and he got two. Would have easily limited out if he had time to stay out.
Sunday I hunted solo again and got another limit even though most of the snow had melted. That evening I was killing some time before I had to be someplace and stopped for a while to watch the geese and ducks flying out to the fields on the edge of town. There was a couple thousand Canadas and maybe a couple hundred mallards using one field. Neat to see and a good way to wrap up the trip. I hope you all had a merry Christmas as I did.
