Spent 5 days last week on 6000 acres owned by a old SD farmer. Had the whole place to ourselves, just me and Louann. The farm consisted of a mix of CRP land, hay fields, some milo and sorgum, and a good number of draws and creek bottoms, all situated on land that rose and fell I would guess about 200 feet total.
In the draws he had about 15 small stock ponds that were formed by setting earthen dams across the draws. There is a picture of one of them here. Dams were from 50 feet to about 50 yards long.
For the ducks we would get on the dam side of the ponds, slip up to the top of the dam where the ducks, if they were there, could not see us and then pop up. Got a few mallards and gadwall this way. Saw some geese on one pond but they were on the far end and no way to get to them.
The pheasants we walked up. There were plenty of 'em and we got most simply by me and Louann walking the creek bottoms and edges of fields and a couple of old homesteads along with a tree row or two. Good thing there were plenty as the dogs he had were not trained all that well.
In fact on 2 occasions we shot pheasants that dropped on the other side of the small, maybe 15 foot wide, creeks we were hunting and the darn dogs just would not get them without a lot of effort. Took about 30 minutes to retrieve one that was dead and in full view. Very frustrating!
Weather was PERFECT. Slight frost in the morning and high 50's in the afternoons. Not a clowd the whole time............
The last picture of the cars is interesting. We asked why they were out there and what the farmer said is that it was common practice way back to use old cars as part of the dams. They would set the cars right in the dirt and cover them up just as if they were rocks. The ones in the picture just never made it into the dam you see in the background.
