First hunt of 2025 - Sharp-tailed Grouse - Devels Lake ND

 

Today, Saturday, was the start of our 2025 Upland Bird Hunting season.  I had planned to star the previous weekend but the weather wasn’t too good so I pushed it a week.  We returned to the Devils Lake ND area to chase Sharp-tailed grouse and Huns if we can find some.

60 degrees and misty was our start.  I put 13 yr old Tasha and 6 year old Peach on the ground to start.   There wasn’t much of a breeze so we zig zagged across the fields hoping to leverage what little there was.  After not finding anything in the first two fields we switched to a field that had two different sets of tree lines through their middle.  The cover around them was very short but last year this is where we had out best success, a bit difference is that it was all sun and 70+ degrees when we hit the trees.  At the end of the tree field we started to make our way back. By the time we got back to the truck both dogs had gotten over 10 miles in.  Tasha will get the day off tomorrow and hopefully will be ready on Monday.  I’m planning on running Peach tomorrow as she still needs to drop a little weight and gain a bit of fitness after having a litter this spring.  I did like how she ran and she is a backing machine.

The next portion of the hunt was a few miles away so I got a bit of a rest.  The three year old Sweep got her turn.  We ran a field that had been mowed for hay a little while ago, it had sunflowers on one side and soy beans on the other.  Sweep was ranging from 250 years down to 50 and has a nice even pace.  At about the half hour mark she locked up and I made my way towards her.  The Sharp-tails got up within gun range.  I pulled the trigger twice and nothing happened, I had this happen before at the start of last season and it was totally user error…. With this side by side you have to make sure to open it all the way so that the triggers will set..  it is a mistake that I usually only make on one of the first hunts of the season.  We continued on and were able to find another small group and this time they flushed a little bit farther out and I wasn’t able to connect…. By the time Sweep finished her run she had covered 13 miles.

 

After the hunt it was still early so we drove around looking at some new to us PLOTS land for hunting the next two days.  It is a bit discouraging to have not gotten any birds today as last year we had filled out before lunch.  I am vey happy with how the dogs worked and it was great to see how Sweep and Peach worked as it was my first actual hunt with them.