Craig F
Well-known member
After many years of invites I finally gave in this year and tagged along with a few other DHBP members on their annual early October trip to North Dakota. A completely new experience for me field hunting ducks, geese, and sandhill cranes where I don't need to worry about the tides, the sea conditions, my boat, etc. North Dakota is an entirely different world than what we are used to back in New Jersey. Open plains, friendly locals, and incredible amounts of birds.
With the area we hunted still rather dry and part of our trip having temperatures into the 80s it was tough some days to stay on birds, but we managed as best as we could. Over the course of the week we hunted we had a few world class hunts with limits of puddle ducks, specklebelly geese, and cranes. I wish we had huntable specks and cranes back east because I haven't had a better eating wild bird before. I am very jealous of you central and Mississippi flyway folks.
The trip also allowed me to get back into what I haven't been able to do at home in recent seasons: film our hunts and actually share them with the public. I still film most of my hunts for my own sake but in today's day and age it is just shooting yourself in the foot to post productive public land areas to other hunters via YouTube. That's a whole other discussion, but it warranted mentioning since I get so many inquiries looking for more NJ hunting content.
Between myself and one of the other friends on the trip we ended up with about 500 gb of video footage. So far I have edited our day one hunt into something passable. We had giant flocks of pintails (giant for us NJ folks) working us all afternoon but with the amount of juvies and hens we let most pass by.
I've almost completely converted my other gunning buddies over to 20 gauges. Three out of four of us shot them exclusively this trip and the fourth bought one when he got home.
Much more to come as I finish edits but figured some members here might enjoy following along.
With the area we hunted still rather dry and part of our trip having temperatures into the 80s it was tough some days to stay on birds, but we managed as best as we could. Over the course of the week we hunted we had a few world class hunts with limits of puddle ducks, specklebelly geese, and cranes. I wish we had huntable specks and cranes back east because I haven't had a better eating wild bird before. I am very jealous of you central and Mississippi flyway folks.
The trip also allowed me to get back into what I haven't been able to do at home in recent seasons: film our hunts and actually share them with the public. I still film most of my hunts for my own sake but in today's day and age it is just shooting yourself in the foot to post productive public land areas to other hunters via YouTube. That's a whole other discussion, but it warranted mentioning since I get so many inquiries looking for more NJ hunting content.
Between myself and one of the other friends on the trip we ended up with about 500 gb of video footage. So far I have edited our day one hunt into something passable. We had giant flocks of pintails (giant for us NJ folks) working us all afternoon but with the amount of juvies and hens we let most pass by.
I've almost completely converted my other gunning buddies over to 20 gauges. Three out of four of us shot them exclusively this trip and the fourth bought one when he got home.
Much more to come as I finish edits but figured some members here might enjoy following along.