Safe to Pheasant hunt in MN??

[Grits]

I am relatively new to Minnesota and have been grouse and woodcock hunting hard so far this year with a little bit of luck. However, gun season opens up for deer this weekend and I have been told by numerous people to stay the heck out out of the woods until all those silly deer hunters go home. So I am heading West to the Morris, MN area to try pheasant hunting on WMA's and WPA's. Will I be running into a bunch of goons with buck fever or just other classy bird hunters like the members of this forum?? Also, any tips on hunting alone on these public areas (with my GSP) would be greatly appreciated. I know there are still a lot of standing crops because of all this rain we've had. Thanks for any help and advise.

[JakeDD]

My opinion, grits: go fishing the next 2 weekends. As much as I would like to give guys the benefit of the doubt, I have been proven wrong time and time again. If you had private land lined up and you knew who (if anyone) would be out there, that's one thing. Hitting public land during deer season is always a toss-up and the risk is not worth it. FYI, the best hunting is from mid-Nov to New Year's anyway!

[Grits]

Thanks a bunch for the advise guys. I'm definitely going to hunt all day Friday but it sounds like I need to be pretty careful if I decide to hunt this weekend.

[BigShooter]

Personally I don't put a dog on the ground during deer season. What makes you think there won't be deer hunters pushing through the WPAs & WMAs, are they closed to deer hunting now?

If you do decide to take a chance remember you have to be wearing a blaze orange coat & hat when afield during deer season. I would also make certain my dog(s) were wearing a blaze orange chest protector as well.

[original mngsp]

I really don't even like being in this state during opening weekend. I usually try to be out of state, but if stuck here usually spend the weekend hiding in my bunker wearing my kevlar vest. Just kidding on the bunker thing.

No dont take a dog or yourself out. Those deer hunters are nuts.

[BigShooter]

Those deer hunters are nuts.

A "glittering generality". A very sizable number of deer hunters (most likely the majority) are just ordinary hunters that have harvested their share of ducks, geese, varmits and upland game as well. At this point in time the majority have taken hunters safety as well.

Big game hunting though is not really compatable with upland hunting and there are about 462,000 deer licenses sold in MN each year for a two or three weekend long season. So that's more than the average number of hunters out hunting each weekend in MN during the non-deer portion of the hunting season. Two of the best times to hunt pheasants are on warm sunny days or after the crops have been harvested. By the time deer season ends many more crops will be out of the fields.

[Chaingang]

Seems like all too often we hear of someone shooting a cow or a horse and claiming they thought it was a deer. :roll:

In fact I remember an incident a few years back where a bow hunter sitting in a ditch was shot. Some in this state prefer to shoot first then identify their target....

[muddycreek]

I was born and raised in the Morris area (glad to see some hunting out there ), but do NOT bird hunt during deer season. With the season framework there the motto " if it's brown its down" prevails way too much... Unfortunately it seems the preferred method of way too many is to drive the section roads and bail out shooting at what ever they see running across the fields. One year we had 20+ pickups surrounding the section our farm is on because there was a real nice buck bedded in the middle of our pasture waiting for him to cross the road. Smart dude just sat there in the open all day where nobody could get him. Sorry to digress.

Good luck and be careful, heard there are still birds out there, but hard to find till some crops come off. Where abouts you hunting at, wouldn't be south of the airport would it (see user name).