SNEAK IN
Treat winter’s wary, skittish roosters with the respect you give big game. Roosters can't smell you of course, but they make up for it with their hearing. Rumbling up, slamming doors, talking, rummaging through gear and whistling at dogs will send roosters running or flying. So don’t get ready near your hunting area. Instead, pull in a mile down the road or at the gas station in town, get ready there, then pull up and slip into the cover without all the monkey business.
Bonus Tip: Before your first stop of the day, give your dog a little "pre-run" somewhere else to get her ya-yas out so she's ready to go right to work.
HUNT QUIET
Do you talk and laugh back and forth with hunting partners while deer hunting? No. PhD roosters demand equal consideration. If you hunt with a partner or two, work out some hand signals so you can communicate silently as you hunt. By this time of the season, you and your dog have probably worked out an understanding, and can keep your own communication decibel levels between minimal and nonexistent.
Bonus Tip: Remove beepers from your dog; train him to respond to the softest toots on your whistle, “hups” from your voice, or buzzes on her collar.
GO SLOW
A slow pace works best, and helps keep the birds guessing. Winter roosters circle, sneak and skulk around you and your dog. Slowing down gives the dog more chance to work, and makes roosters fidgety; maybe fidgety enough to hunker in for a point or flush.
Bonus Tip: When you think you’re going slow enough, slow down another step.
ATTACK TWICE
Don’t give up. Take a swing around and work the cover again from a different angle. Take a new track through. Hit different corners and pockets. If it looks like there just must be some birds around, there probably are; sometimes it just takes a second pass to get them moving.
Bonus Tip: The thicker the cover, the more times you can work it. It has taken me three passes to get birds out of a cattail thicket.
THINK NASTY
Forget nice grassy fields. Head for the nastiest cover you can find. Cattails offer pheasants thermal protection, tunnels to slither through, and hidey holes to tuck into. Hunt mean brush such as raspberry canes, multiflora rose tangles, plum brush and other thorny thickets.
Bonus Tip: If you are enjoying a fun and pleasant stroll, that’s nice. If you want to shoot a pheasant, get your butt into the junk.
STAY LATE
Take a midday break so you can hunt the last two hours of daylight, right to sunset. Pheasants move now, laying down scent as they head out to feed and then work back toward nighttime roosting cover.
Bonus Tip: Scout roosting fields and zones, and save one for last. The last half hour of legal shooting light offers the best minutes of the day. Pheasants become vulnerable as they head to grass areas or cattail-grass edges to roost, and roosters may be reluctant to run once they've settled in.