OutdoorNebraska

December 2019 • Nebraskaland 23 will hole up in cover." About an hour into the hunt, we crossed the trail of two walking roosters. We followed. After about 10 minutes, the tracks entered a patch of thick cover and we prepared for a fl ush. Hoping to capture a photo of Meduna shooting, I set my gun down and took out my camera. Soon after – you guessed it – the birds fl ushed right in front of me. Flustered, I missed my photo as Meduna dropped the second rooster. We ran to the spot, but found no bird. It had run or buried itself in nearby cover. For 20 minutes we stomped about looking for the downed bird. We followed a set of tracks leaving the area, but they vanished in a patch of wet grass. Reluctantly, we gave up the search and continued hunting until sunset. Pheasant tracks were fairly common that day. We fl ushed about 15 hens and saw the tracks of a few other long- striding, well-educated roosters, but could not fl ush them. A dog would have been advantageous on this day with patchy snow. Though we harvested no birds, it was a fun day, and hunting with Meduna taught me a few new tricks of the pheasant hunting trade. Winter Cover As winter descends upon the Plains, breathing wind, snow and cold upon the land, pheasants leave lighter fall cover and head for the thick stuff . In Nebraska, this is mainly dense grass or marshes. Radio tracking studies have shown pheasants will travel up to 10 miles from their normal home range to winter cover, though most likely travel only a few miles or less. For them, fi nding heavy vegetation that provides thermal insulation on cold winter nights and shelter from the wind and snow, which can bury or suff ocate birds if caught in the open, is a matter of life and death. "Over the last few decades as we have lost more old farmsteads, pastures and Conservation Reserve Program fi elds to the plow, the un-farmable marshes have become even more vital pheasant habitat," Meduna said. "Here in farm country, they are especially important as winter cover as crops have been harvested, pastures grazed short and snow has buried lighter grass cover making these other habitats useless." In Rainwater Basin wetlands, cattails, river bulrush, prairie cordgrass and tall patches of giant ragweed and sunfl owers On a cold winter day in a South Dakota pothole marsh, a pheasant found shelter in a stand of prairie cordgrass.

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