Guys, thanks for all the information. Unfortunately, I am kind of limited time wise to the week after Christmas and know the drill with the weather. Also I only have one buddy interested this year and a 7 month old GSP that I will probably leave home. I have done 3 hunts in the past during the same time frame. One in Kansas and two in SD, last year Kansas and 2015 in SD were brutally cold but we got by. Usually late season SD the birds have been bunched up and we have done OK. This was not the case last year in Kansas, we had trouble finding pheasants and we wondered if the public areas had been hit hard. We found a lot of public walk-ins but many were very sparse for cover and we did a lot of driving/scouting for the places that we did hunt.
First day last year I stumbled into a covey with no dog and shot my first true double on wild quail in 30 years with a 110 year old Lefever and that's what makes it all worthwhile! Missed plenty of easy birds after that too!
At 54 years old I'm realizing that I will never shoot or need all of the doubles I have collected over the years. I'm thinking of starting to find takers to swap guns for bird hunts in different states as the hunts and experiences and more important that the guns. Not a big fan to the cushy pay to hunt experiences, nor do I have the budget for those types of hunts.
