A fine day to hunt pheasants at Laona’s Heritage Hunt Club

A fine day to hunt pheasants at Laona’s Heritage Hunt Club

It turns out that getting friends together who share a passion for shotguns, dogs and birds takes nothing more than a phone call, and so it was recently as we planned a hunt to chase pheasants.

The retired scribbler put in a call to David Eibner of Eagle River, knowing that a trip to Heritage Hunt Club in Laona was the perfect choice for a guy with a new bird dog before seasons opened in South Dakota and beyond.

Meet Daisy, his 18-month-old black Labrador retriever, fully trained for obedience but needing some field work to ignite that bird-loving fever that transforms puppies into hunting machines.

We would be joined on the hunt by Ellie, the Eibner’s 13-year-old veteran Lab, and Tom Busha of Eagle River, a gunner who has chased birds and waterfowl across North America.

We arrived earlier than expected so hunt club manager K.J. Lind sent us out for some momentary scratch hunting around the farm, hoping we’d score on a couple of bonus birds before his work began.

It appeared we had the first rooster of the day surrounded in a slough, dogs on the chase and hunters safely spread. But the bugger snuck out the back door and escaped unscathed, laughing at us with those telltale cackles.

A couple of hens erupted from tall grass on a second push, but our shooting eyes were obviously still sleeping.

The time came for K.J. to plant some birds, a mixture of roosters and hens that would be placed in heavy sorghum cover, so the dogs could work their magic and get them airborne.

That’s when the pheasants started falling from the sky and slowly stacking up, with Ellie doing the majority of the early flushing and retrieving.

Heritage Hunt Club may be a game farm, but the truth be told, it is blood-rushing excitement no matter the location of planted boots when a big rooster pheasant bursts from cover, cackling for all its worth.

It’s even more exciting when you start chasing extra birds around the farm that others missed, because just like wild birds, they quickly learn that running beats flying and they escape more times than they end up in a game bag.

The highlight of the trip, besides the camaraderie, was watching a young flusher and retriever come into its own.

Daisy transformed from wandering, clueless puppy into a true hunting dog in a matter of hours. Once she tracked down and flushed a rooster, and then retrieved that bird, the little Lab was on fire.

We witnessed the change in energy, the quicker movements as fresh bird scent forced her long body to attempt keeping up with her nose. And the speed of that wagging tail, on hot scent, was something to see.

And that was, of course, the main reason for the hunt. The youngster needed some interaction with live pheasants before heading west on Eibner’s annual South Dakota adventure, where Ellie has been the queen retriever for years.

The Northwoods of Wisconsin offers a lot of things for hunters, from waterfowl to trophy deer and ruffed grouse, but hunting for wild pheasants is not one of them.

That’s one reason why Heritage Hunt Club is so popular, giving hunters opportunity close to home. It’s a great place to tune up the shooting eye and give any dog — especially young dogs a chance to learn.

Of men and guns and dogs, the legacy continues.