# Cannonball Company



## cobirdhunter (Jan 15, 2008)

I was looking through an outdoors magazine, and came across an article about pheasant hunting in ND and this company came highly rated. But if memory servers me right, I seem to remember that this outfit was leasing up all available land for private hunting. I'm not one to pay a private company to hunt a farmers land, would much rather pay the farmer directly to hunt his land. I usually hunt public land in Nebraska or northeastern Colorado and do alright. Not like back in the mid 70's when I lived in omaha, but I do ok. Just started hunting birds again after a long, long time away from it. But I was thinking about trying ND this year, but I get mixed reports about how bad the hunting is on public land...and how hard it is to get access to farmers land without going through a private company. Its a long way to go from Colorado to ND..so any info would be great. Thanks for all your help.


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

Both ND & SD have a good public-walk-in land program. Fee hunting for ND pheasants is most prevalant in SW ND and the counties along the SD border. That said there is private land open if you ask around and if you hunt outside these areas there is enough land to hunt without paying. Make a few calls, do some homework and you'll have a good hunt without the fee hunting.


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## Rick Acker (Sep 26, 2002)

This might not be the year to come to North Dakota to be honest. Especially coming all the way from Colorado. We've had a pretty decent winter kill across the state. Trip to Bismarck this past weekend along I 94 there were too many dead pheasants to count. The SW might even be worse. Friend of mine who came up from Hettinger said he saw hundred plus dead pheasants along the road. Not trying to scare you, but we are having a tough winter and it's not done yet.


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## Chuck Smith (Feb 22, 2005)

An added note to the winter kill. Had friends hunt around x-mas and they came across many dead birds that had there beaks frozen with ice build up and what not.


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## wburns (Feb 27, 2009)

There are plenty of areas for public access. I am from ND and hunt a lot of PLOTS around the state since I travel for work. Some of course is hit and miss but a good proportion is good pheasant land. Cannonball Co. is exactly what you have described. My suggestion is to stay away from Mott and Hettinger areas if you want to avoid companys like that. It is some of the best hunting but the access sucks. There are areas around Bowman and north to Bellfield and even up to Williston that are very good and you can get into sharptails as well. Not everbody leases out so if it is posted stop and ask. There are a number of people who will let you on.

I would wait though and see how the spring hatch goes as we have had some bad winter kills in ND for pheasants this year in the SW due to some ice and snow storms. The game and fish has estimated up to 75% winter kill in areas. Until all of the snow is off we will not be able to tell for sure. I saw some dead around my area as well in the SE. Not as bad as over there but I am uncertain as we have a lot of snow and the dead could still be buried and not visible.
SD has not been hit as hard as far as I know but I would check with someone from there to find out before you decide. No matter what happens there still will be huntable populations, they just might be more spoty than wide spread.


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