b'Hunting This image of the dam on Sunday showed the summer-like day, with shooting finished by 9am.Bagging a pheasant with a walk-through scrubby country was a just reward.BONUS PHEASANT metres when it jumped up at speed We drove to another farm only tenflying to my right and I nailed it on minutes down the road to a largethe second shot.It was jumping gully that had plenty of cover andoff the ground doing helicopter livestock to worry about.This spotmoves so Derek quickly finished it has produced pheasants every yearoff to stop it running for any cover, for over a decade and sure enough,a good idea when you dont have after we parked the ute and starteda dog on hand for easy retrieval.walking quietly along the track, weWhat a fantastic way to finish off saw a big cock pheasant out feeding. the start to the day as we drove It was by the fence with scrub andback into town to get lunch and gorse for cover, as we didnt haverefuel the ute.We returned to the a dog, we decided to approachdam at 3:30pm and we only shot it from two angles to cover ourone duck as the evening shoot was bases.Derek went over the othera bit of a dud.The next morning side of the fence and along it as Iwasnt much better as we only shot snuck along the right-hand side toanother mallard and only saw a stop it flying down into the gully. handful of birds that day, as it was As we closed the distance to abouta lot calmer with those summer-like 35m, it saw me and crouched down. conditions of Northland back again.I motioned to Derek on the roadWe packed up the decoys, removed to move in quickly and we bothall the spent cartridges and both rushed it, we only got several moreagreed we should have gone fishing.70FISHING IN GODZONE MAGAZINE'