very nice dude. take my dad on a bird hunt every year.  it is a ball.  we go the first monday after deer season.  they close down for firearms deer, so we get to be the first guys hitting it in a while, and we always get a lot of birds.  love the pic of the 2 dogs as well man. very nice!

I shot my first pheasant about 1953 and continued to hunt them until about 1990 and then the wild birds were gone in my area and I hung up the shotgun.In the 60's and 70's there were so many birds that we would limit out everyday for the first two weeks on days out.We hunted them with Beagles as the dog did double duty on birds and rabbits,two hunters as standers at end of cover and two or three as drivers with the dogs.There were times when the action was fast and furious.Sadly as I mentioned earlier it's all gone now,and will never return to what it was.
By the way,from what I see in those pictures that is a real nice looking preserve.I'm curious if any of those birds manage to live thru to the breeding season and breed?

I'll try to addess most comments.
 
With regard to the sucker -- it was not intentionally stocked as the Drake would like you to believe.  It was a wild field bred sucker, you could tell by the diameter of its lips.  The Drake is too humble to admit that he cannot only catch suckers with great ease, he can shoot them as well.  He is just some sort of mystical sucker magnet.  He doesn't need stocked suckers in order to be successful.  Besides, Silver and I would never stoop so low as to pull such a ruse on him.  There are so many untapped sucker jokes out there that we really don't need to obtain more via artifcial means.  Since it was a wild or at least liberated sucker, there was no additional cost.
 
There is a great deal of additional training needed to get the dogs to work suckers.  The hardest part is getting them to hold in cover during training.  For some reason they always try to get to a nearby stream.  They are really difficult to point in the water and the dogs have not been able to master that.  Yet.
 
As for pafisher's and S-10's small game experience, mine was somewhat similar.  We hunted bunnies with beagles, but always found phesants.  I would ike to have a dollar for every time I was up on stump to get a better view while the dogs were circling a rabbit and saw a pheasant trying to sneak by.  I really wanted a bird dog back then, but my Dad, a product of the depression when subsistance hunting was the norm, couldn't see why we would feed a dog all year when the limit was two on phesants and the limit on rabbits was 4, besides having a late rabbit season to hunt when pheasants were out.
 
I'm glad that some of you enjoyed the photos.  I was sorting through some from last year (2010) and thought I might have a few more that you would like.  Some are preserve photos, some are game lands photos.  I'll start a new thread.

Darby,I am curious if any of those birds live thru the season and manage to breed in that area.Here in SE Penna the state stocks lots of birds on the gamelands,where there is still a lot of cover,but next to none manage to make it thru to breed as they are too stupid to evade the hawks,owls,fox,etc.

Some of the birds the PGC stock around here make it thru to the next summer too... not sure if there is any breeding going on though ...

one guy with a couple small "fields" has three males and two females at his bird feeders now and he allows hunting so the PGC does release some birds there..

another adjourning farm usually has a couple running around their front yard every year after the season and into the next summer too ... this is where I often get the photos of the pheasants along the road...

I do not think I have every seen any "hold-overs" at the "carrier fields" on SGL#54 where the majority get released every year...

Hmmm.

Cabin fever already?

Great pics DarDys, love watching dogs work. I"m on my 2nd weimaraner.. First one was a dream dog, current one is an overgrown lap dog. Thanks for sharing.