Birds, buddies and fun

WISNER, Neb. — It was a field of dreams.

Ring-necked pheasants by the dozens boiled out of their grassy roosts before dawn Saturday as Lary Moeller's hunting party fanned out from an old farmstead.

The furiously fluttering wings of flushed pheasants signaled the start of another season of ringneck hunting.

For Moeller, it was a sweeter sound than even the first pop of a hunter's shotgun a few minutes later because it meant two things: the birds and the buddies were back.

“We're out here to laugh, have a good time and watch the dogs,'' Moeller said. “Killing is not the purpose.''

But opening day of rooster pheasant season wasn't simply an exercise in exercise for Moeller's mixed-bag party of two women, a teen boy, six men and six dogs. The quarter-square-mile of grassland hunted by the group after dawn produced 17 ringnecks by mid-morning.

The group flushed 50 to 70 hen and rooster pheasants.

“I thought we were going to have to make an ammo run'' for more shotgun shells, Randy Evans of Omaha joked afterward.

Since moving back to his hometown in 1992 and retiring from a road warrior sales career three years ago, Moeller has poured his energy into restoring and preserving wildlife habitat on the family farms.

“If you get the habitat, the birds will come,'' he said.

So do family and friends.

Moeller hosts an opening-weekend hunt on the family land in Cuming and Wayne Counties each year. Hunters sleep, eat and swap tales in a bunkhouse.

It's Moeller's opportunity to spread the message of good stewardship of the land. He is a member of Pheasants Forever, the habitat conservation organization. He also is president of a newly created Elkhorn Valley Prescribed Burn Association, an organization of about 20 landowners who help each other plan and conduct scheduled burns of their grassland to improve habitat.

Evans proclaimed the morning hunt on a Wayne County farm the best ever.

Near-freezing pre-dawn temperatures combined with frost and dew on the grass helped the hunters' Labrador retrievers and Brittany spaniels track the scent of pheasants. The birds also tended to sit tight in the thick roosting grass — not flee by running — until discovered by the dogs or overcome by their sense of flight.

“We're missing a lot of them,'' said Tory Moeller of Fort Calhoun, one of two siblings hunting with their dad on opening day. The other was Tara Moeller of Omaha.

Malia Meyer of Wayne was credited with dropping 2½ roosters with a shotgun given to her as a wedding gift by her husband, Curt Meyer. One of Waterloo hunter Mike Heller's dogs retrieved the bird and delivered it to Heller.

“I feed them, so they think they bring me the birds,'' said Heller, who carried the prize for Meyer.

A late-morning hunt of grassland on Moeller's family farm southwest of Wisner produced one rooster from three flushed.

“This is fun,'' said Curt Meyer. “We shoot and miss, and it's OK.''

Tory Moeller said hunting on the family's managed habitat land will improve through the end of pheasant season in January, despite the number of roosters taken Saturday.

The grassy fields hunted Saturday will attract pheasants from about 10 surrounding square miles as the long-stalled corn harvest progresses.

“Once the crops are out,'' he said, “everything will be so bare that the birds will just flock into here.''

Just as Lary Moeller planned it.

Contact the writer:

444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com