Of course, the first tip is to have your shotgun loaded before you start out to find some birds.

Good locations for finding pheasants is a dry lake bottom with a significant amount of dead brush and weeds which are about knee to waist high or, in the edges of grain or corn fields.

The rooster (male) pheasant is the one that you want to be hunting. It is colorfully marked with long reddish-brown tail feathers and a red and green head. It has a white ring around its neck and has red-orange and black body. The hen (female) pheasant is smaller than the rooster. She is mostly light brown throughout the whole body and has short light brown tail feathers.

Pheasants follow a schedule as routine as your morning coffee. Understanding their routine can increase you likely hood of flushing out a rooster.

Before sunrise pheasants start their day at roost sites. This is usually the areas of knee to waist high grass or weeds, where they have spent the night. At first light they head for some place to find gravel or grit, such as roadsides, grain fields or similar areas.

They usually begin feeding around 8 am. In some places shooting hours begin at 9 am and the birds are still feeding.

By mid-morning, pheasants have left the fields for dense, thick cover such as standing corn fields, brush patches or native grasses. Here they will hunker down until late afternoon. The nastier the weather, the deeper into cover the pheasant will go.

It is hard to work large fields of standing corn, because pheasants will run to avoid predators. If you are hunting during mid day, then pick ditch banks, field edges, grass field and deep into marshes.

When you do have a successful shot, make sure and mark where the bird fell so it will not be lost on your way to pick it up because the brush and weeds make it difficult to find anything.

Eventually the pheasant has to eat again. So, during the late afternoon, the pheasants move from their loafing spots back to the feeding areas and are easier to spot.

In summary, the best time to hunt pheasants is the first and the last shooting hours of the day.

Hope these pheasant hunting tips were helpful and you have a successful hunting trip.