Where do you go when your day off and a 20 mph sustained wind coincide? Two words: low and thick.

First, search out the lowest ground you have available, bottoms or valleys that are out of the wind. These places don't necessarily have to represent the best-looking cover your plot of ground has to offer--as long as it's predominantly out of the wind.

On a windy day hunt near Aberdeen, South Dakota, a couple years back, the majority of the group I was with insisted on working the ridges and peaks of a rolling public area. The general consensus was that it looked great, and I agreed. But one young man, a enthusiastic pheasant chaser, asked the hunt captain if he could venture off on his own. Permission was granted, and with that he turned his back to the wind, put his yellow Lab at heel and headed into the bottom of a thick, cattail-choked valley to the west of us.

Our group saw a handful of pheasants, including one lonely rooster. The young know-it-all, as it was painfully retold to the group upon our rendezvous at the vehicles, had flushed "50 birds, maybe 75" during his short walk, several of which had been cockbirds; a full South Dakota limit weighted his game bag even as we listened.

Turns out the young man had lived and hunted pheasants in South Dakota for six years. "When the wind blows hard," he said, looking around as if to check if anyone was listening, "those birds head to the bottoms. The thickest stuff out of the wind they can find. That stuff you guys walked this morning--they just won't be there in the wind. You gotta go low, you gotta go slow and you have to think thick."

If you don't have low cover, focus your windy day efforts on the leeside of the cover. Here, the birds will feel a bit more at ease, particularly if the cover is thick or they have quick access to relatively windless thick cover. Hunt slowly and keep your dog close--using silent commands rather than voices that will carry on the wind--because these birds will be skittish.

Unless I'm dead, I will not miss being afield the day following the first snowfall of the season. Young-of-the-year roosters are completely befuddled by the change in their environment, and even old cockbirds are thrown for a loop. Any time I can catch a bird with his guard down...well, I'll take all the help I can get.

Snow and cold go hand in hand, and the question of where to find birds when these conditions prevail can be answered in one word: food. With the arrival of snow and cold in pheasant country, I focus on the best cover--thick waterways, cattail sloughs, short stands of sumac and the like--that's close to a food source, preferably a high energy one such as corn.

Snow also means that I can sleep in and not start a hunt until later in the morning. It's been my experience that early or first snows tend to keep birds on the roost later; thus, I'll give them time to get out, wander around and leave plenty of pheasant smell lingering for the dog to find. But once the snow has been around for a while, I begin hunting earlier because the birds will often move toward food sources at break of day because of increased competition for what accessible food remains.