Lucky,
You and me both! I've only been hunting pheasant for 6- 7 years and am confounded by the same problem. Is it getting worse?Darwinism, the running birds live through the season and then breed the following spring. Is running genetic? All I know is to do what you said. I hunted last week in MT and had alot of hens hold for the dogs but the wily roosters wanted to run. We had GSP in the field and usually put 4 dogs in at a time with 3 to 5 guns. We put 6 dogs in once or twice. Definitely the extra dogs confused some of the roosters and they flushed, sometimes in range. Our hunting party had 3 guys in their 30's and 2 guys in their 50's. The young bulls and the old bulls. We are hunting pointing dogs and really didn't want to use blockers but when the old bulls grew slightly tired we asked them if they wouldn't mind blocking. We took some roosters doing so, or should I say the seasoned hunters did. Stealth took some birds using one or two dogs hunting the sloughs with 2 guys. No whistling or talking and we were able to get some pointed cocks. But when the birds got out into the huge grass fields they much prefered to run. The last morning we hunted opposing fields and one group put some roosters across the road into the field I was in. The birds flushed 40 feet from the edge of the road about 15 feet in front of our group, the young bulls. To my dismay 2 of the young bulls had unloaded guns {amateur mistake} but my sweet 16 took a nice bird with one shot. We ran the birds to each other and they flushed. If any knows how to stop running birds I'd like to know as well. I know someone out there is saying we need dogs to close the back door and I've accomplished this with some of the older dogs we hunt; even my chessie has learned to do this for the pointers but if there is another approach I'm all ears.