I just returned from 4 days in South Dakota and did a previous 4 days in mid November as well. Overall, this was probably the most successful year of pheasant hunting I've had in South Dakota and have been doing it since 2009. Some is luck, a lot of it is trial and error over repeated trips out there and figuring out how to turn the luck into your favor. All of my public land hunting was within an hour radius of Mitchell.
November trip - Wednesday, solo, public land, 3 birds in about 3 hours.
- Thursday, group of 5, private land, 12 birds, took all day. Certainly had our chances to limit.
- Friday, group of 6, if I recall, maybe 6 birds, public land. Not a great day, I've documented it in a different post.
December trip - Wednesday, public land, 2 guys and 2 dogs, 6 birds in 1.5 hours, with 4 EASY misses to start the day.
- Thursday, public land, solo, 3 birds by 10:45am
- Friday, public land, group of 5, feeling pretty confident that we could get 10-15 public land birds, ended with 4.... 2 missed birds.
- Saturday, private land near Winner, traditionally very good, 3 birds for group of 7.
My thoughts... there are A LOT of variables in play, but anybody that is determined, in shape, has a decent dog, is a decent shot, can reasonably expect a 1-2 man limit on public land in South Dakota every day. Any large groups on public land and it will be tough, large groups are just simply too loud and often involve hunters that are not as committed to the sport of upland hunting and yell or talk too much, get too tired, etc.
If a spot doesn't look good, then don't waste your time hunting it. If it has nearby harvested corn, shelter belt, cattails, water, and different types of grasses, then hunt it. If it is missing any one of those, then skip it. I honestly don't understand people that complain about the public land in South Dakota. On Thursday when I got my limit in 45 minutes, I spent the remainder of the day driving around scouting new (to me) public land spots and taking notes in the SD Public Land Book on them. I have more positive looking land circled in that book than I could hunt in a week long trip. Yeah, there are spots in the state where there might not be much public land or it may be grazed or bailed, but for the most part every 5 miles there is some sort of public land that you can hunt, often times there are multiple spots within that 5 miles!
Some other observations I have made over the years and this year. When hunting public land, Wednesday is ALWAYS my best day, Thursday is the next, Friday is worst, then Saturday. That also falls right in line with the least to most days of hunters I see out and about too.... I haven't hunted on a Monday or Tuesday before, but I would suspect that Mondays could be hit or miss depending on the weekend pressure, Tuesdays would be good days. If you could make a public trip that involved Tuesdays - Thursdays, your success rate goes up a lot.
As far as how the birds are acting right now, where I was at was just the perfect amount of snowfall. Enough to knock down a lot of the grass and concentrate some birds, but not too much (in most places) to make it terribly difficult walking. The birds held TIGHT. Maybe tighter than I've ever seen. The grass is knocked down and almost makes a little cave or tunnel system under the knocked down grass and snowpiles that the birds can safely hide in. There was several times that my lab would be birdy in a small area for 5 -10 minutes, digging through everything, and eventually a bird would get up. A few hens he even caught. Another example of how tight the birds are holding, I shot one rooster, it went down, the dog retrieved it. I spent a few minutes trying to take a "cool in the field retrieving picture" with my dog and that bird, then also spent a few minutes on the phone returning a missed call from earlier. After 5-10 minutes of standing in this place and being FAR from quiet, my lab acts birdy about 10 feet from me and points a snowpile, starts digging in it, and out flies a rooster. I missed the first several birds of this trip because everything was flushing so close and I simply wasn't used to that.