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Some Cabelas/BassProShops advice- look in the racks off to the side of ammo where they have carboard boxes. I found full cases last year where there were none in single boxes on the shelves for many loads. Ask the floor staff (sometimes even harder to find than shells) if they will split the...

As for cover in short supply, right-of-ways (isn't that a more dignified term than ditches?) can be even better in dry, mowed years. The fence rows are still there for huntable cover but you don't have as hard a time in the really heavy jungle down in the ditch bottom to see, track and flush...

"I don't give a damn about my bad reputation." I'm a rebel in a muddy depression doing a dirty deed on a ditch parrot. I'm an upland cowboy in a free grain elevator ballcap, riding my steal horse, striking out for the backroads nobody goes down. At sunset, I run and gun until the I see the fire...

I've just looked over my google map and I've got 70 honey holes over a 100 square miles of east central SD, all of them publicly accessible for free and none of them a WPA/WIA/CREP/ETC. I've been posting towns, crossroads, gps waypoints, routes and general areas after filling out opening weekend...

Just west of Watertown used to be really good hunting but frequent flooding and more grazing vs crops seems to have reduced the bird numbers permanently since the early 2000s. I still give it a try most years and make a swing through Conde/Doland/Clark but then head back west after reminiscing...

Not an inherited trait but a genetic mutation from inbreeding over time. I know local breeders that attempted to hatch and raise only from their own stock for a couple years that started to produce slight piebalds. They are generally sterile so they switched to mixing in birds from other...

A group of Argentinian hunters traded a dove hunt for lodging to go on an SD pheasant hunt back in the 80s. They showed up in Redfield at Appel Oil to fill up their rental sedan and asked where to go to find pheasants and what did they look like. Attendant sent them in the general direction with...

The fields I hunt are 20 miles wide and 20 miles long. I just have 33 feet wide strips cut into them to give me a chance. We spend far more time walking ditches than driving up on them and often have had a dog to flush them out on those walks. I would bet they get a tougher workout in a ditch...

Duh- road hunt with the AC on.

They will also switch roadside locations if there is big wind. For instances, in a wind blowing north to south, they won't be in north/south road ditches since the wind whistles right down those. They will move to east/west roads and specifically in the ditch to the north side of the road where...

Maybe it's more of a micro-habit but rock piles in picked fields can be an absolute blast to hunt. They can be the only cover for a quarter mile sometimes so the birds bunch up on them. Despite large numbers of birds, they also hold incredibly tight and most often flush one at a time a couple...

Ditches primarily, fence lines/shelterbelt second, grass choked CRP or crop stubble way in third. Nesting needs are moisture and bug attracting plants- ditch weeds are the prime mix for that. Most CRP doesn't provide that if they get their sloughs drained and are not in a program that requires...

Winter carry over is the only way you get the big numbers. CRP grass does little for winter cover so what you really missing is the sloughs that are in many CRP acres that come out when they are converted to crops. Even the soil bank years can be traced to those mild winters and flooding that...

Biologists predict 5% rooster survival is all that is needed for full reproduction numbers. Even hunting pressure in SD takes only about 45-55% of roosters. If almost every SD hunter doubled their current success rate there would likely be little effect on numbers the next year. I think bag...

Between hunting and winterkill you are only looking at 20% rooster survival so if the crippling shot didn't take them out, 4 out of 5 times the winter weather would have anyway eventually. Hunting ethics requires you to do the best you can at recovery with what you have available. I guess you...

I have hunt almost exclusively public right of way ditches for 30 years with 1-2 people and most often without a dog. We limit out on opening week just working ditches and driving so I recommend it without exception, especially to first time hunters. So much bird action and empty boxes of...

Taking up your other hunting goal for finding retirement places, I can't fault the logic of putting Chamberlain at the top of the list for both hunting and houses. You will certainly find as many birds and hunting opportunities there as you would in Aberdeen or Gettysburg. See this recent thread...

Some official designations and whether they are rights of way for public hunters- Interstate-no. US Hwy- no. County Hwy- yes (even the paved ones) Roads- yes. Hard to believe but true that any public roads but the Interstate/US ones above are open to hunting. These are the gravel roads and...

It's not what you assume it is. Half the time we are on two-rut section lines hunting the fence lines next to shallow ditches. These are county maintained right of ways that divide up the square mile fields into quarters. They are public access but not graded gavel roads that nobody but the...

Allow me to get simple- I'm not being sarcastic at all, mostly. Are you hunting for birds or hunting for cover? I prefer to hunt cover that has lots of birds in it. So I go to the part of the state with the most birds, not the perfect cover. See, all the non-hunters have been nice enough to...