2010 SD Pheasant Harvest

Dakotazeb

Dakotazeb

Well-known member
I have copied and pasted this article from the Aberdeen American News.

Pheasant hunters harvested about 1.8 million roosters in South Dakota during the 2010 season, a state Wildlife Division official said today.

Chad Switzer provided the estimate to the state Game, Fish and Parks Commission. He said the number is preliminary but shouldn’t change much when all hunter surveys have been completed.

“It’s pretty solid,” Switzer said. “We had a real strong harvest.”

The estimated harvest of 1,839,000 was the fifth highest since 1963 and comes on the heels of 1,648,200 pheasants taken in 2009 and 1,933,200 in 2008.

Those numbers tracked the population estimates of 9.9 million last year and 8.4 million in 2009 and 10.3 million in 2008.

There were 72,551 South Dakotans and 100,200 nonresidents who bought licenses for pheasant hunting last year.

"We have a very strong pheasant base out there. Our fall populations are most closely tied to reproduction,” Wildlife Division director Tony Leif said. “We have the base out there to produce another bumper crop of pheasants this fall.”

The 2011 main season opens on the traditional third Saturday of October. That practice has been in place since 1958.

A citizen asked the commission last month to look at moving the opening day to the Saturday closest to Oct. 15. The Wildlife Division staff today presented an analysis to the commission.

Leif said the division isn’t recommending any change, and commissioners didn’t express any interest in pursuing it.

“People are very protective of that third Saturday,” commission member Mike Authier of Vivian said.
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Thanks for the information. Made my first trip this year too SD and it was 2 cd week in Dec. we still limited everyday and had a great time. Everyone we met was helpful and very nice to us.:thumbsup::10sign:
 
Zeb, I was surprised by the number of Non-Res hunters. Thought it would be much higher. Seems like when your there , you seem to see more out of state plates while hunting.
 
This last year I got to spend a lot of weekdays in the field (I retired 1 Oct) and I noticed that there did not seem to be as many out of state hunters as in previous years. There are many factors for this--one being I was able to observe more all the way to the possible economic climate last year.

I bet that if the gas prices stay way up that the numbers will be down again this year. I know that I had two groups of out of state hunters that would not have come if they did not have my private land to hunt on.

You should also note that the report says the potential for another year year is there but the weather in nesting season will make or break the numbers. This is always true,with the number of birds I have been seeing the potential is sure there.

So save your pennies and dimes for gas--there my be so many birds this fall that you just have to come.
 
I love my SD trips. great info. Im sure that there was a drop in out of state hunters. Last year was great for our group. Sure does help when the crops are out.
 
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