2012 sharpie/chicken opener dates?

G

GSP

New member
Greetings all,

My wife and I are expecting our 3rd child in July. As such, my anual hunting trip is going to have to be in mid to early Sept this year while she's still on maternity leave. Once she goes back to work, my world is going to get real busy real quick.... That means pheasants are off the menu... :mad: But I do want to get a sharpie hunt in. I hunted them a few years ago in MT and had a blast.

I have never hunted the Dakotas, but like the fact that I can save some drive time vs going back to MT and it sounds like sharpie numbers are reasonably similar.

SD's game and fish website does not yet list dates for the 2012 season. ND is listed as Sept 8, 2012. I see that in 2011, SD opened a week later than ND. Is this typical? If that's the case, I'm probably going to have to hit ND as she will be returning to work probably sometime mid Sept.

Regards,
Mike
 
Best plan on ND as mid Sep is the traditional grouse opener in SD
 
Thanks. Mid Sept will likely be cutting it too close. Depending on when the baby comes of course... Looks like I need to stick with the Sept 8 opener in ND.
 
sharptails

Don't know if Nebraska is closer but they have lots of sharptails and prarie chickens in the sand hills and lots of public hunting and they opened on the
first of Sept. this year for some reason, don't know when the 2012 opener will be
 
jfreeman said:
Don't know if Nebraska is closer but they have lots of sharptails and prarie chickens in the sand hills and lots of public hunting and they opened on the
first of Sept. this year for some reason, don't know when the 2012 opener will be
Click to expand...

Interesting. I hadn't even considered Nebraska. For some reason I had it in my head that there was not much public access in NE. The earlier start date would be a bonus too, provided I can tollerate the heat. :D And it is a lot closer. I could be in central NE within 15 hrs. Thanks for the heads up!

I sometimes forget how much fun just the planning aspect can be of a trip. Lots of homework to do.
 
sharpies

I hunted Samuel R. Mcelvie national forest and some at the Valentine national wild life
refuge and saw lots of sharptails in 2010 with my 11 mo. old GSP he had several great points but I did not do my part as well as I should have. There is some pheasants around the many lakes on the Valentine nwr if you want to just introduce your dog to them like I did. We stayed in the cabins at
Meritt lake on the edge of Mcelvie, but Valentine NE. is about 25 miles from
Mcelvie and the Valentine nwr and they have motels there. If you have any questions just holler and I will try to help. I think they said there is about
207 thousand acres of public in that area. There is also Ft. Niobrara NWR
at Valentine NE but I haven't hunted that.
 
sharpies

I hunted Samuel R. Mcelvie national forest and some at the Valentine national wild life
refuge and saw lots of sharptails in 2010 with my 11 mo. old GSP he had several great points but I did not do my part as well as I should have. There is some pheasants around the many lakes on the Valentine nwr if you want to just introduce your dog to them like I did. We stayed in the cabins at
Meritt lake on the edge of Mcelvie, but Valentine NE. is about 25 miles from
Mcelvie and the Valentine nwr and they have motels there. If you have any questions just holler and I will try to help. I think they said there is about
207 thousand acres of public in that area. There is also Ft. Niobrara NWR
at Valentine NE but I haven't hunted that.
 
You must have the same incurable disease that I have. I was just thinking about how many days we have until the sharpie opener this morning.

I have run into pretty good numbers of sharpies in North Dakota and South Dakota. I would suggest waiting until bird numbers are out and then pick your place.
 
All very good advice. Thanks Gents!

Never too early to start planning the next trip, right! It's really the only thing I thought about the whole way home from KS last week. The dogs are darn near healed up and raring to go. Tick-tock, tick-tock til Sept....

jfreeman, I have searched the NE forums and read your report. Very nice. I gotta tell ya, the Sandhills do sound very nice. It's down to ND and NE. SD's opener is going to be too late for me this year. I have to get this one in early due to the new arrival.

The timing is actually quite good. If there was a year that I'm fine with not heading W during phz season, this year is it. I've got a young EP pup that I'm trying to turn into a ruffed grouse zen master before we expose him to the demonic ditch parrot. :D
 
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