Best public areas to hunt

T

tript2009

Member
so, I am looking at making a drive out to SD for a 4 day weekend from Ohio for some bird hunting, and have a couple questions:

1) being as I am from out of town, and I am going to have to hunt public lands, which city/public lands would be the best starting place for me to try? I will be bringing my Chocolate Lab, and one other guy, so the more condensed the cover, the better: i dont want to try walking 15 acre fields with two guys and a dog, and have birds circling us constantly.

2) If there is anyone that would be interested in meeting up while I am out there, let me know! I am looking at making the trip up at the end of December, but will have set dates within the next week.
 
Am I reading you right that you don't want fields over 15 acres?? Not sure if you have been to South Dakota before but this is the land of wide open spaces. Small fields here might be 80-160 acres. You will find very little public land that is small than 80-160 acres and most is larger. Contained in that land may be smaller patches of cattails, etc. that will hold birds. And now with the snow a lot of the grass is covered so the birds are in the heavier cover. Good luck.
 
Dakotazeb said:
Am I reading you right that you don't want fields over 15 acres?? Not sure if you have been to South Dakota before but this is the land of wide open spaces. Small fields here might be 80-160 acres. You will find very little public land that is small than 80-160 acres and most is larger. Contained in that land may be smaller patches of cattails, etc. that will hold birds. And now with the snow a lot of the grass is covered so the birds are in the heavier cover. Good luck.
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That's another good point. I haven't been up towards the Watertown area in a couple weekends, but, with the snow, I have to imagine road hunting is the best way to go.

As to the best cities with public land around them, Mitchell is probably your best bet.
 
Dakotazeb said:
Am I reading you right that you don't want fields over 15 acres?? Not sure if you have been to South Dakota before but this is the land of wide open spaces. Small fields here might be 80-160 acres. You will find very little public land that is small than 80-160 acres and most is larger. Contained in that land may be smaller patches of cattails, etc. that will hold birds. And now with the snow a lot of the grass is covered so the birds are in the heavier cover. Good luck.
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Sorry, i may have worded that wrong: im not trying to walk through 15 acres of thick thick cover. Patches of an acre or two, I am more than ok with. In Ohio all we have is THICK cover, and with 4 guys and 4 dogs, it is still a ton of work. Having that in mind, if im coming with only 1 dog and 2 people, im trying to not walk into 20 acres of hard cover, where there could legitimately be a bird anywhere throughout.
 
SD Publics

I understand not wanting to tear into large tracts of really thick tall stuff. Cant keep track of dog, partner or shot birds. You could look at the public hunting atlas and pick out the smaller parcels. As previously stated, even the larger areas may be broken down to construct a hunt through a low spot with a nice patch of cattails, ect. No need to over think it. I would look for a spot with decent cover and adjacent picked corn or bean fields. A large percentage of the publics in the Eastern 2/3 of the state will meet this requirement. Then its a matter of putting boots to the ground. Some spots will likely be producive while others that look great will not pan out. I was out in the Mitchell area last week and that was my experience. We hunted publics 2 1/2 days, for our group(3) we only shot our limit one of those days, but personally had opportunity fill my vest each day if I could shoot straight. Suprisingly good ratio of roosters.
The other option would be to hunt section lines.
Good luck and Enjoy!
 
Kind of makes me chuckle. I was out there again last weekend. Two public spots I hit were large, as in very large or huge: One is 2.5 sections, as in 2.5 square miles!! Bring your camping gear! And the 2nd is a half-section, as in 1 mile by 1/2 mile, this one I circled the entire thing and weaved around inside, took about 3 hours, I figured I walked about 3.5 miles in that one piece alone. At one point my hard-working GSP came up to me and stopped as if to say, what the heck, the birds are not in here! Middle of the day and although there were plenty of fresh tracks and I saw 22 pheasants, 4 hens that were in range, and killed the only shootable rooster I saw, most of the birds were out messing around on the surrounding private land.
 
tript2009 said:
Sorry, i may have worded that wrong: im not trying to walk through 15 acres of thick thick cover. Patches of an acre or two, I am more than ok with. In Ohio all we have is THICK cover, and with 4 guys and 4 dogs, it is still a ton of work. Having that in mind, if im coming with only 1 dog and 2 people, im trying to not walk into 20 acres of hard cover, where there could legitimately be a bird anywhere throughout.
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What constitutes HARD COVER for you? can you describe it?

Public land in SD will consist of a variety of cover from cattails to shelter belts (tree groves planted for cover) to CRP grasslands to food plots of corn and or sorghum. You rarely find public lands of just one variety of cover on it and as Zeb says, most are 80 acres or larger in size. Winter time SD depending on which part of the state you are in means Cattails or wind breaks such as shelterbelts. Available snow will dictate whether the birds are still using the grasslands (CRP). Cattails sloughs vary in size from a few acres to 100's of acres.
 
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To me, hard cover is 5-7ft tall fields, with briars, heavy bushes, tall grass, and the likes covering the entire area. Ohio division of wildlife is known for releasing all of their birds in super heavy cover like this. The main reason I'm trying to avoid too much of this comes down to safety: half the time when hunting on Ohio public lands I can't shoot at a bird because I can see the people and dogs I'm hunting with: I would like to try and avoid areas with too much of this. If the fields had knee/waist deep grass, briar bushes, etc, I would be more than OK with that. And im not sure what your cattails look like out west, but ours are usually 8-10ft tall....
 
birdshooter said:
Go to this link and scroll down and you will see some of the typical hunting land that South Dakota has to offer.

https://www.google.com/search?q=cat...-obvious-new-farm-bill-a-necessity%2F;800;600
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Unbelievable... I wish we got to hunt fields that low... Well that changes things quite a bit, gents. Clearly SD fields don't grow nearly as crazy as our here in OH. With that being said, we would have no problem whatsoever burning through a lot of land while out there. What cities would be the best places to stay where we would have access to large amounts of public land that would yield decent results?
 
Best thing you could do at this point is to go to the SD game and fish website: http://gfp.sd.gov/ and have them send you a copy of the 2014 Hunting Atlas. The Atlas will show where all the public lands are located from Walk-in tracts to WPA's to State Game Production areas. Then you can decide which areas of the state you wish to base out of.

that being said cities like Huron, Mitchell, Chamberlain, Pierre and maybe Aberdeen which are in the heart of the Pheasant belt and cater to hunters you can't go wrong.

P.S Remember all public lands in SD require Non-toxic shot for hunting.
 
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tript2009 said:
Unbelievable... I wish we got to hunt fields that low... Well that changes things quite a bit, gents. Clearly SD fields don't grow nearly as crazy as our here in OH. With that being said, we would have no problem whatsoever burning through a lot of land while out there. What cities would be the best places to stay where we would have access to large amounts of public land that would yield decent results?
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Keep in mind that was just a sampling and not all cover will be exactly as you saw in those pictures.
 
I hunted 30 or more birds on 300 public acres Friday in 18 inch tall prairie with 6 inches of snow in it. Couldve shot 8 roosters over points. shot the last one over a 35 foot point where I could see tail feathers sticking out of the snow. You just got to corner them, and follow your dog. If the weathers right, you dont need to heavy stuff..

Hunted it Sunday also, and seen 5 roosters, shot one. 30 mph wind was not in my favor.

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my 2 cents

Not sure exactly what cover type you are looking for. I just returned last week from SD and the hunting was awesome. However it was hard work. I walked some crep lands that were easier walking, however I did not fair well there. My best hunting came in the cattails, they were not that tall, or maybe the wind and snow knocked them down. They were tough to walk through, but that was ok. Just walk slow be quiet let the dog work every clump and you will see more birds than you can imagine.

Non tox is not required on all public lands. Just the waterfowl, and game production areas.
 
Hi
We are in south dakota hunting in 30 plus winds at 20 degrees. Me 50 yrs old a 12 yr old and a 72 yr old on creep ground .had a ball.5 birds saw a hundred today. Awesome.other out of state at the cafe .all had success on public land.
 
We were hunting public land last weekend, based in Pierre. First time I have hunted the area. There were four of us and three dogs and we worked very hard.

Alas, very few birds were bagged and most of the area had been heavily hunted and the grass was a bit matted, due to the snow.

The last day we were forced to road hunt due to the 45 mph wind. We hunted near I 90 - from Kennebec to Vivian. Lots of pay-to-hunt facilities, but there seem to be more birds, good ditches and cut grain in the fields.

If you have the" SD Hunting Atlas" you'll notice a few public hunting areas in light tan. If I were to hunt that area again, I would focus on these areas and hunt the edges


Don't be afraid to ask permission - we hunted a private farm next to a public area...
 
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thanks to everyone for the help thus far! judging by the pictures everyone has sent me, the cover in SD is a lot thinner than what we are used to experiencing here in Ohio. I will be sure to let everyone know how the trip goes!
 
I had just enough time to on Friday and Saturday to venture into SD but not enough time to travel too far west so I hunted public land in the Watertown area. Not a hot spot but it was still a good time, got some birds, lots of misses, and tons of wild flushes. Hunted one area of cattails that was too big for 2 people but not ridiculously huge. Got 1 out of it, then 30 seconds after we finished hunting it we watched probably 60 pheasants fly out the back side of it. I'm guessing they circled around behind us. Saw tons and I mean tons of pheasants on the side of the roads. If somebody wanted to road hunt they definitely could. I did not take any birds road hunting but probably would have completed our 2 man limit if we did. Unfortunately 1 of our dogs got sprayed by a skunk twice, so that kind of ruined the non-hunting part of the trip.

Went to Main Car Wash in Brookings and used their pet wash area to get the skunk smell off, which worked pretty good! Our hunting day was over, but we went to the closest public area to Brookings just to let the dogs run around for like 5 minutes to dry off since they were soaking wet. Didn't even have a gun on me since it was just a quick run for the dogs, and what do you know they put up 3 roosters within 10 yards of me and 4 hens..
 
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