Day #4 report.....

Well long story short, a ton of ground covered and very few birds to show for it.

Our party of three has 13 roosters total after three days of hunting. We have had limited contacts which at this point has me frustrated. We have covered a 40 mile radius from the home base.

There isn't no lack of effort in trying to find the birds. The dogs have worked very hard to find birds to the point they are pretty rough shape. I am resting a few dogs to let them recover.

One thing I have noticed is there still is a ton of standing corn. Hopefully we will see that come down before returning on our next trip in late November.

Well we have two more days to hunt and we will have the weather against us. It's suppose to blow 25-35 and gusting to 40mph. I guess we will see what happens. I wish I had more to report but at this point it's pretty bleak.

I will report after the next couple of days hopefully something gets better.....
 
Perehaps you would share what part of the state you are hunting...

Thanks!

Had a report this morning from Clark, SD - birds are down from last year.
 
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We'll be in North Central SD a week from tomorrow. I hope another 8 days puts a good dent in the corn. There was zero corn down last year on this weekend and we really stuggled too. The year before (drought year) we had our limit every day in less then 3 hours. So I believe the corn makes a huge difference. That's why we pushed this years trip back a couple weeks.
 
I'm headed out in the early morning for the week... I hope the areas I like to hunt have some birds. I will be solo this trip, so I can work slow with my dogs and hope I find the right area. No matter what I'm just glad to be going and I'm sure I can find some birds...........
 
We were hunting the southeast corner of the state south of Mitchell. The hunting really didn't get much better the last two days that we hunted. We had tough conditions- warmer temps, extremely dry, high winds and a ton of corn still standing in a lot of areas.

Our group of three ended with 23 birds over five days. I guess it wasn't a bad trip but we covered a ton of ground. There was a lot of areas that were good on past hunts that just didn't produce anything on this trip. I guess I was surprised after being out there Labor Day and seeing birds running all over. I am sitting in my office this morning still stumped over the lack of birds????

Well one good aspect of being home the dogs get a well needed break for the next three weeks before going back out. They took a pretty good beating with how hard we hunted. I am still amazed after all these years of hunting over dogs- they would run until they tipped over if you let them. They are amazing bird machines!

One bright spot of the whole trip, the daughter of my oldest female was on her first trip to SD. By day #4 she held a staunch point and I shot three roosters over her. Pretty good for only six months old and experiencing SD for the first time. These are the moments that make the trip worth while even with the low birds numbers we experienced.

I am sure as more corn comes down and temps drop the hunting will only get better. Good luck to everyone!
 
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