Early season thoughts

A5 Sweet 16

A5 Sweet 16

Well-known member
So far, public land, specifically WPAs in eastern SD, have been very good to me & Ace mid to late afternoon. We've started our hunting between 2:00 & 4:30. The longest we hunted was 2 hrs, but that day we were completely surrounded by standing corn. The other days, hunts were significantly shorter, and every single bird was shot within 100-150 yards of picked corn or beans. We're seeing real good numbers, especially considering the bad winter & large amount of standing corn around. Plenty of 1st year birds. Plenty of hens. Ace has been great. He's made some exciting flushes & a couple impressive recoveries. I love hunting cattails in snow, but early season light/medium cover is sure fun too, since I can actually see him most of the time. I'd say that as real early hunts go, these have been among the best I've ever had. There's potential for a REALLY good season. Curious what some of you other guys are seeing & what you think.

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Glad to hear it. It makes me look forward to next week. The tahoe is headed north on Wednesday the 1st and we're planning to hunt through Saturday.
 
Thanks for the initial thoughts. hearing similar things from most people. Leaving OH on Saturday morning to start hunting Sunday at 10. not sure how long we will be there but looks like at least until the 13th or 14th. Maybe even the 15th. 🤞
 
I'm in the Woonsocket area. It has been hard. WPAs and Crep plots are getting pounded hard. Lots of standing corn and seems to be a surplus of hens. Dog flushes them and looks back like, "I did my job, why didn't you shoot?" :)
 
The last hour and half Sunday was about as good as I’ve ever seen as far as numbers of birds in front of my dog for him to work. The resting the day Sunday was slow. When crops are out it looks promising to me, as a fairly rookie SD hunter.
 
I'll be out the 26th-30th, with some snow in the forecast it should be a ton of fun.. two days of roaring winds won't be the greatest, but the last 3 days should be perfect.
 
UplandHntr said:
Thanks for the motivational speech Brent ! Im hunting M-F next week. Very difficult to work this week.
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isnt that the truth? we strike out before dawn on saturday and hope to step in the first field sunday at 10:00 am.

I havent been this early in the season since 2016. not much "work" getting done this week on my end....
 
gps4 said:
isnt that the truth? we strike out before dawn on saturday and hope to step in the first field sunday at 10:00 am.

I havent been this early in the season since 2016. not much "work" getting done this week on my end....
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Same plan we have and also the earliest we have gone by a week. Not happy about it but it’s that or we won’t get our full hunting time in.
 
Hello everyone, not a big poster but I’ve been following this thread the last 5ish years. I love it!

Im currently hunting Aberdeen area 10/25-10/30 and staying at the Holiday Inn as well. My dad, cousin, and I drive here from Indiana each year. Yesterday was our first day and we hunt only public land. I’d say we are average hunters but have rock solid dogs. We saw probably 150ish birds and ended up with 9. Plenty of corn still standing, which makes the midday hunting pretty slow. Evenings are great though!

I’ll keep you updated on the rest of the trip. We typically hunt all directions out from Aberdeen within an hour and a half.
 
I was out for opener. First time hunting on the opener. The first day I didn't see nearly as many birds as I had anticipated. The amount of fields unharvested was really high. They were going hard though and it made a huge difference as the week went on. Each day I saw more birds and by Monday and Tuesday the numbers were looking really good. The cover is better than it has been in the past couple of years. I had a blast and hopefully will be back later in the season. I will mention that on Saturday I saw a group of about 20 guys hunting a patch of sorghum at 9 am? Do the pay to play guys have different rules or were they just blatantly breaking the 10 am start time.
 
Rude One said:
I was out for opener. First time hunting on the opener. The first day I didn't see nearly as many birds as I had anticipated. The amount of fields unharvested was really high. They were going hard though and it made a huge difference as the week went on. Each day I saw more birds and by Monday and Tuesday the numbers were looking really good. The cover is better than it has been in the past couple of years. I had a blast and hopefully will be back later in the season. I will mention that on Saturday I saw a group of about 20 guys hunting a patch of sorghum at 9 am? Do the pay to play guys have different rules or were they just blatantly breaking the 10 am start time.
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Either they were breaking the law or were hunting on a preserve. Private Shooting Preserves can hunt from Sunrise to Sunset from September 1 to March 31.
 
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