East River North Central and Central Report

[randywatson]

Just returning home from 3 day hunt.

North Central: WET! Corn is coming off but its gonna be a looooong time before its all out. Farmers having to use tracks on combines. With the wet weather hail and wind there will be plenty of food left for the wildlife. Every 5th ear in each row was laid over. Corn was yielding 40 bu/acre in the hail area from Roscoe to Aberdeen. Bird numbers were spotty in north central. but do your homework look for public ground next to picked corn snd youll do ok. shot 3 man limit. got onto some private ground 1/2 way through the day to finish up the limit.

Friday/Sat we hunted a mix of private n public central east river. Public place we hit was loaded w whiley birds. had to split up the groups then go after individual birds. Found a lot of birds in cattails throughout the entire day despite being mid 60's each day. 5 guys shot 9 on Friday. shot at our limit. lost 1 bird. pretty dry conditions.

Saturday had us shooting lil better. took 13 for 5 guys. again mix public n private. hit a gpa that they were finishing up corn next to it. saw lots of birds explode ahead of the combine.

Good luck to you all. Ill be back Dec 3-5. West river private ground.

 

[roadscholar]

Nice report, thanks!

 

[Benelli Rooster]

This about sums up what I experienced really. I was there the week before last, which is a solid week before I normally get up there, and it was a borderline disaster. Soooooo much corn still in, it was really tough going on mostly public land. Me and my hunting buddy and my two labs shot 7 birds in roughly 4 days, easily half or less than what we usually do.

Very tempted to go back up in a week or two but damn, that's a long drive... I'll have to think about it. I think the late season hunting this year is going to be pretty decent, like Nov 20 and beyond

 

[ehudgens]

I was up in the Ipswich area last week for 5 days. Hunted 3 days on Private, and 2 days on public. Our hunting was decent. Bird numbers were slightly down from last year, but still pretty good numbers. I don't really know why, but seemed like when we did find birds they were bunched up. The weather really could not have been better last week. Three days, the wind was less than 8 mph. I will say, an area that we usually hunt was completely decimated by the hail that came through there. The damage was unreal. I've personally never seen hail damage that extreme.

Some corn still in, but I'd say the harvest was 90% complete where we were hunting. This was my 24th year in a row hunting in SD, and had a blast as always.

On a side note, SoDak outdoors in Aberdeen had a decent inventory of 12 guage nickel plated ammo. This is the only place I've found any on the shelves.