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First hunting day

Two of us got off the plane in Sioux Falls today, and were hunting an hour later, south of Mitchell. First time I've hunted SD in shirtsleeves. CREP and ditches; it was as poor as I've experienced in a decade: We saw maybe a dozen hens at various distances, mostly long; and one ditch rooster. Heard some others out in the corn near sunset. Without a dog, in those big-though-beautiful CREP fields--two guys just don't have much of a chance.

And the hunters! We were ditch-hunting a minimum maintenance mile, and I counted six cars full of hunters cruising by me, some getting out at the next intersection and putting out four dogs and as many hunters. I didn't hear any shots, FWIW. Maybe tomorrow will be better; we'll be farther from SF and Mitchell, that might help.
 
People really travel with dogs from far distances away to hunt SoDak roadside ditches ?

Can't imagine.
 
I just got back from a 5 day hunt. The winds were howling 3 of the 5 days and made conditions tough. Our group of 3 brought home 24 birds. I believe the birds are staying in the uncut corn and corn stubble most of the day. From 4:30 until dark was the only time we really saw birds. Some good cold weather will help and I think the best hunting is yet to come. I saw enough birds to be optimistic, but you"re going to have to walk to get birds this year.
 
Re:First Hunting Day

I hunted quail for over half a century in Virginia, North and South Carolina. If you think pheasants without a dog are tough...! If those birds were still there, I wouldn't be here. But they dwindled to nothing, for the same reason SD birds are: Loss of habitat. So I recruited my family, back about 10 years ago, and we made the adventurous trek out here. First to Nebraska; they had a respectable number then. But high corn prices...away they went. So on to South Dakota.

My first year here was 2009. I saw, several times, what we estimated were 500 pheasants erupt from a five-acre weed field. It would take us all day, but we all got a couple of birds, and were happy enough to keep coming back--even as we watched SD go the way of Nebraska.

This may be the last year. Our party of four dwindled to two: Just not worth the labor and expense, when the past two years we barely got a bird apiece in four or five days.

Dogs would help, for sure; we've been privileged a few times to go with someone who had them, and it was wonderful. But what to do? It's a 30 hour drive from our part of North Carolina out here; I'm too old, and the others are too busy with work, to add four days to the trip, minimum. I'd never dare fly a dog, these days. So, remembering the good times, and hoping lightning may strike, we soldier on: ditches, small CREP plots, the occasional friendly farmer...

You got dogs? You want to hunt with two weary tourists? :)
 
Beech - my comments were not directed to you specifically or meant to be critical of your hunting style, but your comments did say you saw groups with dogs hunting ditches ... and other above and on other threads report ditch hunting...

Again, I can't imaging all these people coming to SoDak to hunt ditches and now it appears over hunted public land.

Now if I were dogless ... ditches would make sense because you can cover these small pieces of cover with two or three people. Drop of one or two people and the driver moves down the road and posts ... rinse and repeat.

Also to clarify ... abandon section lines are different than ditches in my book.

The best part about SoDak is all the MN hunters it pulls there and thus dramatically reducing pressure in my current home state. :thumbsup:
 
treedaddy said:
I just got back from a 5 day hunt. The winds were howling 3 of the 5 days and made conditions tough. Our group of 3 brought home 24 birds. I believe the birds are staying in the uncut corn and corn stubble most of the day. From 4:30 until dark was the only time we really saw birds. Some good cold weather will help and I think the best hunting is yet to come. I saw enough birds to be optimistic, but you"re going to have to walk to get birds this year.
Click to expand...

I believe the birds were feeding all day Friday after a few days of sitting tight. The wind Thursday would have plucked their feathers clean off. ;)
 
hunted 2 weeks ago.mitchell. to aberdeen.
public private land. .half of birds we saw last year. would not go back at thanksgiving if it wasn't booked already.aberdeen to redfield not a rooster on road.disappointed. dont think anyone else did what we hope either that we know
 
Hunted public in the Aberdeen area last Sun thru Tuesday and it was some of the toughest hunting I've had in 15 years. First time I have averaged less than 2 birds a day since my first couple of years freelancing in SD.

Bird numbers were not great but that was pretty clearly indicated for this area in the counts published by the GF&P. I think the issue for me was somewhat related to soft numbers but moreso unusual weather and unusual conditions for the second week of November.

60-degrees and above mean't a lot of breaks for the pup and reduced hunting time on the ground.

Birds were scattered all over and I think spent lots of time in thin cover and in the food sources. All but one rooster we put up in shooting range we caught loafing near the edge of a cut corn field. It was hunting birds "one at a time" to the extreme. Even with the hens. So many running single hens that while providing a lot of good dog work & excitement also wore the dog down quickly and took a toll in the heat.

The "golden hour" proved much less than productive than normal. Maybe it was my poor choices of where to hunt but the usual best roosting cover didn't hold all that many birds. I tend to think the less than ideal roosting cover was working just fine for the birds given the weather conditions and they took advantage rather than exposing themselves longer while heading to better spots.

To be honest I don't sense a crash in bird numbers. If conditions are right in early December (not flipped to the other extreme with deep snow & cold) I will try and come back and have confidence we will have decent success.
 
There may be hope, I hear there is renewed interest in CRP. In fact in Edmunds county there are quite a few acres going in, so I assume this is happening in other counties too. $3 dollar corn and a better CRP is having an effect.
 
Reports....

More and more terrible reports..... I am really stumped on how bad the numbers seem to be by the reports. We seen more birds over Labor day prior to the season than I have seen in the past. Our first trip out was late Oct was really good hunting just like in past years. I was able to shoot my limit daily in the first section or two when we hunted public. Of course I am hunting behind dogs which I think make a huge difference. I don't know if I could hunt birds without dogs. Maybe we just have a few seams where there are some birds to be had. I figured with the corn coming down things would only get better?

We head this coming Friday and will hunt Thanksgiving week- 8 days. Way things look I will probably have to wear out a pair of boots to get my birds. At least the dogs will get work or conditioning for a solid week and hopefully see some exposure. Way things sound our last trip of the year which is the last week could be really good if we get some cold weather.

I will report how things progress as we are out there. Good luck to all!
 
dry warm conditions

Last couple days have been tough. Seems that scenting conditions deteriorate as the day warms- drys & gets windier. Last two days we see some birds - get some shots in the period roughly 10 - 12 am. Aftn at 65" F & windy........ The pointy dogs pick up scent, trail & point only to have the quarry melt away. These are all veteran dogs with many birds shot over them, looking like rookie - pups.
We have noticed birds out in the middle of sections of harvested fields (mostly corn) during mid day & are flat unapproachable. Also they come in to roost later than usual. Change in wx coming in Tuesday. Will see if it's huntable. Cooler & wetter w/in reason would make things a bit easier (maybe).
 
While I don't think it to be inaccurate or contrived I do think the positive SDGF&P report may have pulled in quite a few more freelancers this year. Quite possibly more pressure than the current public land pheasant pop. can handle in some areas? Hunted several parcels where the flush count of hens vs. roosters was dramatically out of balance over what I have experienced in recent years with lower expectations.

Also definitely witnessed more hunters driving the roads and in the public land parking areas than I have in close to a decade. Could have been related to the "good" weather but tend to think most folks have to commit to vacation dates well in advance and usually hunt those dates regardless of weather conditions.
 
it will be interesting to see the harvest number reported by GFP at end of the season. the credibility of that number will be closely scrutinized, based on the hunter experience in the field. if they claim over a million birds were harvested, i call bullshit....my experience this season has already convinced me to skip next year.....not complaining, but just my observation of the diminished habitat and bird population....good luck to the late season hunters, there are some pockets of birds out there, but you will have to hunt hard.
 
You know all those birds killed on private land, cleaned and vacuum wrapped will carry SoDak over the 1 million mark.
 
I have been going to South Dakota for several years. I don't think the bird numbers this year are dramatically different from last year. No year in my opinion was worse than 2012. The difference this year than 2013 and 2014 is that the birds were not near the roads until about 4:30 in the evening.Therefore, not seeing birds while driving form one spot to another tends to dampen one's enthusiasm. Maybe the high winds last week effected my ability to find birds, but I saw enough to believe that there are good opportunities left this season. After a week of hunting last week, I would try this approach if I were hunting there now. I would look for harvested corn fields with CRP near by. The Walk Ins and CREPs hold birds with crop fields close by especially late in the day. Also, look for grassy roads close to CRP. We did not see many birds at transition areas near the roads like we normally do. I think the birds are spending a lot of time in the corn fields. I guess that's the approach you should take every year, but you are really going to have to walk the grass and cattails this year to get birds.
 
Who has hit cat tails?

I'm heading out on Thursday with 6 guns. My intent is the same as always. Find some water, walk the cat tails. Even in the tough years I did ok walking cat tails solo with one dog on WIA. How many of these bad reports are from people walking the easy stuff that is knee high?

1. cattails with water
2 lone standing tree strips
3. ditches near water with harvested grain fields

I have been hunting SD pheasants for 24 years. I hunted in the really bad years when 2 sightings was a good day.
 
just returned from SD yesterday, trip #3 so far this year. FWIW, one of the guys had an app on his phone that counted steps taken, which we converted to miles walked...we averaged a bit over 11 miles per day. We hunted lots of cattails, though there was little water...wished there was for the dogs sake! Cattails held birds all trip, all times of day...makes sense, there is so much CRP gone from prior years. I own a 1/4 section that is all grass, food plots, trees and cattails....from my observation, birds are up, 40% probably makes sense. I just had a group of 6 of us total, and we did best hunting the smallest patches of cover near a food source...the big fields were too tough for us, as we were WAY short on dog power...just mine, basically. Not an overabundance of birds, but was pleasantly surprised every day. We shot and retrieved 50 birds in the 3 days of hunting, and lost a handful, missed MANY, yada yada yada....
 
Reifer said:
I'm heading out on Thursday with 6 guns. My intent is the same as always. Find some water, walk the cat tails. Even in the tough years I did ok walking cat tails solo with one dog on WIA. How many of these bad reports are from people walking the easy stuff that is knee high?

1. cattails with water
2 lone standing tree strips
3. ditches near water with harvested grain fields

I have been hunting SD pheasants for 24 years. I hunted in the really bad years when 2 sightings was a good day.
Click to expand...

My son and I hunted around redfield area (40 mile radius), we hunted everything from crp to harvested fields to cattails. Our most productive by far was cattails at all times of the day. Araes north of redfield seemed to have plenty of water near the cattails, couple years ago these were dry. Next would have been grass/crop land interface typically hunted the edge then a swath thru the middle. It was just my son and I, we had two dogs, 18 month Britt first experience with pheasants and a 2.5 yr old lab that is still learning the game. Our 5 day trip resulted in 21 birds, 4 winged and lost in cattails and way to many misses. A great trip with my son.
 
I just returned from my 1st "hunting trip" this year. As stated on previous posts, I have been out a few times to check on my land, etc. and as I expected, the birds are up quite a bit in the area I hunt. With that said, my land is a balance of grass, trees, food plots and farmable acres. The weather was awful (windy and too warm). I was surprised by the lack of birds I saw in the evening, maybe due to the weather?? I did notice quite a few birds loafing in areas with minimal cover (pastures, large cut corn and milo fields). I believe once the weather changes and the birds group up it will give us a better indication of bird populations in specific areas of the state.
 
Report in from E SD.

Just returned from hunting SE of Redfield. I hunted 3 full days (1 dog, 1 gun, 2 hunters) and wanted to share some observations. First, if you don't shoot much steel shot, sharpen your skills. I struggled a little switching between lead and steel. Bring your ammo as the places I stopped at had empty shelves. Second, areas that were near a water source produced more birds for me, and if you aren't seeing birds, move. 3rd, public land is holding birds. More than enough birds to shoot group limits. We hunted hard, and all day. End of our day hunts (last hour or so of light) we walked grassy areas near roosting areas that were easy on the legs, fun to watch the dog work, and gave us shooting ops.

We brought muck boots and never put them on; cattails were good, mostly short height, but the ground they were in was dry. Ditches produced as long as they were close to cut cornfields (most corn looks to be out, or close).

I'll add a little more later, time to get the turkey in the oven.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

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And yes I wish I was still out there-
 
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