New to SD freelance pheasant opportunites

G

gps4

Active member
My buddy and I are from Vicksburg ms. Next week will be my second time to hunt pheasant. The last time was 13 yrs ago in fairbury Nebraska right out of college and we went with a local farmer(local meaning, he also lives in Vicksburg, who had developed friendships in Nebraska over the previous 25 yards of cutting corn.

We have booked a three day hunt near parkston for 10/31-11/2. However, we are driving up Tuesday and hope to stay Wednesday night at Custer state park, visit Rushmore first thing Thursday morning, head east thru the badlands and end up in parkston Friday night.

We are considering taking 44 out of badlands national park, and either staying on it all the way to parkston, or dropping down to 18. Ideally, we would like to spend Thursday afternoon and Friday kicking around some public lands to try and scratch out a few early birds before we make it to the outfitters. It will just be two of us, and we will not have a dog.

Would anyone care to point us in the right direction in terms of which route we should take from the badlands east, in order to come across decent public land opportunities, or offer any general or specific advice on how to make our cross-state adventure as enjoyable and bountiful as possible?

Thanks in advance.
 
Never travel that way, but you're driving by a bajillion pheasants on that route to get to Parkston.
 
Get the public hunting atlas or the hunting atlas app and see were you end up. Some spots are good some aren't but have to try some spots
 
5d0ee980e76d0ffc0999d9ce751069d9.jpg


8a32c0b3619a7cea08805a50ac342ace.jpg


Buddy and I drove from Vicksburg and arrived in Custer State Park in west South Dakota on Wednesday night. We left Custer and headed east through the Badlands on Thursday and stayed in Mitchell Thursday night. Friday, we slept in, went to Cabellas, grabbed some lunch, and decided to kick around some public land to spend the time Friday afternoon.

Took a gamble on an out of the way piece of public land. We stepped in the first field around 1:00 and within 100 yards of the truck, we jumped the first rooster. We jumped several birds in the first field alone. We should have been done within two hours, but missed several roosters that should have rounded out our limits. We bounced around 4 or 5 more fields and it rained on us for the last 2-3 hours of shooting time.

It was only the two of us and we did not have a dog. It was also our first time ever hunting public land in South Dakota. Without a doubt one of the best and most satisfying days of hunting I've ever had.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top