Opening weekend and Monday, Shocked!!! Kimball, Chamberlain, Platte area.

Drake1 said:
Keep in mind if you are north of I90 in the area you mentioned, that prime week of hatch some places had north of 9 inches of rain. I am south of I90 and rain totals were not as bad, and I expect to see 250 to 300+ per day. If we get weather and they group up, I will see more.
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Oh wow I wasn’t aware of that. And we weren’t told that by this outfitter we hunted with. I was sure asking our guide why he thought the bird numbers were down so much.
 
kansaslabman said:
Oh wow I wasn’t aware of that. And we weren’t told that by this outfitter we hunted with. I was sure asking our guide why he thought the bird numbers were down so much.
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Keep in mind it was not in all areas but I do know around Pukwana and north of kimball they definitely got hit with the heavier rains. I will be out here bring in a few weeks and will report back. I was out in early fall and I do know there are more birds in my area than last year. I kind of do my own fall survey route
 
Drake1 said:
Keep in mind if you are north of I90 in the area you mentioned, that prime week of hatch some places had north of 9 inches of rain. I am south of I90 and rain totals were not as bad, and I expect to see 250 to 300+ per day. If we get weather and they group up, I will see more.
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I’m really glad to hear that! In Kansas our best days in the last 25 years or so would be about 300 birds at most.
South Dakota west of Chamberlain across the river we’d get into 200-300 a day on bad years and 1000+ in good years.
After our South Dakota trip I was afraid there aren’t numbers like you’re mentioning anywhere in the State.
 
Day county, driving to spot saw pheasants coming out of the cattails on top of each other. Dirty ditches next to private. We jumped in and birds were flushing like crazy on both sides. I couldn't believe how many we saw in this county where pheasant are an endangered species. Mid day gave dogs a rest. Told my buddy, drop me off at this weedy fence line on a walk in, doubt anyone has tried it. Made it 50 yards a rooster jumped, got him. No dog. 10 minutes later I missed a big rooster. Hit a spot at golden hour with dog power, turned into pure bedlam. Dogs flushing birds, roosters flying in from corn landing in front of us at the same time. Never seen anything like it. I'd love to see 1,000 birds flush blackening the sky, deafening like a freight train. In the meantime, it's been a great trip to SD. Personally I like hitting these areas that aren't as publicized or popular. No pen raised birds, no manicured fields, just hard earned wild birds. I think SD is good every year. And let's say it isn't, what state is better? Iowa was a couple times over the years, but with ethanol those days are over. Either way you just go hunting or you don't. Personally I would never decide not to go hunting based on bird reports. I'm going either way.
 
I find it interesting that pheasants in the Dakotas are more prone to be in the open vs. Minnesota. Maybe it is the Dakotas just have more gravel roads. Amazing how many paved county roads there are in Minnesota. Seems like in the Dakotas the birds also often fly from corn field to grass in the evening whereas the birds in MN stay prefer to stay on the ground.

I am not so sure it is just a total numbers thing either.

I notice the same thing in Kansas years ago with wild turkeys. Kansas turkeys had no issue hanging out in the open.
 
Yesterday I had my farmer friend with his brother and nephew out walking some private ground that always holds plenty of birds. My friend thinks we always have to have a blocker so he takes the nephew and hightails it around the crp. The brother and I are in small patch of crp with my 3 weims pushing birds towards the bigger crp. Birds are flushing everywhere and flying to the hillside crp. I did shoot 1 where we were.

So we get into the crp and again birds are flushing everywhere. The blockers are banging away on the other side of hill. They never touched a feather. We get to them and hunt a little ways and my friend drops a bird.

Now we are done and standing in a group when the brother says I can't believe it we saw 200 birds land in there. I was seeing what he saw only having witnessed this many times I knew we really saw 40!
 
I have never seen a flush that blackened the the sky but 300 birds in 10 rows of a snowed in cornfield is something I will never forget.


Another thing I have seen is a path like a deer trail where pheasants were walking between a abandoned farm place and a cattail slough. The path went down the edge of the homeplace along a weedy fenceline that separated 2 cornfield and continued to the cattails.
 
That1uncle1776 said:
What did your Guide say about the population?
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Said it was herbicides sprayed on the crops and maybe grass.
And that the chicks die from ingesting that stuff. Maybe roundup or something similar.
I didn’t know what to think of that. But My dad thought it could possibly be.
But yeah, basically blaming the herbicide and that it’s hard to get good brood survival.
Bob Peters up ⬆️ mentioned ethanol hurting Iowa. Maybe that’s a similarity 🤷‍♂️
 
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Wind River said:
Really, you only need 2,3 or 4 opportunities depending on the state.
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I agree, rarely do I see more than about 20-30 pheasants where I hunt in a outing for a few hours. But the bag limit is 2 roosters for most of the season, and its not THAT hard to bag two of them. Its like, how many birds do you need to see before you are able to fold up a couple? 200? They must all be getting up super wild or you're just a terrible shot.
 
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Last year, many of the CREP fields had been at least partially cut. Not this year. But that sort of hurt us because there was so much cover we couldn't pin down many birds. Also, our favorite spot to hunt was under water this year--first time I've seen it like that in more than 10 years.
 
We hunted eight farms in four days and the numbers were about the same as last year - maybe down a little. We were in Douglas County, SD. The June floods kept it from being a stellar year in the local's opinions.
 
kansaslabman said:
This was my first non-resident opener in about a decade. And where the heck is all the orange in the fields?

We were stunned at the amount of hunters we saw driving up on Saturday.

We took highway 18 that was south of Mitchell headed towards Platte to try to get on some public hunting with a couple hours to spare before sunset. The first hunter we saw was directly south of Mitchell about 30 miles. This surprised us but figured we would maybe see more hunters. We didn’t see any until we got to our first public hunting spot around Platte. And that was only two hunters for a big public hunting area.

The next public hunting area we went to closing out the last hour or so of the day didn’t have any hunters! We saw about 5 birds at each public hunting spot, but only got two hard shots off at the first spot.

We heard the reports that this was supposed to be the best bird counts in South Dakota in a long time. HMMMM is all I got to say to that.

We hunted private land Sunday and Monday around Chamberlain, Crow Creek, Lyonville and Pukwana and it was pathetic. Great looking habitat too. Tried food plots , sloughs, tree rows, etc. Strips of food plots like Milo near cut corn or cover was best.

The wild bird population has drastically reduced!!!

This was very discouraging!

Saw about 20 birds per day! Not enough for our gang of hunters encouraged by these South Dakota pheasant forecast and reports.

However, what was encouraging is some people telling us that they have gotten into some good quail action around southwest Kansas and prairie chicken numbers in South Dakota in the hundreds!

With all this negative report the scenery is stunning in South Dakota especially Chamberlain and lots of good quality time with friends and got to see our dog sniff up some birds. Our pup was happy!
Oh, by the way, we’ve hunted South Dakota pretty much every year from about 2002 until 2021.
Any feedback on this and why things have changed so much would be appreciated.
I really hope others find some more wild birds than us. We used to see hundreds and in good years around 1000 birds per day.
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Hmm, I just got back from SD yesterday and bird numbers this year were the best I have seen in about 15 years…and the majority of the corn was still up.

I saw a few 50+ groups of birds flush a few different times, which I have not seen for many years.

Maybe there was too much corn still up where you were hunting?

On the farm we hunt, the farmer cut out a few nice little strips of corn for us…and we shot several roosters in every strip. Zoom in on the picture.
 

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Drake1 said:
Keep in mind it was not in all areas but I do know around Pukwana and north of kimball they definitely got hit with the heavier rains. I will be out here bring in a few weeks and will report back. I was out in early fall and I do know there are more birds in my area than last year. I kind of do my own fall survey route
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I just got back from hunting north of Kimball and it was great.
 
BKelly said:
Hmm, I just got back from SD yesterday and bird numbers this year were the best I have seen in about 15 years…and the majority of the corn was still up.

I saw a few 50+ groups of birds flush a few different times, which I have not seen for many years.

Maybe there was too much corn still up where you were hunting?

On the farm we hunt, the farmer cut out a few nice little strips of corn for us…and we shot several roosters in every strip. Zoom in on the picture.
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That’s great to hear!
If you don’t mind me asking, what general region of South Dakota?
A lot of the corn was out for us. So we should’ve seen a lot more. Maybe when pen raised birds are supplemented into fields that can hurt the wild bird populations in those areas? 🤷‍♂️
Maybe someone can weigh in on this thought
 
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