We hunted public land from in Huron, SD from Nov 25th-30th. Our first morning we were in the field no more than 20 minutes when we came upon a swampy area with cattails. Not paying to much attention to the dogs we let them venture down into it about 60 yards ahead of us. Those cattails exploded with about 100 pheasants . More than half were roosters. Dumbfounded, i just watched the show until my uncle hollered at me and said "there you go!" I made a quick dash to the swamp but by the time i got close enough for a decent shot all the birds were out of range. My heart was pumping and set the trip off to a great start....well kind of. We walked the next 2 days seeing alot of birds but they were flushing 100-200 yards ahead of us. It seemed we just couldnt get close enough. So we decided to put the dogs away and walk without them. We made a little better headway, but still the birds were flushing way out. In the 5 days we managed to bag a lousy 7 birds! So we decided to knock on a farmers door and ask permission to hunt his land. And it couldnt have worked out any better. He was planning on getting a bunch of guys together and pushing his property that day also. He told us that this late in the season the birds are so "flighty" that you need a minimum of 10-20 guys, half pushing and half blocking. So we met up with the farmer at his land and formulated our gameplan. My group of 4 pushed two strips of milo to a cut corn field where 6 other guys were waiting. In 15 minutes we must have see at least 500 birds!! We filled the sky with lead and dropped some birds. We all said to eachother..."Now thats a South Dakota pheasant hunt!" We ended up taking home about 20 birds, so all in all we had a great time.
I'll have some pics to post soon.
I'll have some pics to post soon.
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