Ringneck Festival

Dakotazeb

Dakotazeb

Well-known member
I'll be leaving later this morning for Huron, SD for the Ringneck Festival. The main event is a Competitive Hunt on Saturday. This will be the 11th consecutive year that my team has participated. We have won it twice, once in 2000 and again last year. So we have to return to defend our title. The Huron Chamber and community does an outstanding job putting on this event and it is always an enjoyable time. Here's the web site for the Ringneck Festival: http://huronsd.com/huntingandfishing/ringneck.htm

This is a quick summary of how the Competitive Hunt works. There are 6 hunters per team and you can only have 2 dogs on the ground at a time. Each hunter gets 4 shells. The winning team is the team with the most birds (18 maximum). If mutiple teams get their limit of 18 birds then the team with the most shells remaining wins. If there is still a tie they weigh your birds and the team with the most weight wins.

The evening before the hunt is a supper, a calcutta and the drawing for land to hunt. Landowners donate their land for the hunt and you must hunt on their land only. That's why the limit of 30 teams as getting landowners is sometimes tough. Oh yeah, there are two scorekeepers in the field with each team. All the rules are on the web site.

When we won last year we had our limit of 18 birds and 7 shells left. You ask, "how can you have 7 shells left?" On the first shot of the day one of our team members got two in one shot and we never missed another shot. And he did shoot the two in the air. What a day! I doubt we will repeat that tomorrow.
 
Good luck. Here is a funny story saw a hunt like this that limited hunters to 4 shells and "team" to provide 2 witnesses for their hunt. Not sure why would need witnesses in that case, got a good laugh.
 
Deacon, in this world there people that will find a way to cheat, even eating supper. So the need for witnesses.....Bob
 
Good luck!:cheers:
 
Congrats to the win last year and here is to a repeat.:cheers:
 
I hunted it one year. Had a really bad draw on the land. The owner was guiding on his best piece and we did not get to it until the last hour! Had one bird before we got there and then shot 11 after the field had been hunted all day-- hardly enough to win.
The judges were done following us around by the time we got there and sat in the car. Year was 2000 and it was snowing heavily by the end of the day.
Was still a good day to be in the field. Also they handed out a ton of Jack Link's jerky, and they had a team there.
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No doubt that drawing some good land is critical, but the chamber has worked had over the years in an attempt to make sure that all the land has good bird numbers. But I think there is still some land that is marginal. Like I said before this was our 11th year we have participated and we have finished in the top five 8 of the first 10 years, with two wins. We have drawn good land every year but have always said that some year we might get some bad land. Well, this was the year. The guy just didn't have many birds and there wasn't a lot of standing corn in the area. Just very few birds. Six hours of hunting and we only got 7 birds. And it wasn't that we missed a lot, we just never had many changes. I only fired one shell all day. A little frustrating but a good time was had by all.
 
Dakotazeb,

Didn't Tom Knapp have a show about last years hunt on Benellis Bird Hunter? If I remember right he missed with all of his shots.
 
Tom Knapp has been at the Ringneck Festival several years but usually for exhibition shooting. Last year was the first year he was on a team and participated in the competitive hunt. He had a film crew along and the hunt was featured on Benelli's American Bird Hunter show. There was a quick shot of our team receiving our winning awards right at the end.

And you are correct, the great Tom Knapp went 0 for 4 in the hunt. :p
 
Dakotazeb said:
Tom Knapp has been at the Ringneck Festival several years but usually for exhibition shooting. Last year was the first year he was on a team and participated in the competitive hunt. He had a film crew along and the hunt was featured on Benelli's American Bird Hunter show. There was a quick shot of our team receiving our winning awards right at the end.

And you are correct, the great Tom Knapp went 0 for 4 in the hunt. :p
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Really! I know one of the best spots to get on was the colony.
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Buck,

The colony only had their land in the hunt the first 2 years (1999 & 2000) and the team that drew their land won it both years. In 2000 it was our team. The problem was that the colony had some released birds and the Ringneck Festival committee thought it was an unfair advantage. They were probably correct.

DZ
 
Did not know that. We drew ground 1 mile south of Wolsey. Much of it was snowpacked already and just could not hold birds. That final field would have been great if we had been in there at ten I'd guess we would have been done by 1:00. I was invited because of dogs, no one else had one. The other guy with dog cancelled. I did not run two most of the time. My shorthair pointed 12 birds in less than two hours in that last field.
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You must have been there in 2000 when our team won it. We hunted in a snow storm all day. Both years we have won it the weather was bad. Snow and wind. But that made the birds hold and we didn't take many shots that weren't over a point.
 
Yes, it was 2000. I still have a team pic somewhere. I got up early the next morning and drove to Buffalo and went westriver deer hunting. Snow was bad till west of Pierre.
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moellermd said:
Dakotazeb,

Didn't Tom Knapp have a show about last years hunt on Benellis Bird Hunter? If I remember right he missed with all of his shots.
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I saw that one. It was hilarious. After all these years of watching Tom Knapp's fancy shooting, he flushed a rooster right in front of him, the bird flew straight away, Tom fired four shots, never cut a feather.
 
Well good luck and please let us know how you did when you get back.
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INbirdhunter,

I did post above how we did. It wasn't good as we drew some poor land with low bird numbers. Maybe next year???
 
I'm resurrecting this post from a year ago as it is once again time for the Ringneck Festival in Huron this friday and Saturday. In addition to the competition hunt on Saturday I decided to run Elle, my young Brittany, in the Bird Dog Challenge on Friday. I'm not really anticipating any great performance by her. I just thought it would be good experience for her. Sure hope we draw better land than we had last year for the competition hunt. I'll report back Saturday night on how we did.
 
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