Just my two cents, road hunting is caused by what Pheasants hunting has become in South Dakota. The public ground is pushed so much. When people paying big money for non resident Lic, gas, lodging, food, Etc. Then they become the hunter outside looking in every where they go. Many are going to do what it takes to bring home something for their time and efforts. To many freelancers, this may be a once in a lifetime trip. They listen to all the hype, like there are Pheasants so thick in South Dakota. You just throw a rock in the air and a bird will fall from the sky. Then they get there and find putting birds in the game bag, very difficult in many cases.
I myself have had my fill of South Dakota pheasant hunting. We will be hunting pheasants in Minnesota. Then heading to South Dakota and maybe do some waterfowl hunting. I have watched pheasant guides bring all their clients to a big public land area. Watched him get out and direct the hunters where and how to walk it. Then he drives off to meet them later, as he can't legally guide them on public land. It's not enough that they have every single piece of private land posted or leased but then they have to skirt the rules and run their operation on the public land too. I don't feel a bit bad about using their action to benefit myself/hunting party. We were hunting a WPA one time and the farmer next to it, that ran pay hunters on his place(who doesn't out there?) was combining the corn. We had kinda finished pushing the area we were able to hunt. I said lets just sit here and see what he pushes out. He just quit combining for a bit, unless we would leave. My thought was, fine...I have all day....DO YOU?
We will hunt WMA's on the way out to South Dakota and skip the circus act. I don't have the cash to pay 100s a day for 3 birds. Folks can and do do good in SW Minnesota and the greed hasn't struck there like it has across the boarder. Trust me, pheasants don't just magically appear when you see the South Dakota sign. I don't like combat style hunting and competing for my little piece of the pie. I like being left alone, walking quite places and will except what I get. I have seen enough of the birds are MINE!!!! thing.
In Minnesota we sold 129,291 pheasant stamps last year and in 2005, we harvested 586,000 pheasants(most recent numbers I could find right now)
South Dakota had 167,299 of which near 100,000 were non residents, which many if not most own no land. Can you understand why they are ditch hunting? Harvest numbers were like 1, 600,000. Most IMO coming from private lands where pay hunting is the norm. I would like to see a statistic that shows how many birds are harvested on public land vs private in SD.
No matter, I wish hunters on both sides the boarder success but we will be hunting Minnesota only this year but will be in SoDak to do some other less competitive hunting. Sorry for the long post, just trying to state my position why I'm not going to resort to ditch hunting.
Carry on folks
