SD Road Report

D

Dakotazeb

Well-known member
I know this will fly in the face of the other threads on here but this is a report from the past few days. I had to attend a funeral in Wyoming on Friday. So Thursday morining I left Watertown a 9:00 AM, drove west on Hwy 212 west of Redfield then south to Miller and west on 14 to Pierre. Went straight west to Sturgis. On my return trip yesterday I drove on I90 until around Mitchell. It was late afternoon so I took Hwy's 38, 34 and 81 and arrived back home in Watertown. Guess how many pheasant I was on the entire trip? ZERO! I couldn't believe it. I went through some prime pheasant country and never saw a bird. Now there is still a lot of corn in the fields. The majority of beans have been combined and some corn being taken out. In fact, north of Madison, SD there is a considerable amount of corn that has been harvested.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe pheasant numbers will be up this year and we should have improved hunting. I'm just reporting what I didn't see on my recent trip.
 
Dakotazeb said:
I know this will fly in the face of the other threads on here but this is a report from the past few days. I had to attend a funeral in Wyoming on Friday. So Thursday morining I left Watertown a 9:00 AM, drove west on Hwy 212 west of Redfield then south to Miller and west on 14 to Pierre. Went straight west to Sturgis. On my return trip yesterday I drove on I90 until around Mitchell. It was late afternoon so I took Hwy's 38, 34 and 81 and arrived back home in Watertown. Guess how many pheasant I was on the entire trip? ZERO! I couldn't believe it. I went through some prime pheasant country and never saw a bird. Now there is still a lot of corn in the fields. The majority of beans have been combined and some corn being taken out. In fact, north of Madison, SD there is a considerable amount of corn that has been harvested.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe pheasant numbers will be up this year and we should have improved hunting. I'm just reporting what I didn't see on my recent trip.
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Just drove from SE SD to Groton twice last week. I thought the same thing. At least thought I would see a road kill anyway..
 
I know it wasn’t SD, but Drove from Walker, MN west to Minot,ND and then up to Portal,ND where we entered Canada. Limited on specks three days in a row and then reversed the route.

Did not see a single pheasant the whole trip. Not even a roadkill. Seemed pretty odd.

In really good years, seems like there’s always dead birds on the road now and then.
 
I recently went from MN to West of Aberdeen and back without seeing a single bird. When it is windy you will not see many out. Without any dew (or much moisture period) no need to go into the open to dry out. And 9am+ is not prime viewing hours. But I hear you - back 'in the day' you would see them crawling everywhere. But I think conditions and time of day highly impact road sightings.

If there were only a way that the population could be estimated under consistent conditions and compared vs prior years...
 
Woollybob said:
I recently went from MN to West of Aberdeen and back without seeing a single bird. When it is windy you will not see many out. Without any dew (or much moisture period) no need to go into the open to dry out. And 9am+ is not prime viewing hours. But I hear you - back 'in the day' you would see them crawling everywhere. But I think conditions and time of day highly impact road sightings.

If there were only a way that the population could be estimated under consistent conditions and compared vs prior years...
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thank God for internet scouting, lol. let's go to Kansas!
 
I agree. Extremely strange and discouraging.
Over the weekend and Monday Tuesday driving all around Platte up North near Kimball, west to Chamberlain, then most of hunting northeast of chamberlain I don’t think we ever saw a wild bird on the road. Only place we saw “pheasants” on the road was a place just north of Platte and we started getting excited until we realized we had counted about 20 roosters without seeing a hen 😆. Then we realized those were dumb/pen raised birds since none of them flew after driving right by them. Saw on google maps there was a hunting lodge right there lol.
 
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