A5 Sweet 16
Well-known member
I was right. The last weekend of the season was more difficult than the previous weekend, when I got to hunt some private land & the ditch gods shone some light on me. Ace & I hunted the last 3 days of the season. Public land & a few little stretches of ditch. No limits (should've Sunday, but I committed a sin & didn't trust Ace once), but we got 2 each day. And really didn't hunt terribly hard to do it. Hard enough, but we didn't kill ourselves. No all-dayers. I'll post a couple pics from the weekend, but unfortunately, Ace was more uncooperative than usual during picture time.
Last season I hunted 35 times. I had a pipe dream of making 40 this season, but didn't get there. Maybe next year. But I ended with a 2.10* birds/hunt average. The asterisk is because 1 bird I shot (on a WPA) back in early December turned out to be an escapee pen-reared pseudo-pheasant (PRPP) from some nearby ground where the landowner releases a few birds. If we throw him out though, my average was still 2.06. I consider any season over 2.0 "pretty good". Not great, but better than ho-hum. We definitely had to work a little harder for our birds than last year, but nothing drastic. It was like every other year. Some places were up, some were down, some about normal. Public land warriors are used to that. Someplace that's really good one year might be rough the next, typically because of what's going on with the nearby crops. Weather seemed weird this season. LOTS of wind. Like obscene wind, at least on the weekends. Almost no snow. But that's South Dakota. Always trying to throw you a curveball. I hunt within maybe a 1,200 sq. mi. area in the east-central part of the state. If I had to guess, I'd say that across that area, on the whole, pheasant numbers were down maybe 30% from last year. An unfortunate, but not terribly abnormal jump. So far, winter has been unbelievably easy on pheasants. So that's a good thing.
I shot pretty well this season. Only a couple that I really was mad about missing. Any other misses were either real long ones, curving with a 30 mph wind, or something nearly impossible. Not good shot opportunities to begin with, so they really don't count as misses.
Ace was again, far & away the star of our little show. He'll be 3 in April, and this was his 3rd season. I just wish I knew how they do what they do. Just amazing. I can't get enough of it, but it seems like next season comes a little quicker each year.
Last season I hunted 35 times. I had a pipe dream of making 40 this season, but didn't get there. Maybe next year. But I ended with a 2.10* birds/hunt average. The asterisk is because 1 bird I shot (on a WPA) back in early December turned out to be an escapee pen-reared pseudo-pheasant (PRPP) from some nearby ground where the landowner releases a few birds. If we throw him out though, my average was still 2.06. I consider any season over 2.0 "pretty good". Not great, but better than ho-hum. We definitely had to work a little harder for our birds than last year, but nothing drastic. It was like every other year. Some places were up, some were down, some about normal. Public land warriors are used to that. Someplace that's really good one year might be rough the next, typically because of what's going on with the nearby crops. Weather seemed weird this season. LOTS of wind. Like obscene wind, at least on the weekends. Almost no snow. But that's South Dakota. Always trying to throw you a curveball. I hunt within maybe a 1,200 sq. mi. area in the east-central part of the state. If I had to guess, I'd say that across that area, on the whole, pheasant numbers were down maybe 30% from last year. An unfortunate, but not terribly abnormal jump. So far, winter has been unbelievably easy on pheasants. So that's a good thing.
I shot pretty well this season. Only a couple that I really was mad about missing. Any other misses were either real long ones, curving with a 30 mph wind, or something nearly impossible. Not good shot opportunities to begin with, so they really don't count as misses.
Ace was again, far & away the star of our little show. He'll be 3 in April, and this was his 3rd season. I just wish I knew how they do what they do. Just amazing. I can't get enough of it, but it seems like next season comes a little quicker each year.
