South Dakota Field Crops Report

UplandHunter--yes. I have not seen it this wet in NE SD in a very long time, at this time of year in particular. Bring your hip waders--quite seriously. The saving grace in the east hill country is there is some relief that gets you up out of the water--if you can drive to those areas, lots of roads are washed out and/or gated/closed off.

The grass--even brome--is in pretty decent shape there this year. Public land birds have been harassed enough that they will still run but if you have a good dog you might be able to work a bird here and there in country where they wouldn't be caught dead in dry years.

I don't know how much the arriving cold is going to help the harvest immediately, as the problem with moisture in the corn isn't disapearing that fast and access to corn dryers is already backed up.

You have to watch those harvest reports that are statewide. It isn't the same situation statewide at all--never really is, this year there seems to be a real disparity in some parts of the state.
 
I don't know the #'s but out out west of Mitchelle over Turkey weekend there was still way to much corn. I watched the birds fly in at 9:00 am and fly back out at 4:30. The SDFG department did the right thing. If hunters aren't getting 3 birds a day what difference would increasing the lmit to 5 birds a day do. Increasing the limit might have had a ecomince impact and bring back few hunters for the 2nd time.
 
Unless there is a major bottleneck at grain dryers or storage shortage issue the remainder of corn crop should come off in next 2 weeks. I would suspect that next crop report will reflect a 20% gain this last week and weather looks good for next 10 days.

Interesting look back at harvest stats over lasy 5 years and majority of time all the corn is off between Nov 15th and Nov. 30th. Good planning tip to all for future.

Last 4 weeks of this season will be best hunting of season. And probably better each week as they will still be working on corn due to drying and storage bottleneck.
 
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Wessington/Huron area

I just returned from a three day hunt in the Wessington/Huron area. Corn is coming out fast and I would estimate that they are approaching 75% complete in the area. We hunted a mix of public and private and met a lot of very generous land owners. Birds are heavy in the cattails and the ice is finally thick enough in most places to get out there after them. Public land birds are extremely wild at this point but if you plan ahead and cover the escape routes there are plenty of birds. Good luck to everyone and I can't wait for next year.
 
boomer1 said:
I just returned from a three day hunt in the Wessington/Huron area. Corn is coming out fast and I would estimate that they are approaching 75% complete in the area. We hunted a mix of public and private and met a lot of very generous land owners. Birds are heavy in the cattails and the ice is finally thick enough in most places to get out there after them. Public land birds are extremely wild at this point but if you plan ahead and cover the escape routes there are plenty of birds. Good luck to everyone and I can't wait for next year.
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Great Update Boomer1. Thanks!
 
Good example of how things can vary---the statewide reports from NRCS NASS jumped from 58 to 73% of the statewide SD corn harvested in the last week (as of yesterday), but a local NRCS official told me that when you move out of prime farm country into the area with more public land that I hunt, the farmers he's talking to are making some progress--but have only 1/3 of the corn off.

Progress still, though--going to be real cold for awhile which won't hurt either.
 
tmrichardson said:
Good example of how things can vary---the statewide reports from NRCS NASS jumped from 58 to 73% of the statewide SD corn harvested in the last week (as of yesterday), but a local NRCS official told me that when you move out of prime farm country into the area with more public land that I hunt, the farmers he's talking to are making some progress--but have only 1/3 of the corn off.

Progress still, though--going to be real cold for awhile which won't hurt either.
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TM, local conditions ALWAYS rule the roost when it comes to pheasant hunting conditions. Just the fact that 27% of crop is still in is a fairly significant issue. I'm hoping that by weekend of the 19th when we are up in Aberdeen it is a non-issue and the tables will have turned.
 
82% complete

Looks like it's going to take right up to year end to finish this corn harvest. 10 day weather looks good though and that should help.

Other posts on the forum have indicated that the bird hunting is improving.
 
Much better in the NE last weekend. Birds to be had again, not like previous years but you can find some birds now. Will likely be great right near the end of the season if snow doesn't get too deep. Still quite a bit of corn standing despite the cold weather. Saw very little coming off even on Monday--maybe just a bit too dang cold to run the equipment, esp. with a warmer forecast on the horizon.

I checked some ears in a couple more places and didn't look great--mold on a fair number of them. I wonder if some of that isn't leading to slower harvest too, perhaps there's no hurry when your markets are more limited for the stuff due to quality problems.
 
I was told that as of this weekend the remaining corn standing in the Aberdeen area was too wet and the elevators were not accepting it. The combines were racing to take off anymore before the storm hits and pile it on the ground if nothing else. Rest may stand until spring and be some much needed pheasant winter survival food. Might just be the cats pajamas to have this much corn still in and not be able to be taken out until spring (or plowed then).
 
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