Rooster Rodeo
Member
Hunted the North Central part of the state with my Dad last week. All public land. The plan was to drive out Monday and hunt the remaining four days.
We ended up leaving a day early. I anticipated things to be tougher habitat-wise thanks to the reporting on this site. What I failed to understand was just how much impact that would have on the pressure on public lands. I’ve hunted the Dakotas for the past 6 years, and I intentionally take time off to hunt during the week in hopes of encountering a little less pressure than the weekends. I have never ran into so many other hunters on public land in my past years. Less spots left to hunt due to the drought and in increase in hunters from last year is my opinion. We ended up finding a concentration of birds on an evening hunt, probably in the 50-100 range. It’s always so cool when you get into those situations. These birds were also extremely flighty. My Dad and I have well trained dogs and we hunt quiet. I also attributed these birds’ behavior to pressure. We drove by the next day and a handful of vehicles were parked on multiple sides of the piece hitting it so it was not these birds’ first rodeo
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Things were definitely tough, and the constant pressure got to be a bit much, but we bagged a few and had some success resorting to right-of-ways in order to avoid pressure. In the end I enjoyed being out in the field and got some valuable time to decompress from day to day life which is ultimately what matters most. Just thought I’d share my experience, best of luck to you all out there!
We ended up leaving a day early. I anticipated things to be tougher habitat-wise thanks to the reporting on this site. What I failed to understand was just how much impact that would have on the pressure on public lands. I’ve hunted the Dakotas for the past 6 years, and I intentionally take time off to hunt during the week in hopes of encountering a little less pressure than the weekends. I have never ran into so many other hunters on public land in my past years. Less spots left to hunt due to the drought and in increase in hunters from last year is my opinion. We ended up finding a concentration of birds on an evening hunt, probably in the 50-100 range. It’s always so cool when you get into those situations. These birds were also extremely flighty. My Dad and I have well trained dogs and we hunt quiet. I also attributed these birds’ behavior to pressure. We drove by the next day and a handful of vehicles were parked on multiple sides of the piece hitting it so it was not these birds’ first rodeo
.Things were definitely tough, and the constant pressure got to be a bit much, but we bagged a few and had some success resorting to right-of-ways in order to avoid pressure. In the end I enjoyed being out in the field and got some valuable time to decompress from day to day life which is ultimately what matters most. Just thought I’d share my experience, best of luck to you all out there!
