Wasting time in South Dakota

BeirlSetters · Nov 16, 2016

Bird counts will never influence whether I head for SD or not. Even in the past years when numbers were terrible you were still able to see more birds than you could anywhere else.

I won't even let the weather back me off a day. We are 24 hours away from heading out and in typical fashion we are driving into a good old SD snow storm. Reports are rain early tomorrow changing to snow with 3-5" possible, 25-35 mph wind and gusting to 50 possible. Hopefully be able to get through and not have the interstate shutdown on us if it gets to bad. This will be followed up by 1-3" on Friday(day#1) with the same type of wind. This kind of weather makes you appreciate the calm stable weather.

sdviking · Nov 16, 2016

safe travels

Chad weather does look kind of ugly for Thursday and Friday. Like you I hope the roads are ok, (ugg no black ice). I do like hunting pheasants in the snow, due to all the tracks pheasants leave to give you a good idea of the activity in the area! Plus the birds group up even more which can make for exciting hunting. Good Luck, Safe travels SDVIking

A5 Sweet 16 · Nov 16, 2016

Chad, safe travels. Aside from maybe having to white knuckle it back to God's country, you should be hitting it just about right!

BeirlSetters · Nov 16, 2016

A5 Sweet 16 said:
Chad, safe travels. Aside from maybe having to white knuckle it back to God's country, you should be hitting it just about right!

Hahaha.... Figuring on the white knuckles on some portion on the ride out. The snow will be a blessing for hunting but by Thanksgiving figure it will be gone with the warm up I see in the forecast.

Well we have moved up our departure time all the way to 10am tomorrow vs 4pm. Figure get 75% of the ride done in the daylight vs night.

I will post how things are going as the trip progresses. I sure hope I can find the needle in the haystack(Roosters on Public). Just kidding I am pretty confident we will find birds even if I have to walk to Nebraska and back.

Good luck and safe travels to anyone else braving the weather to get out to SD late this week!

sbode · Nov 18, 2016

Sd hunting the best in 4 years

I hunted 2, 3 day periods in November and took 17 pheasants and one grouse. I hunt with a Brittany. I saw a 100 or more birds a day. The birds were quite wild and several days I only got to shoot at a hand full. Bird numbers were the highest since 2011. I hunted private property.

MOBirds · Nov 23, 2016

Annual SD trip report...4 guys hunted 11/12 - 11/18. 75% private / 25% public ground. As is always the case, more birds on private but we definitely bagged roosters on public ground. Overall, birds in our view were down a bit but we still saw more than I would expect anywhere else...I would guess most days 100 or more birds.

We had a couple experienced Britts, an experienced Braque, and a new lab. Birds were flushing very wild, at times waves would be rolling out of grass/reeds ahead of us. It was warm and very dry, scenting conditions were tough but dogs did well considering, just had to pack LOTS of water. Unfortunately, we lost a couple cripples and that rarely happens, dogs just struggled to pick up scent if they weren't right there when they hit the ground.

As always, South Dakota pheasant hunting made for a great time, good dog work, got old friends together, made new memories, and we brought back 49 birds. Some pics of the adventure...