Home Forums Birds & Dogs Upland Game 2011 South Dakota Pheasant Outlook

Pheasant counts decline from historic highs, but still good

This is the result of the SD GF&P pheasant brood survey, the link is to a GF&P page.

Well, one to two birds per mile...that still gives me a limit in 3-4 miles, if all the birds that get up are roosties.
I`ve put on more.

Betting there will be a lot of empty motel rooms this year.

Good weather for harvesting would be helpfull too.

The survey is done by driving the same routes every year and seeing what's on the road. They used to have rural mail carriers do it though I don't know who does it now. The idea is to correlate an easy, repeatable count with better estimates of pheasant population they can make later in the year. With all the years they've been doing it, it's a pretty fair general predictor.

But it doesn't account for local hot spots and areas not on a route which could be better or worse - it's a general predictor. Also we're coming off record numbers. The survey has us down 75% where I am and I still see more birds than more than a few years over the last 20.

At face value the numbers look dismal and I suppose that'll cut back on out of staters. But if you consider the immense number of birds we've had over the last two years it still should be good. Now another winter like the last one would hurt.

We`ll be there...We hunted many of thoes years when numbers were dismal..and still had good luck.

It`s much to much fun to pass on.

Lots of water northeast, like around Aberdeen and Hecla. LOTS of water as in over roads. Ground was saturated going into last winter, lots of snow and rain, and it just hasn't gone away. Too much of it dries by evaporation and what flows away does so ever so slowly. The James River valley is famous for slow.

If we make a trip out of it this opener it'll probably be to Mitchell to browse Cabella's and gawk at the crowds, and hunt back close to I90. It's all very iffy until a few days before.

We're going to head for SD this fall for the first time. Our hunting area in E. MT took a real beating this past winter. We're almost as intrested in sharpies as pheasants, any suggestions for areas to look at. We're pretty much public land hunters, not too intrested in Pay to Play hunts.

We're running two Grif's and a GWP, pllanning on being there two weeks.

Erich

I can't help much, I mostly stick to home territory which is about as far east as you can get and still be in South Dakota. Don't make enough trips west to give you good info. The Game, Fish & Parks web site is pretty good. GF&P Click on the hunting tab or the speed goat picture and poke around a bit. Do go HERE and request the (free) pheasant packet. It includes an atlas of all public access lands which is invaluable. The atlas is on-line but was a PITA the last time I looked, may be better now. Just looked and it's better, public access areas overlaid on a road map, topo map, or satellite image. Pretty cool actually. It's "Interactive Map System" under Public Hunting Maps on the Hunting page.

Any thoughts on hunting on the Standing Rock Rez?

Erich

All I can tell you is you need a rez license and rez rules apply. They do their own wildlife management, no idea if they do it well or not.

I'm in NW Iowa and we had the same unrelenting winter as SD and a wet spring which is not good for young chicks, but on the route my GWP and I take for exercise, I am seeing more quail sized pheasant chicks than ever this time of year-- a good sign of a late hatch, or maybe two.

SD's numbers the last decade have had to be seen to believed. I'm sure that there are birds to be found.

I grew up in SD and hunted sharpies and Prairie Chickens along the west side of the Missouri River 100 miles north and south of I-90. We used to do well up around Reliance but it's checkerboard with Indian land in some areas. Lots of Corps of Engineer land with Grouse. Be aware that early in the season and on warm days later that the rattlers will be out. You can shoot them, your dogs can't. We never ran dogs in the river breaks. Too risky.