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Once again: The state of South Dakota does not release pheasants. No pheasants are released on public ground.

No one releases pheasants for others to shoot for free.

The licensed preserves must release pheasants in a number equal to the number of pheasants shot on the preserve, which birds are tagged and recorded.

Some wild birds are shot on preserves. Some released birds escape from preserves to private and public land and are shot there.

Helpful? Let me know.


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Yesterday turned out much more beautiful than anticipated, so after the previously ignored yard work was accomplished and the summer yard furniture was put away, two of us took off on a drive through Sully County. I left the dogs home, kennel cough has hit our house, despite my dogs being vaccinated. Going through town Im told.

Anyway we got to our first destination and found a group of Minnesotans working the ditch, and their dogs working a very generous amount of the cover. I would say they were skirting the line, at best could be said about that situation, so I got out and walked through their party and into some trees on our spot. We found one rooster left in there and he escaped. I noted how unused I am to hunting without dogs.

I was told to take a hike and assume a position covering an escape route from a second tree cover, while my hunting partner approached it. I got there about 30 seconds too late for the big flush, but two late comers fell stone dead to the shots, and my retrieves were flawless. My partner got one in the trees, and so we had half a limit. We decided to walk back to the pickup, about 100 yards away, and as we did, flushed two singles from the wheat stubble, and crushed both of them.

We are one short at this point. I drove back a quarter mile to the road, and my partner and his dog made it about 100' into the grass before finding and shooting and killing #6. Six roosters, probably ten shots, and 20 minutes tops. What a fantastic day.

Off to Harold soon.


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Three of us went out to Harrold yesterday afternoon about 3 o'clock. It was a much chillier day than Saturday was. The pickup said 31, I called BS on that and said 23. My neighbor said he'd peg it at 19. It was fresh. Dry and over cast but the sun came out toward the end.

We caught the birds napping in a loafing cover next to harvested corn. Unfortunately we also caught about 6 whitetails napping in the same place. When the dogless blocker (Me) took a poke at a distant passing rooster, the deer woke up, scattered and in doing so scattered about 250 pheasants as well, and before the walkers got close enough to bag any. Our cover is thin this year owing to the lack of rainfall and so once scattered, its hard to get back on the birds. We ended up with two hefty roosters, both shot by the dogless blocker (me). If we'd had three more blockers in place, it would have been a grand shoot indeed. Fun to see so many pheasants going so many directions at once.

Edit to include that I am up to five flawless retrieves over the weekend. I was steady to the flushes, took excellent lines, retrieved to hand without a victory lap, and even deposited the birds in the pickup.

Last edited by BKinSD; 11/22/21. Reason: judging my retrieving skills.

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You have a peculiar way of making some guys jealous as all git out.


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We went back to Harrold last night. It was too nice to stay home and also too nice to hunt apparently. The cover is thin and when the birds can hear you coming, they don't stick around long. We got one.


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We had some out of staters on hand Friday so we took four of them plus a local for flavor, and went to Sully County. We had a hell of a good time. As usual, the non locals were great sports and eager but it took putting alot of birds in front of them to make a limit of 21. My dogs were "plumb tuckered out" at the end of that adventure. Fun to make friends like that, hope they come back again. I shot seven.

Last edited by BKinSD; 12/06/21.

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[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


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Originally Posted by BKinSD
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]



You boys need to pay attention...the Dog has one nailed up in the weeds.... grin

Last edited by battue; 12/07/21.

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Ha, I pulled the camera to the right to get him in the frame. Nice dog but it wasn't his day. Never did anything too wrong, but he never did anything right either. Couldn't even get himself in the picture!

I had walked around that pile of gravel about 3 hours earlier to figure out our next move, when I spotted a rooster about 40 yards away run into a drainage ditch. I got the guy in the pickup on the left to get his shotgun and took my old dog Flash with us to get him. Ended up to be a great chance at a double but he missed the first one and crushed the second. The retrieve was beautiful.


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Four of us Iowa friends, a son, and a grandson in central SD Thursday, Friday and Saturday during an 8” snow fall. We had some Michigan friends we were with with their dogs also. This dog is a poodle pointer, is well trained, and has a great disposition. If he looks kind humped up, he is probably very sore as he was nearly run over the day before. Catastrophe averted and a local vet had checked him out as ok.

We expected the most birds to be in the shelter belts because of the snow but Friday and today, in spite of a -10* wind chill, they were in the row crops primarily.

[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc]

The next day — today — was clear, cold, and bright. Good shooting again. I picked up these three in a picked cornfield nearby with the help of my friend’s lab.

[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc]

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Been waiting for this… looks like your crew is putting a dent in them!!!! Have fun, try and stay warm and keep the pics coming.


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Friday’s wet snow had everyone wet including the guns. Back in the room I broke my Ben UL 20 down to it’s component parts, which of course a blindfolded monkey could do with gloves on. I dried everything well and put it back together. Oh, the beauty and practicality of Ben’s inertia guns.

On Saturday, with a temp in the teens and the wind chill, most of the guns were hiccuping. Did you break them down and dry them out? No, why? That’s why!

I barely used the Dickinson Plantation 16 because, first, “I wasn’t feeling it”. Just wasn’t connecting like I’m used to — winter clothing effectively increases LOP — and secondly, moisture in the air started Thursday afternoon and it’s a fair-weather shotgun for me.

Actually, I wasn’t shooting that well with the Ben 20 either due to the clothes “thing.”

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A second smaller recoil pad goes a long way in solving that.....Two screws....off and on.


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Yeah, you are right. However my Dickinson 16 has the very thin wood butt and my two UL’s have the notorious Benelli crumbling recoil pads. My 12 is on its second pad which is already breaking down. I put a slip-on pad ( very thin) on both of those UL’s. Something several years ago went awry in their production. Anyway, I will replace both this year with a different make.

A little more about Jaeger, the poodle pointer’s, incident. We were gathering at the end of a field after a hunt and one of the trucks was very slowly pulling ahead on a two-track dirt road. I don’t know if Jaeger didn’t hear it but he was sitting at attention and the left front tire pinned his two hind legs and pelvis. As quickly, a few of us saw it and screamed for our buddy to back up. Of course he couldn’t see what was happening.

I feared the worst as we retrieved him and was expecting a crushed pelvis, a broken back, or minimally a broken leg or two. He was immediately passing blood-tinged urine. I gingerly felt both legs to feel if there was an obvious displacement which there wasn’t. He used his right rear leg very hesitantly but did do some weight bearing. His urine cleared and he began to act normally if a little slower.

I was still concerned about soft tissue damage — a ruptured bladder or bowel. A quick trip to a vet in Chamberlain confirmed no fractures and his urethra was ok. As far as soft tissue damage, “ you’ll just have to wait and see.”

Yesterday, Saturday, he seemed normal if somewhat subdued. But we were all very relieved because of what might have been.

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Of course the driver was devastated but he had no way of knowing what was immediately in front of his tires or that a dog had just gone and sat down there. It made me wonder if a front-view camera would be such a bad thing for these big trucks to spot kids’ toys, kids themselves, or dogs, all in perpetual motion.

I and some others are thinking of going back to SD the week of the 27th.

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Looks like a great trip. We were spared the weather here but the line isn't very far south of here Im told. Sorry about the dog deal, I hate to hear stuff like that. Yikes.

I had the most odd happenings this weekend pheasant hunting that I can remember. Just bizarre occurrences.

On Saturday two of us went up to Sully County. Three guys with Minnesota plates were thrashing a well worn cover but they had Munsterlanders as does my friend, so we stopped to chat with them a minute, They'd seen nothing, and we directed them toward thicker cover. I hope their weekend got better after that. They'd seen pheasants in this particular walkin area a few years back and were surprised to find none were home today. Yikes. Long ways to drive to hunt a public spot from memory.

Just after that, We were passing a cover on private property which is too hard for two guys to hunt, you just end up blowing the birds out and doing yourself no good. But as we did, I spied a rooster about 15 yards off the road. I called for a halt, and took my 20 out the door with me. The bird busted out and I dumped him, causing him to be doing the dead bird flop, and another rooster sprang up just past him. I missed with the first shot but connected firmly with the second, and now a third rooster erupts. "Click." Empty gun, no vest. At some point in the ruckus #2 who was in my eye completely wrecked, I mean he was totally messed up as far as I was concerned, composed himself and scurried off. Fifteen minutes later and with three dogs searching, no #2 could be located. Arrrrgh. WTAF.

We arrived at the cover we intended to hunt a couple minutes later, composed a plan and executed it. My dog was in the trees while I stood outside essentially doing my own blocking. A rooster flew over me and I grassed it; within seconds, a second did the same. My dog came to me, started to hunt around, found one rooster, then found a live hen and grabbed it and brought it to me, and in the process never recovered the second rooster. WTAF. Got a couple more roosters on the way back to my truck in the normal fashion whereby they're walked up, shot and retrieved without incident, and that was that.

On Sunday we went over to Harrold where its been a difficult year. There are birds around, not a lot but several hundred in the area. You just can't get up on them, the cover is too thin to make them feel secure. We put together a plan where we had minimal walkers and more blockers and downed five total. I shot none. One of my friends took the tail feathers from all the birds as his wife has a flower shop and she wanted them for arrangements.

On my way back to town, I stopped to pull some sunflower heads laying on the ground in a picked field, which I use to feed the squirrels and a rooster that lives in our neighborhood. He's fat like a turkey. Just about a mile past that, I saw a rooster sneaking into a weed patch in the ditch, and thought I could probably get him so I stopped, and got out to find one rooster is now three roosters springing from the same ditch. I wasted three shells in the surprise but a fourth late rooster busted out and I graveled him with my last shell. Fell right in the middle of the road, dead as a wedge, no movement at all. None. Zero. I picked him up and put him in my truck. No ruffling, no hours spent in a dirty vest, no lab drool, he looked perfect.

I had to stop on my way home at the flower shop to pick up some stuff for my wife and order a few wreaths for clients. I planned to take my friend's wife the plumage from the perfect bird. Got out with my pocket knife, went around the back, looked in with the dogs and the crates and the beer bottles and the sunflowers, and no pheasant. Some time in that 20 minutes, that bird came to life and decided to make a flight for freedom. Eff.

Anyway, chickamaFLASHmc-co executed a beautiful retrieve during the Sunday ruckus and I got my phone out as he was coming back with Curt's pheasant. He'll be 12 in April. Be sure to turn the sound on.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/e7gyAMz.mp4[/img]


Last edited by BKinSD; 12/13/21.

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I really enjoy reading everyone's pheasant hunting exploits. Thanks for sharing.


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Excellent retrieve!!!!


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Thank you. He's done mostly blocking this year. Its his 12th season.

I wish I had a count of the number of pheasants that dog has retrieved. Not working at a lodge, his numbers wouldn't be as gaudy as their numbers. For a weekender, he's grabbed alot of them.

How's the pudelpointer doing?


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Tough day yesterday. Too nice to stay home, too nice to shoot many pheasants. We got two, I shot none.


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