(Editor's Note: I wrote this article for the Oct., 2004 edition of Dakota Country)
The Best in the World By Tony Dean
Combine a carnival, celebrities, the atmosphere of a major sporting event, dogs and crowds, and you have the South Dakota pheasant opener. To call it festive is to undersell it, and while opening day is always the third Saturday in October, the days before are as much a part of it.
Visit Joe Foss Field in Sioux Falls on the Friday before the opener, and gaze in awe at a sky filled with commercial and private planes. You wonder where they’ll all find a space to tie down. The lobby features a mini-sport show with hunters, barking dogs and lots of hand-shaking.
Go to Redfield, just one of a number of South Dakota communities proclaiming themselves “Pheasant Capitol of the World,” and stand in line outside Terry’s Steakhouse, where this time of year, there are always more customers than chairs, tables or booths.
Visit Platte on opening morning and try, just try, to buy a box of shells at the local hardware store in less than an hour. The line at the checkout extends from the counter to the rear of the store and snakes back through two more aisles, a scenario that is repeated in almost any small town in the pheasant belt. A year ago, I hunted the Aberdeen area later in the season and waited almost an hour for some friends to buy non-resident licenses at a local sporting goods outlet. Course, they also bought gloves, caps, hunting jackets and one guy even sprang for a new shotgun.
Even Pierre, some distance from the main pheasant belt, sees an army of hunters and dozens of small planes are parked and tied down at our local airport. Some are corporate jets, and those who climb out carry shotguns and bags. The local Dakotamart, a grocery store, really, sees thousands of hunters walk down the stairs into the sporting goods department on the day before opening day. It’s their biggest day of the year. Meanwhile, we’re told that over 25,000 pass through the doors at Mitchell’s Cabela;s store. Later in the month, if history is any indication, Air Force II will land at our little airport and Vice President Cheney will depart, and then head north to Gettysberg to hunt on the Paul Nelson farm, something he’s done for years. And if his Secret Service guys are lucky, they won’t roll their Ford Expedition on a gravel road, as they’ve done in the past.
Over 85,000 visitors come to South Dakota for this event, and the crowd hunting pheasants will more than double those attending any single game of the world series. In fact, there’ll be more folks hunting pheasants in South Dakota that weekend, than attend any other sporting event in the world with the exception of the Indianapolis 500. Though visitors now outnumber local hunters, that wasn’t always the case. More on that later.
You can also bet that certain things will happen.
No matter what gasoline costs two days before the opener, it’ll go up at least a dime the day before and the sellers will blame Saudi Arabia and the Democrats will say it’s George Bush’s fault. A more astute observer would call it the result of supply and demand meeting capitalism. And if you drive in without a hotel or motel reservation, you might have to head west to the Black Hills, where rates have been reduced following their normal price gouging rates.
Those motels that ban pets learn quickly that this is not an acceptable business practice during a South Dakota autumn. The more astute usually offer free kennels and a place to clean and freeze birds. And all hunters who keep their birds in public storage should know that authorities always check the numbers, so cheaters beware.
Celebrities nearly always abound, especially in Mitchell where a Celebrity hunt annually attracts sports stars. Aberdeen hosts one too, and this fall, I’m one of the featured celebrities. I felt pretty good until I found that Buck McNeely and Gary Howey were both invited in previous years. That must mean their celebrity budget is low, leaving them to choose between those of us who will hunt pheasants for free, and not request a fee. Gov. Mike Rounds will host the annual Governor’s Pheasant Hunt, and Sens. Tim Johnson and Tom Daschle will have theirs too.
There is one thing I am reasonably certain of, and that is the 2004 pheasant opener might be the biggest, in terms of pheasant numbers, since the 1940’s. The official count doesn’t say that. In fact, the Game, Fish & Parks guys say it could be down about 9 percent from last year, which means about 8 million birds, but if they’re right, it will still be spectacular. But in some areas I’ve traveled, they might have underestimated things.
My friend, Steve Halvorson, who farms south of Kennebec in the heart of South Dakota’s pheasant belt, told me not long ago that he thinks he’ll have “twice as many birds as a year ago.” When he says something like that, I don’t take it lightly. I’m still in awe of the afternoon, the fifth day of the season a year ago, when he and I walked over the top of a stock pond full of kochia weeds and pheasants. Birds began flushing, and continued to do so for a full 6 ½ minutes. I know that to be true because I have the videotape to prove it. How many? We’re both comfortable saying there were probably over 1,500. Thing is, I saw at least that many birds almost every time out on his farm.
I’ve hunted with Steve for several years, and prior to last year, we did a pretty good job of harvesting enough roosters to come very close to what is considered the ideal ratio of roosters to hens, something like 1 to 10. But last year, it seemed like at the end of the season, there were still as many roosters around as on opening day. And these are wild birds because Steve does not stock as many engaged in commercial pheasant hunting do. That’s because (a) he’s in an area that raises more pheasants in most years than any place on Earth, and (b) he emphasizes habitat; grass nesting cover, water, strategically located food plots, and maintains wetlands that provide good winter cover. If you doubt the wisdom of this approach, consider that exactly 1,600 roosters were killed on his farm last fall with a few of them coming off farms belonging to his brothers. Do the math. That’s 533.3 daily limits. His “habitat first” approach makes what he does, sustainable.
How do you know if your dog is pheasant-savvy? If you can enter a field with a thousand or so pheasants, and the dog obeys every command, ignoring rabbits or deer, and remains focused on ringnecks, your dog has arrived. Dee, my 2 ½ year old pointing lab, is among the veterans. I think it’s because she’s had more birds in front of her at a tender age than most dogs have in a lifetime. She’s a joy to hunt over and is becoming a decent retriever too. But you can teach retrieving, along with “Whoa,” and other commands.
You can’t teach pheasant savvy.
When you look at a cock pheasant in flight, the bird appears to be about three feet long. That’s an illusion though, for the tail can measure anywhere from a dozen inches to to a couple feet. Since there’s more tail than body and head, lots of hunters miss the latter because they concentrate on the former. I learned a long time ago, to swing my shotgun and pull just ahead of the bird, slapping the trigger the instant I see daylight between the bird and the barrel. That works for me.
If you wonder about the difficulty of hitting pheasants, ask yourself if you’ve ever hunted quail or jumped a covey of Hungarian Partridge. In either case, a covey flush catches an average hunter by surprise, and rather than picking a single bird, he flock shoots. Usually, nothing falls.
But even when your gun pointing is true, pheasants aren’t easy to kill. In fact, I’ve seen countless birds that seem to fall out of the sky, obviously dead, but hit the ground running. And let me add something else, something I’ve been guilty of too often in the past. Sometimes we shoot at pheasants that are too damned far away. For me, that’s a bird that’s over 35 yards from the end of my shotgun. I’m pretty good at estimating ranges, a skill that resulted from measuring distances of game birds of a variety of species with a rangefinder. My findings dovetail with research done by Tom Roster, whose testing indicates most of us are proficient only to a distance of about 28 yards.
The first step I took to become a better wingshot was to take the full choke tube out of my gun and replace it with the improved cylinder tube. Then I practiced and I now kill most of the pheasants I shoot at. I’ll still have some cripples, but that’s where Dee earns her keep. Still, I shoot pheasants better than most, and it always amazes me at the range at which some hunters choose to shoot. Truth is, the average shotgunner just can’t hit much out past 35 yards, and when they do, you see the bird hunch up, then regain its altitude and continue to fly on. The bird will likely die but won’t be retrieved. I’d rather not do that.
I shoot steel shot for everything. Common sense tells me that mixing loads with varying velocities does little but screw up my ability to correctly figure lead on crossing shots. I also choose fast steel loads in 2 ¾ inch and have settled on #3 shot, which works well on ringnecks. I also shot a bit of Hevi-Shot a year ago, and it did impress me. The parent company, Environmetals, sent me a few packs of 5 to try a few years ago, and I used loads of #6 shot to stone several Canada geese and some mallards. The few shells that remained put a few ringnecks out of their misery too. And my last shell ended the life of a 22-pound turkey back in April. Now Remington is marketing it which means it won’t be available to many Dakotans because not many dealers carry that brand in our part of the country.
A good dog is almost a necessity in pheasant hunting because it will do two things even a good hunter can’t do: (1) Find birds and (2) find them after you shoot them.
I’m partial to retrievers, goldens and labs, both of which I’ve owned. These dogs have great noses and can often find birds you’d walk past. Course, so can a good pointing dog, and while these breeds excel in years of low populations, I’ve seen some of the best become completely stymied when they encounter hundreds or even a thousand or more in a single field. I suspect that’s because they have a nose that’s too good. Moreover, few pointing breeds (with an occasional exception) can compare with the retrieving abilities of even an average retriever.
Goldens have a marvelous disposition, are very loyal, and generally have a better nose than a lab. They’re terrific fighters too. In fact, I’ve never seen a field fight with hunting dogs that involved a golden retriever that didn’t end with the golden establishing himself as the dominant dog. And that includes some tangles with Chesapeke Bay Retrievers. Labs offer a personality nearly on a par with goldens but my sense is they are a little tougher when the cover is heavy. You won’t have to spend nearly as much time at the end of the day removing burrs and sticky things from the shorter-haired lab.
But I digress. This is about South Dakota pheasant hunting, not dogs, guns or shells.
On opening day one year ago, nine of us walked into a brushy draw. About 40 yards in, a rooster exploded from the cover, and before anyone could get their guns to their shoulders, several dozen others filled the air. Everyone shot, some birds fell, others just flew on. I remember killing a rooster flying from right to left, but also bagging another that flew from left to right in such a manner that they crossed paths as I fired. I got both. You’d expect your fellow hunters to cheer such a feat, but it didn’t happen because they were all too busy shooting roosters. Somehow, our dogs retrieved all of the birds that went down. We walked another 50 yards, there was another eruption of pheasants, and when the last feather fluttered to Earth, we’d filled --- 27 birds.
It’s a good thing. On that day, the temperature rose into the high 80s with humidity to match, and over 100 dogs died of heat stroke. Fortunately, our dogs barely broke a sweat.
Yet, I remember an opening day where I waded through snow, an event that usually waits until Halloween, and several times, I’ve spent the second weekend of the season battling snow drifts during the annual South Dakota Governor’s Pheasant Hunt.
I believe South Dakota was the first state to hold a Governor’s Hunt of any kind, something that dates back to Joe Foss days, when the hunt consisted mostly of Joe’s old wartime buddies and a few cronies from the shooting sports industry. Later, it served as a showcase for South Dakota when mostly outside business investors. But it took Bill Janklow only a few years to turn it into a gigantic political fund raiser. None of that could have happened had it not been for South Dakota’s well-earned reputation as the best pheasant hunting state. You would think that with the economic importance attached to pheasants, South Dakota would have a full time management plan working for it, other than the annual counts. It doesn’t. And following the first blizzard that takes us back to annual populations of only a million or so birds, we’ll come up with something like the Pheasant Congress that took place during the Kneip administration in the 1970’s. The reality is, when we have an industry that pumps up to $100 million into our economy annually, we should invest some of that back into maintaining the resource. Imagine if we were to put 10 percent…$10 million…back into pheasant habitat and maintenance.
To be sure, there have been times when Iowa’s kill exceeded South Dakotas’ but that’ll never happen again because Iowa traded her pheasant potential and a lot of other things that all add up to quality of life, for corn and soybeans. Certainly there are many in South Dakota who would gladly exchange places, but I’m not one of them. I say that with a degree of authority because I have lived in both, and I spent my time in Iowa before it was all turned over to more cropland. In those days, the 1960s, much of eastern and southern Iowa offered decent quail hunting and fair to good pheasant hunting, though nothing on the order of South Dakota. In fact, old Iowa hunting pals tell me that quail are a thing of the past and pheasant hunting has declined dramatically. But I lived there before turkeys were stocked, deer rebounded following the creation of more “edge” cover, and giant canada geese were stocked. Today, Iowa hunting is limited to those species, but aside from big deer heads, you can hunt geese and turkeys most anywhere. Even in southern Minnesota.
However, South Dakota is quite another kind of hunting state with deer, elk and antelope, turkeys, quail (probably more than Iowa has these days), sharptails, prairie chickens, three species of grouse, geese and ducks. And, of course, the best pheasant hunting in the world. In fact, the only other state where I’d want to hunt pheasants is North Dakota. There aren’t as many but most of the cover is smaller and more suited to a hunter or two. Collectively, these are the last two great bird hunting states in America if you leave out eastern Montana.
But both Dakotas have their problems. Fee hunting, which depending on your perspective is the best or worst thing to happen to hunting, is growing rapidly in both states. If you’re a landowner, it marks the first time you join bars, restaurants, motels, grocery, hardware, sporting goods and liquor stores as someone who gets more than just a kick out of pheasant hunting. In the past, members of the above industries carried sacks of cash to the bank during the hunting season. The farmer who made it possible got a ham or a brick of cheese.
So market forces went to work, and here’s where we’re at today.
Our departments sell as many licenses as ever, however the split between resident and non-resident has widened, especially in South Dakota. To even things out, the Game, Fish & Parks Department gave residents their own three-day season on public lands, in advance of the regular opener. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that many residents have taken advantage of it. In fact, each of the past two years, I had no trouble finding public land to hunt, even close to town. South Dakota also launched its popular “Walk In Acres” program, a plan that’s being adapted in many states. It’s a good one, and though we have over 500,000 acres enrolled, that seems a drop in the bucket toward what’s needed because after opening day, there’s been so much pressure on these areas that they remain largely devoid of pheasants for the rest of the season.
Some resident hunters say they’re being priced out of pheasant hunting, and there’s some truth to that. Yet, I am convinced that anyone who wants to hunt, can find a place to go…and enjoy some decent pheasant hunting. The trick is to understand that the best areas offer the fewest opportunities.
Confine your efforts to fringe areas outside the main pheasant belt. Do some homework. Talk to rural mail carriers, farmers, truck drivers, traveling salesmen, anyone who spends a lot of time on rural roads. Ask them about areas they travel where they’ve seen birds. Once you locate such an area, go there and knock on some doors. But do this well in advance of the start of the season because the worst time to knock on doors is opening day. In fact, I wouldn’t even ask to hunt on opening day. In recent years, I’ve consigned myself to asking permission later on, and I can usually obtain it.
After you obtain permission and actually hunt, stop by the farm and thank the host. A few days later, send a thank you note. After the season, call him and invite he and his wife to dinner, on you, assuming you are close enough to do so.
But in spite of all the problems, pheasants have not lost their magic in South Dakota, or for that matter, in North Dakota. They are still our most popular upland game bird and we’re lucky, even with all the problems, to be able to enjoy the best in the world. If you think not, go hunt Iowa and southern Minnesota, or worse, Illinois or Ohio.
