Another encouraging year for the 2008 South Dakota Pheasant Outlook
By: Chris Hitzeman
UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Self Guided Pheasant Hunting - May. 21, 2008
Could conditions be ripe for another South Dakota Pheasant Perfect Storm?
Having been recently out on the farm in south central South Dakota I am happy to report good news and bad news. The bad news first....lots of dead birds on the roads and lots of bird/car collisions. Now the good news....that is the good news.
When I was traveling the roads near Aberdeen 2 years ago I noticed an excessive amount of dead pheasants on the road. I felt bad for a minute but then realized this was the result of extremely high pheasant populations. So now it is a measuring stick for me and I am oddly encouraged when I see these indicators.
I spent about 10 days in the Charles Mix County SD area, preparing for food plots planting and other projects. The weather could be summed up as cool and wet with no insect hatches. By the end of my stay on the day that I left there was a tremendous insect hatch due to the previous days warm weather. Insects are a pheasant chicks diet for the first 2 months. Critical.
All week I noticed an abundant amount of rooster crowing in both the mornings and evenings. Quite a lot of visibility of roosters showing and fighting defending their showing spots. I ran into at least two sets of roosters that were going at it head to head right on the centerline of the state hwy.
The other thing I noticed that I had neot ever seen before in as much abundance is the number of roosters with hen clutches. One morning I was out driving and in a 1 mile stretch of road I came across 6 roosters that each had 6-8 hens close to each of them. these groups were evenly spread out as I assume this was due to territory pressure.
Looking forward I am very optimistic. When I left the area the was a very high amount of farmers getting there crops in. This means it was drying out and warming up. Thats good for the nesting season since we need a nice warm and dry June to have a banner hatch.
Additionally, there was a lot of standing water around and I beleive that many famres will leave these areas fallow as they need to get their corn in and are willing to forego getting these areas planted in lieu of getting majority of crop acres in. This is a similar scenario to what occurred last year.
On top of that we have had 2 years of excellent winter weather and abundant carryover of mature birds. If there was ever a year to get a trophy bird, this would be it, based on fact that some birds could be going into their 3rd year. I also expect, like last year, that birds will be wilder right out of the shoot on opening day because of the mature bird carry over.
The unknown but real factor of impact of CRP expiring acres going back to crop production is largely unmeasurable at this time. In the South, where my place is there is not as much CRP as in the North.
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