2025 South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Season Forecast - Part I
May 11, 2025 by UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting
I heard a phrase on a podcast yesterday that helped clarify the engine of pheasant production in South Dakota. The Hatch! Oftentimes you will hear hunters and others interested in natural pheasant production refer to the hatch in terms of "first hatch", "second hatch", and so on. The podcaster corrected that phraseology into the correct terms of "first nesting attempt", "second nesting attempt", and so on. There is only ONE hatch. Pheasant hens will attempt to nest multiple times but only when their whole brood or nest fails. If one chick is successful, she will stay with it until maturity (at least 2 months).
The hatch begins when pheasant hens start nest building and ends when the successful brood (1 or more chicks) is at least 2 months old (during this time they mainly eat bugs). I credit nest building and egg laying as a 15 day duration and incubation as 30 days. So the whole duration to hatch is 45 days. Add 60 days or 2 months of brood rearing to that and you come up with 3.5 months to successfully create a batch of pheasants naturally.
It's May 11th today and I know hens are already sitting on nests. Peak hatch is said to be about June 10th so that would stand to reason.
We are potentially staged for a spectacular 2025 hatch and subsequent pheasant season based on 3 things:
1. Record bird numbers in 2024
2. Strong carryover of mature roosters from 2024 season to 2025 due to a very mild, dry and open winter.
3. Initial good rains to get things growing and get some bug production going. In other words, set the foundation for nesting.
The weather between now and the end of June will tell the story for the "Part II" update. We'll need sufficient rains and moderate temps to keep both vegetative growth and bug production up. In 2021, I will never forget, we had high temps in the 100's in June and June 16th it was 106 degrees. Hotter than Arizona.
Crop planting is well ahead of record and that suggests early crop harvest vs later, benefiting early season peasant hunters.
While in the fields I can't say that I have ever seen more birds this spring than I can remember in recent history. South Dakota has been in some form of drought stage all spring across the state. The direction the drought monitor goes in will be telling as well.
Even if the hatch is not optimal, the game changer will be the amount of mature roosters carried over already.
Check 2025 Availability of all UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Camps
Meadow Creek - Note: Meadow Creek is seeing sharp-tailed grouse harvest on the order of about 25-30% of pheasant harvest numbers with some bonus Hungarian partridge mixed in.
West River Adventures - Note: WRA is seeing sharp-tailed grouse harvest on the order of about 20-25% of pheasant harvest numbers with some bonus Hungarian partridge mixed in.
