2025 South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Season Forecast - Part II
July 03, 2025 by UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting
If you have an affinity for fair chase hunting, you accept the condition that nature is the majority share partner in your hunting experiences. It's taken me 20+ years to learn that.
If you haven't read Part I Report , which came out on May 11th, you may want to do that to get the back drop for this Part II Report. I almost called it the concluding report because once you get to this point of the hatch, it basically determines your season.
Other media outlets have stated their bias and this story, on June 6th, has the most detail with SDGFP resources contributing.
Here's what's happened since the May 11th Report:
- Good amounts of rain through May & June. Enough to make hatch conditions excellent.
- I saw my first brood on May 27th. Fuzzballs I call them. I got out of tractor to video them and you can catch them with your bare hands at this point.
- On May 28th I encountered 5 more broods and brood size is large with an average of 10 chicks.
- I also saw birds of varying sizes and could separate hatch dates by up to 5 weeks. It indicated how early a hen could have started nesting and egg laying. March is conceivable.
- On June 20th we hit out first 100 degree day and that ran for 3 consecutive days. South Dakota was warmer than Arizona. This reminded me of 2021 when it was 106 on June 16th and we had a terrible hatch that year. That year was different though for the following reasons: 1). drought was much worse. 2). We had four 100 degree periods in June with the first being on June 4th. 3). We did not go into that spring with a high number of carryover birds.
- On June 27th we had a storm come through with 70+ mile an hour winds causing crop damage. This is just an example of extreme weather that can be very local as far as hail and wind causing pheasant mortality.
- And lastly, if you watch the Drought Monitor over May and June, you will notice we are coming out of drought stages rather than going into them. This supports statewide rainfall which grows bugs and feeds newly hatched birds. Probably the single most important variable of all- Bugs!
I'm still very optimistic about the upcoming season based on all the variables. As in the Kelo report, we had great numbers of Sharp Tail Grouse harvested. We're seeing great brooding success of many different species of wildlife on our farm across May & June. The cover is excellent and rainfall has been great.
With early crop planting comes early crop harvest. This will help speed up the pheasants bunching up concept.
The next survey is the one you conduct. Survey by hunter with shotgun in the field. It's always the most accurate. Could this be another record year? We'll see. I wouldn't want to miss it. We still have a few excellent hunts available for this pheasant season.
There will be many pictures taken like the one above. Will your bird dog be in the middle?
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.
