Any here coming for the great pheasant hunting?

The 2022 ring-necked pheasant hunting season will last more than 100 days from Saturday, Oct. 15 to Tuesday, Jan. 31.

Such a beautiful bird, tastes as good as it looks!

I used to hunt around Tyndall & Yankton.

I've often said that if there were only one type of hunting I could do it would be birds.

Where I grew up, we were surrounded by farmers' fields and they were full of pheasants and Hungarian partridge. I have many memories of coming home after school and walking those stubble fields and wind rows with my Brittany Spaniel Misty and kicking up birds. I got pretty dang good with that old Stevens 20ga before graduating to a Wingmaster.

Sadly, those fields are now subdivisions, and places to find birds around these parts are few and far between.

I've been over to eastern WA and done quite well, but I'd love to do a trip to SD.

I grew up in Central Nebraska and Pheasent season was a ritual.
Started as a bird chaser @ 9.
Got my Mossberg 20ga. super single @ 11.
Hunted every season until I left in '75.
If it was a good day for birds, school didn't matter.

Yes, I have a group of friends and family that do a hunt just about every year in Miller. Seventeen of us are scheduled to arrive and hunt over Veteran’s Day weekend. I’m hearing reports that the birds are plentiful this year.

God help me I love pheasant (and quail) hunting over well trained dogs. Sadly, unless it's near home such hunts are history for me. You boys enjoy one of the best fall activities.

Beautiful bird, state and Governor. I’m jealous.

In the 70's, driving from PA to MD, it was like a glass wall at the border. You would see pheasants flying across the road and an occasional dead pheasant in the road in PA but nothing in MD.

One of my favorite activities and even better eating.

Doing some refresher work with my girl before season starts. It’s quail and woodcock for us though.

When I had some good dogs and lived back east, pheasant hunting was my favorite hunting. ( I suck at shooting shotguns so lots of misses and follow ups) but appreciating the work of the dogs and having a great bird for the table was something special.

Unfortunately pheasants which were very abundant in the 50’s 60’s and early 70’s in my native western NY took a drastic downturn in population and the hunting was pretty much limited to stocked birds from the state. Then the state started decreasing the breed and release program and that was the end of that. Since moving to Arizona it simply isn’t the climate for it. Also sadly my dogs have gone over the bridge and it isn’t the same without your dog

Pheasant hunting was a true passion for me. alas, despite managing two different properties for pheasants for decades, we have no birds left. when my last German Wirehaired Pointer died, i didn't look for a replacement. Back when my wife was writing and doing her weekly outdoors radio show, the nice people at the SD DNR invited her every year to come and hunt and do stories. Never made it out.

Up here, Its Ruffed Grouse.

We live in South Plains of Texas. Back in the late '50's and early '60's my Dad and some of his friends would go to Kansas every year and hunt pheasants. They noticed several simularities between the two areas and wondered if pheasants would live and thrive in our area. They began to talk to Parks and Wildlife personnel...then they talked to area farmers about leaving areas that were suitable for the pheasants to live and nest in. Several pairs of the birds were brought and released. Long story short the pheasants loved the area and thrived. Today they are everywhere in the area. As a matter of fact my two oldest grandsons have set up a guide service that has has people coming in from all over and paying to hunt the 'em.

I haven’t asked permission to walk a field in a long time. I wonder if farmers & ranchers are as nice as when I was hunting.

We always asked if landowners wanted any dressed out birds, sometimes yes, or at times no. Loved it!!

quote:

Originally posted by recoatlift:
I haven’t asked permission to walk a field in a long time. I wonder if farmers & ranchers are as nice as when I was hunting.

We always asked if landowners wanted any dressed out birds, sometimes yes, or at times no. Loved it!!

We used to pheasant hunt in Iowa and South Dakota. The permission to hunt plan definitely evolved from the 80s to the 90s. When we started, you'd probably get 90% approval. By the end, it was more like 10% would let you go on without paying. The farmers all realized that it was a source of income and guys in the state for the weekend would pay $100/gun to walk around. That price kept going up as they managed more of the land for that purpose by leaving cover strips, etc.

There may still be a few that will let you walk on for free, but not nearly the way it was.

Sitting in the airport now awaiting a flight to Rapid City. Hunt opening weekend with my dad and a group of about 14 guys every year. Trained a lab a brought him out a couple times (don't have time to do the drive to take him this year, hopefully next).
Tomorrow morning, we will drive from Rapid City to Kimball, stopping at Wall Drug for breakfast. LOVE SOUTH DAKOTA!

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:
We used to pheasant hunt in Iowa and South Dakota. The permission to hunt plan definitely evolved from the 80s to the 90s. When we started, you'd probably get 90% approval. By the end, it was more like 10% would let you go on without paying. The farmers all realized that it was a source of income and guys in the state for the weekend would pay $100/gun to walk around. That price kept going up as they managed more of the land for that purpose by leaving cover strips, etc.

There may still be a few that will let you walk on for free, but not nearly the way it was.

Eastern MT has gotten the same way. Used to be when asking permission on the ranches out there, the response we'd get was "knock yourself out, just don't shoot any of my cows." Nowadays, nobody is granting permission as most of them have deals set up with outfitters.

I have fond memories of growing up in SoDak and pheasant hunting back in the late 50's and 60's. This was during the time of the soil banks and farmers didn't get their corn all picked until early December, so there was an abundance of cover and food for the bird which translated into lots of birds. Then things started changing, soil banks were plowed under and converted to cropland, farmers got more efficient in getting their crops in before the first snow and the birds started to become harder to find. With the birds becoming harder to find the 'out of state' money spenders got wise and started contracting with farmers to limit access to their more productive pheasant areas to these 'special hunting' groups. The smaller farmers not to be out done got the State involved and laws were passed making it almost impossible for the individual or small group hunters find a place to hunt. Road hunting, which was popular when I was growing up, is now almost a thing of the past because of these stricter trespassing regs.

Looking back in retrospect, one of the things I noticed about this commercialization and control, the more commercialized and regulated pheasant hunting became, the fewer birds there seemed to be and now the only ones who seem to enjoy pheasant season are the out of state hunters.

I've hunted pheasant in Kansas, never made it up to North or South Dakota. Bird hunting is by far my most favorite type of hunting.
Sadly, more and more it's becoming a rich man's sport just like deer hunting has become around here. Long gone are the days when you could simply ask a farmers permission to hunt or find a reasonably priced lease.