2011 South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Season Outlook Forecast Report-2011 Pheasant Opener October

October 11, 2011 by Chris Hitzeman

Just when you'd thought you'd seen it all, as far as weather goes in South Dakota, it does a 180 on you again.  In the last 2 weeks I have spent more time at the farm and also talking with UGUIDE Pheasant Camp Owners about the upcoming season.  I also got to ride in a John Deere combine for the very first time.  On Oct. 1, while mowing some edges of CRP fields, I saw a week old pheasant that could barely fly.  It looked more like a chick than poult.  I saw another brood of 8-10 birds that had no color on them whatsoever.  I saw fields of crops burning and smoke filling the air like it was spring CRP burning.

It has been one of the wettest springs on record, setting the planting window back several weeks.  And now, one of the driest falls on record, accelerating the crop harvest past the 5 year average and past last year's accelerated harvest which helped pheasant hunter success across the state.

The day I got to ride in my operator's combine I got done with my ride about noon.  My operator was going to come over after he finished that night and talk business.  Well he ended up calling at about 9pm and said between noon and 9 he got called out to help fight 2 fires started by combines in the field while harvesting.  One fire burned 80 acres of corn and soybeans.

The state recently received a much needed rainfall from 1-3 inches and that has helped the dangerous situation immensely.  Prior to that the state experienced sustained high winds, high temperatures and low humidity.  Grain was drying down as fast as 1% per day in the fields which is staggering.

Needless to say, the farmers were highly motivated to get their crops out of the field because when crops get too dry they start to lose yield  when it doesn't all make it into the combine due to shattering effects.

I was eagerly awaiting the release of this week's South Dakota USDA crop progress report.  I suspected that the harvest progress would show a significant gain but did not expect that it would surpass last year's accelerated pace which was ahead of the 5 year average.  At time of the report about 80% of the state's soybeans were out of the field and 20% of the corn.  I also suspect that this report is even lagging a bit because another unusual aspect of this year's harvest is that corn was ready before beans in many areas so when beans were too dry they switched to harvesting corn.  That was another "new one".

Aside from the fire danger and risk of loss to farmers, pheasant hunters could not have hoped for a better scenario to arise in the state than the dry warm conditions.  It will have helped late hatched birds as well as accelerate the crop harvest setting up the opening weeks hunters with good field conditions.

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