2012 South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Season Outlook Forecast Report - May

April 13, 2012 by Chris Hitzeman - UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting

What's the recipe for a great spring pheasant hatch?  1 Cup of warm dry fall, dose of warm dry winter and sprinkle in a smidgen of warm dry spring.  Walla, a wonderful dish of increased pheasant numbers!

We are not there yet but the only thing stopping us from a really good spring hatch would be intense hail or intense downpours during nesting and we are clearly in a different weather pattern this year versus the last two.

The real purpose of this post is to give you some hard and fast pheasant harvest statistics for the state of South Dakota Pheasant Hunting, by county, for the counties where UGUIDE Pheasant Camps are located.

My old days as a business analyst and project manager in the Informations Systems world are rearing their ugly head but maybe not.

I just happened to be checking the SD Game and Fish website and they finally have posted the 2011 season harvest data.

I have these maps posted on my bulletin board going all the way back to 2005.  This one is different in that it is posting harvest data off the survey sent out versus August road count data and birds per square mile.

Here is a summary of the data: (Please note that these are all wild birds as no preserve data is included in this survey)

Walworth County (Gunner's Haven) - Total Hunters 3119 - Total pheasants harvested 33,628

Edmunds County (Roscoe-Hosmer) - Total Hunters 5189 - Total pheasants harvested 58,903

McPherson County (Leola North/South) - Total Hunters 3230 - Total pheasants harvested 36,351

Dewey County (West River Adventures) - Total Hunters 1612 - Total pheasants harvested 19,481

Hyde County (J Bar Lazy 7) - Total Hunters 1697 - Total pheasants harvested 20,616

Hand County (Miller, Wolf Creek) - Total Hunters 5798 - Total pheasants harvested 61,915

Faulk County (Faulkton) - Total Hunters 4399 - Total pheasants harvested 57,297

Miner County (The Boar's Nest) - Total Hunters 2907 - Total pheasants harvested 28,033

Charles Mix County (Cattail Haven, Pheasant Camp Lodge) - Total Hunters 4031 - Total pheasants harvested 28,767

In summary, the total harvest statewide was 1.5 million roosters with a per hunter harvest of 9.5 birds each which is very close to the 10 year running average.  So it looks like total bird numbers and harvest were down, but birds per person remained close to the average which tells me hunters just had to stay in the field a little longer to get their birds.

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