2013 South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Brood Count Survey Report-UGUIDE Reponse

September 02, 2013 by Chris Hitzeman

The survey's in, the counts are out, and the birds are down.  But, will hunters across South Dakota harvest fewer birds this year?  The 10 year average says no.  I won't get into all the details because you can read them for yourself and draw your own conclusions on the official GFP Brood Count Survey here http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/small-game/pheasant-outlook.aspx

What we have found is that the GFP surveys don't really tell the story of all areas of the state and certainly at UGUIDE Pheasant Camps.

Probably a more important survey is the year end hunter harvest survey which boasts a very interesting stat about how many birds hunters harvest and on how many days of hunting per year.  The harvest survey can be found here http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/harvest/reports/Pheasant.pdf

Here's the bottom line:  From 2003 to 2012, Non-resident Hunters hunted an average of 3.83 to 4.61 days per season.  Those hunters averaged a harvest of 8.90 to 11.19 birds per person over that span of time.  Those hunters' satisfaction ranged from 5.14 to 6.00 over that same period of years.

I don't know about you but that is pretty impressive IMO.  That's a limit 3 out of 4 days roughly.  This stat is on wild birds only and does not include any hunters that hunted at preserves.

The resident numbers showed that they hunted a few more days, harvested a few more birds and basically had similar satisfaction scores.

We still have several camps open and I can assure you that some of these will produce "hunt of a lifetime" type experiences for those that have never made the trek to South Dakota.  So don't sell the shotgun and lab just yet.  The cover in the state is twice as good as it was last year and the locals are reporting a lot of newly hatched pheasants as of late across the state.

Check Availability and Rates for UGUIDE Pheasant Camps