2013 Year in Review Summary - South Dakota Pheasant Hunting

February 19, 2014 by UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting

We will review all the impacts to the 2013 pheasant season in South Dakota in an attempt to determine whether Game, Fish and Parks (GFP) does their readers a service or an injustice in making decisions about whether or not they should come to the state to pheasant hunt or not.

2012 Drought

The 2012 drought was labeled as one of the worst in the upper Midwest.  This drought began during peak nesting season 2012 (June) and lasted until May of 2013.  Then the rains came.  Some farms did not have any insects and pheasant production suffered.  Some farms had insects and faired better.  Then the rains came.

Late Spring 2013

The spring of 2013 was at least 3 weeks late and I know because our tree order was delayed 3 times.  My own findings of nesting hens in the 3rd week of June showed hens with broods at about 20% and in 3rd week of July about 80%.  Quite a delay.  There were also sitings of new chicks well after Labor day which would be another indicator of a late spring causing a late hatch.

GFP Road Counts Down 64%

While this is still probably the best "statistical/scientific" survey available to us, it is far from being accurate and comprehensive as far as the hunter wanting to determine if it is worth the trip to the state for that fall.  I think it was the wisest thing when the GFP changed their wording of the survey results to be call "Visible Sightings"  and not actual hard counts.  I know on my farm visible sightings are not a good indicator of pheasant populations at all and in recent years, low numbers of birds have been seen from the road.  In order to separate UGUIDE results from GFP surveys we determine to launch our own UGUIDE harvest surveys and posted results each week in our blog section.  More on this later in article.

Expiring CRP, Grass Cover, Ditches, and Haying

In 2012, the status of hunting cover in the state was nothing short of horrific.  Just about every roadside ditch was mowed including half of all the CRP acres in the state due to emergency haying and grazing provisions.  While the GFP counts were at 18% up for 2012, once again those numbers don't tell the whole story.  Harvest was record early in 2012 due to the drought and early season results were good but late season hunters suffered as well as hunters on public land which also had some haying done.  2013 was a different story.  Yes there have been a lot of habitat acres lost to expiring CRP and grassland conversion to crops but close to 1 million acres of CRP still remains in the state and 50% of it was not hayed in 2013 due to no drought emergencies.  Road ditches were also in much better shape and haying pressure was reduced by timely rains through the summer.

Late Crop Harvest Fall 2013

Similar to the fall of 2008 and 2010, when there was corn up on my farm well into December, this harvest was record late. The pheasant opener was dramatically impacted as well as several weeks into the season.  In fact it was not until after Thanksgiving that the hunting did improve quite a bit.  This is the plight of the pheasant hunter.  Some years it will be good early and some years it will be better late based on the crop harvest progress which is largely dependent on weather (nature).

Hunter Harvest Results

The UGUIDE results are posted but even they don't tell the whole story.  A case in point at my farm would be the success between the weeks 7 and 8 groups.  The groups were both about 7-8 hunters and hunted for 3 days each.  The week 7 group came away with 3 birds for the whole group.  I was beginning to wonder about bird numbers.  They did not say they did not see enough birds.  They said they wanted to see "some more dumb birds". They did not rebook.  Hmmm?  Enter the week 8 group.  They called me during their hunt to tell me they were having a great time and that if they could shoot would have had their limit each day.  They rebooked their hunt the same week for 2014.  It should be noted that some of our top tier camps produced limits for large groups of hunters each week of the season.  Some total up to 120 birds per group per week.  I do think that other camps were impacted by both a late crop harvest and also a poor hatch.  One thing is for certain though is that good habitat makes all the difference.  Many of are camps are working very hard at making additional habitat improvements for the 2014 season.

Here is what I learned from that:  These things vary WIDELY - Hunting skills, shooting skills, dog skills and habitat conditions and neither our harvest surveys nor the GFP road count surveys tells the complete story of the localized area.  Another example of this is my neighbor's place (Cattail Haven).  This is a tier 4 camp but the groups hunting there weeks 8 & 9 each got their limits each day and filled out.  They got one of the better deals of the season IMO.

Mild Winter 2013-2014

So far, it has been a very mild winter in the state of South Dakota (unlike much of the rest of the Midwest).  I was at my farm at the end of January and there was no snow on the ground and the cover looked like midfall.  That is nothing but good for the birds.

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