2014 UGUIDE South Dakota Spring Pheasant Hatch Update Report
May 12, 2014 by UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting
Lots of exciting news in the state of pheasants (South Dakota). Read further for exciting new info on pheasant updates, UGUIDE/Pheasants Forever Food Cover Plot Partnership and recent pheasant sighting updates from around the state.
NEW! For the 2014 season there is a brand new food and cover plot seed partnership between UGUIDE and the South Dakota Pheasants Forever Organization. What this involved is me taking orders from all our UGUIDE Pheasant Camps on bags of food plot seed. Once the seed came in, I drove from Mpls to Chamberlain South Dakota and picked up the 145 bags of corn, milo and soybean seed. I spent the next 3 days delivering this seed in the rain to the various pheasant camps. The partnership agreement requires that the food cover plots be unharvested and remain standing throughout the winter months thus providing critical habitat both for hunters during the season and also pheasants during the harsh months of Jan-February-March.
We can estimate that a bag of milo will cover about 5 acres, a bag of corn about 3-4 and a bag of soybeans about 2-3 acres. When all is said and done, that is a lot of great new food plot acres at more UGUIDE Pheasant Camps for fall of 2014. This will translate to a higher repeat rate among guests due to a higher experience satisfaction rating not only this year but in future years due to the plots left standing. These will in turn bring pheasants through winter in much better shape with better food and cover from the new plots. I felt there was no better investment I could make in the UGUIDE system than this one project effort.
Furthermore, this seed comes to PF from Monsanto so there is some resource from BIG AG coming back to the conservationists in the way of low cost high quality food cover plot seed.
My delivery route took me to the further west reaches of South Dakota in Perkins county all the way back east in Miner and also as far as the borders north to south.
Overall the exciting news is I personally saw a lot of pheasants along the route and all pheasant camp owners are reporting seeing more birds now than last spring or this last fall. The logical explanation for this is the late harvest of crops that provided much refuge for pheasants from early fall hunters and an open winter with little snow and not many if any major storms which would have resulted in a much higher carry over of pheasants into spring.
Weather always varies across the region but there is much optimism for a good nesting season as overall snow amounts were lower and moisture is average to below average with not much if any spring flooding setting up nesting hens with more dry land acres to choose from.
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