2015 South Dakota Pheasant Hunting Brood Forecast
August 01, 2015 by UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting
2015 Pheasant Camp Lodge Guests,
My wife and I just returned from out at the lodge. Armour had their annual Prairie Fest town festival so we attended that while we were back and also made some final alterations to the lodge. I made some inspections of the property and here is the final season poop scoop and it is a doozy for those that want to understand the challenges of a pheasant manager and the expenses associated with running a top notch, sustainable, fair chase pheasant hunting operation in South Dakota. You will see on the bottom of this update the total expenses for the operation for the 2015 season. It was eye opener for me and I think you will feel the same way.
EQUIPMENT UPDATE
Nothing happens without the right equipment. For the most part the equipment functioned well with little mechanical breakdown. Expenses were incurred for mid planting season drill repairs and apparently the 20’ Bush Hog Mower was large enough to take out the PTO drive on the big tractor. It is in the shop right now for repairs. New parts were estimated at $10,000 but we located some used parts and I am estimating the parts and labor to come in around $3,000. With a better understanding of how the PTO works, sharp blades and educated startup and shutdown, I should be able to prevent this from happening in the future.
LODGE UPDATE
We got all new flannel bedding and new pillows for the lodge. We removed the entertainment center and made a wall mount for the flat screen TV to free up some square footage. We installed new electric base board heaters throughout the building to act as the primary heating source thus eliminating the noisy wall PTAC unit since we run ceiling fans anyways. We put additional rock out in the indoor parking area and that has really minimized the rodents in that area.
FOOD PLOTS
Milo – Looking excellent. We doubled the seeding rate to 20 lbs an acre, based on recommendations from the Wolf Creek Camp. Lots of food and lots of cover. Some weeds are coming in now but that just adds some great diversity and cover and fills in any gaps. The plots that had corn last year have some volunteer corn coming in so that makes them extra good.
Corn – For the most part good. Lesson learned here is that I do no till and my drill is not designed for corn so I need to double my seeding rate like I did the milo. Where there was volunteer corn I did not have to reseed. The plot on the west farm by the highway has 11’ tall corn in it (I plan to cut some strips in it.). Other stands I reseeded corn into corn and also some milo into corn. On the east farm I can only think the pheasants picked a lot of it out of the ground before it had time to sprout.
Sunflowers – As you know we had trouble getting these to go. Good news is on the west farm the 2nd planting took on all plots and looks good. On the east farm nothing came up even after a third planting. According to the Co-op, the atrazine I used on milo last year needed 2 years to work out of soil before planting sunflowers so that seems to be the culprit. West farm must have received more rain than the east to work it out of the soil. Lesson Learned: The new Flowers/Milo/Corn rotation allows for 2 seasons after atrazine is used on milo. I also plan to double the seeding rate from 10 to 20 lbs an acre to get a good canopy and sufficient stem density. Weather permitting, I will try and get all these plots in as soon as possible in the spring.
CRP FIELDS, COVER, DIVERSITY AND NOXIOUS WEED MANAGEMENT
Cover – Overall you will find the cover in all fields to be improved over last season for 2 reasons: 3 years of new stands and no clipping of whole fields.
Diversity – I had an on site meeting with our PF biologist, Millborn seed Rep. and the state DOW chemical rep. to look at all CRP fields. I had to treat musk and/or Canada thistle on every one of the 600 acres of habitat this year. That is about a new $8000 expense for chemicals. We tested various light rates of various DOW chemicals like Milestone, Transline (relabeled Stinger) and 2-4-D. The analysis showed to use just a 5oz. rate of Milestone in the future as it shows the most tolerance on the most species. It does however take out many of the diverse forbs like alfalfa and sweet clover that add to the pheasant nesting value of the stand. In the future we are looking into some interseeding programs to interseed back in those lost forbs immediately after a prescribed burn.
Noxious weed management – Never before have I seen such a bad year for thistle as this one and never before have we done such a good job of getting those thistles under control. The good news is pheasants don’t mind any weeds really. We are also trying a test plot in one of the untreated fields where we are going to fall apply after 2 hard frosts to minimize the impact on forbs that will hopefully be dormant at that time. You can get good control on thistle under those conditions according to the DOW rep.
Weeds & Dogs – We have a good system but nevertheless a few giant foxtails and possibly sandbur (although I have not encountered any sandbur as of yet) will be found in the various plots mainly. I would always advise any longhaired dog owner to consider getting their dogs hair clipped short to make this potential issue less of an issue.
BIRD NUMBERS
All signs point to a significant increase in birds. I would say the bulk of the hatch was in June which indicates a strong hatch although I do believe I saw a few day old chick in one of the breaks during this weekend's inspection. This is not surprising at all, even up through Labor Day. All my local contacts around town have commented on how many birds they are seeing in the morning.
One neighbor who has the same Colony that farms my ground, farms his and has wheat next to his CRP and this is about ½ mile west of the east farm. He “got” to ride in one of the combines they use to harvest the wheat crop which they did this past week. Apparently they encountered broods in the process and they must have been young enough to where the hen would fly off but the brood would go through the combine. Tough for the landowner to see but a common issue for any farmer combining wheat. The owner said he would not be riding during that harvest again. Point being they are seeing birds in the wheat. PS. Wheat has a 30% nesting recruitment stat compared to CRP at 60%. Spring wheat is less than winter wheat due to an earlier harvest window. This years wheat crop was poor resulting in some interseeding spring wheat into winter wheat. This years wheat harvest was a week or 2 earlier than normal.
Game and Fish Brood Counts are due out by Labor Day but we don’t really go by those anyways too much as it does not indicate what might be seen on an optimized pheasant farm. Also there was an article citing feedback from head biologists at Game and Fish where they also see conditions very favorable to a bird number increase in the state.
OPERATION OVERALL
As you may or may not know, this UGUIDE model is a cooperative model. On my farm the expenses you see below are about what is received from hunters + CRP rental payments. So hunters subsidize half of the conservation costs on the farm or the public federal taxpayer subsidizes about half of the hunting fees depending on how you want to look at it. One other consideration is that the expenses below do not consider any of my time involved which is significant. There are other involvement expenses not tracked here either such as mine and my wife’s vehicle expenses.
Bottom line is this model needs to compete with other models in Farm country such as grazing systems, cropping systems and basic passive cash rent scenarios. For instance, cash rent in our county runs about what CRP rent is. So assuming I have 600 cropable acres at $150/acre rent I could simply cash rent it all out to the colony and they would take complete care of the whole farm. I would pick up a check in March and virtually have no time, expense or involvement in the operation. With CRP I am the operator and have significant time and expense.
I mention this as we continue to refine our UGUIDE model and fees. As you know we are moving to Tier 1 rates in 2016 so that helps and we may also be looking at some rate adjustments for tiers 1 and 2 for weeks 1-6 when demand is much higher than later season. We like returning visitors so we are going to look at those adjustments with much consideration.
