Crop Harvest Well Underway in the Plains
September 24, 2015 by UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting
Many many years of opening the Iowa pheasant season (when I used to hunt a lot of public in that state) amidst a sea of corn and beans educated me that sometimes the pheasant opener is not the best time to hunt pheasants.
That scenario will not be the case in South Dakota this year. My wife and I recently returned from visiting one of the UGUIDE Outfitters near Pierre and we drove from Minneapolis to Pierre and back between a Friday and Sunday. It was amazing to notice the change in crop maturity in just the 3 day trip.
This year we have not had anything near a killing frost in September which bodes well for farmers wishing to see their crops grow to full maturity versus having that cycle started with a killing frost. The mild dry weather is finishing crops at a very rapid pace. The first few soybean fields are coming off and it will not be long before the soybean dust will really fly from combining.
Soybeans are a very time sensitive crop to harvest because once ready to harvest, the soybeans can get to a point where just a couple lower percentage points in moisture will cause the bean pods to burst when entering the combine. As the pods explode, the soybean grain falls on the ground resulting in a loss for producers. So that being said, once soybean harvest begins, it is a race to the finish.
Corn, on the other hand, is nowhere near as time sensitive. With the prices at record lows you can bet that farmers will let corn dry down on the stalk until it gets to the 15% moisture range where the elevators will not charge them any penalties for drying costs. This is also the case for farmers storing there own grains until they sell at market. They have no margin on these prices to incur any additional costs on the crop such as drying costs.
We have received a couple nice rains in the recent days and that does not add moisture to the crop, but makes field access limited. We need a couple days to dry out the top soil and then combines can roll again.
With the advent of very top notch harvest equipment now owned by farmers in the state, the bean and corn crops could conceivably come off in about two weeks time for each crop. 2 weeks for beans and 2 weeks for corn once they really start "going to town" on it.
With all that being said I see a very optimistic early season outlook for pheasant hunters based on the potential to have much of the crops off much earlier than usual. Both soybean and corn harvests are underway which is a good indicator that all the soybeans in the state will be off and a big dent in the corn harvest will have begun. Traditionally on average the corn harvest completes around Thanksgiving week each year in South Dakota.
Keep in mind that the one unknown in all this is if the state would experience heavy rains during the harvest season. The good news is things tend to dry out REAL fast in South Dakota.
