Pheasant Fest 2024 Wrap-Up and 2025 Dates

March 03, 2024 by UGUIDE South Dakota Pheasant Hunting

Pheasant Fest 2024 breaks all time attendance records and sets sight for 2025, Mar. 7-9 in Kansas City MO.  New attendance records of 35,000 visitors for the weekend now knocks MN off the block as the largest draw for the shows history since its inception in 2003 in Bloomington MN.  Previous attendance records were 28,000.

I've attended these shows since 2003 and it is amazing how far the show has come.  I'm a habitat junkie but the show is mainly geared towards all things dogs, guns and pheasant hunting.  Public access has been a growing offering of the show too.

I'm not your typical attendee and I will validate that by describing my favorite new exhibitor, Nutrien Solutions via the PF Habitat Store.  Nutrien is all things agriculture to production farmers.  Nutrien Solutions is all things to all non-ag land managers.  I could have used them when I started managing my farm and habitat 23 years ago.  Nutrien also presented on the habitat stage and answered some tough questions for me and others. (Please Note:  I am informed by Nutrien that this section of the PFHabitat store is soon to yet be released around March 8th.  Will remove this comment when site is live).

They are geared towards smaller project quantities of supplies of things like herbicides and the instructions needed to use them as well as technical resources for questions.

The second most exciting announcement was that Pheasant Fest and Commodity Classic are on different weekends.  Commodity Classic is Mar 2-4 in Denver CO.  The reason why this is significant is that Commodity Classic is about the opposite of what Pheasant Fest is.  It is all things production Agriculture and a little bit of conservation.  The big production ag groups at CC are Corn Growers, Soybean growers, Sorghum growers and Wheat Growers.  Winter Wheat is the ONLY production crop that has nesting benefits to pheasants.  Can you see the connection here?

There needs to be connection efforts between these two shows and I am starting to see them and the benefits to both conservation and production agriculture.  Many think pheasants are a grassland only bird but oh, not so.  They are a grassland and agriculture bird.  They love cattle, pastures and production crops, like corn, sorghum and wheat, at the right balance.

Sorghum Checkoff is a new sponsor of Pheasants Forever.  They exhibited at Pheasant Fest in Omaha but I have not seen them since.  Their agronomist has been a major help to the UGUIDE Food Plot System and now Nutrien Solutions can be a big partner on the herbicide and weed control side.

I think the single biggest game changer exists with Winter Wheat benefits and a relationship with Wheat Growers organization.  Winter Wheat is 50% as productive at CRP for nesting pheasant results.  That's 100% better than any other production ag crop.  Winter Wheat is struggling to maintain is acreage position on the landscape in a corn and bean dominated world.  Wheat has a lot to offer these other crops and also conservation.

Checkout the UGUIDE 2024 New Food Plot System.