South Dakota On My Mind

The wind whistles unmercifully on the high lonesome prairies of South Dakota in the fall. Secrets are told, in a language long dead to humans, to the wildlife that listen intently to the loquacious and blustery currents that filter down from Canada this time of year. The animals of the prairie prepare themselves for the inevitable whisper of cold and snow by gorging themselves on the plethora of wastegrain that litter the fertile crop fields. An outsider can feel the harshness of this place long before the first snowflake falls. The farmers faces betray their ages, weathered before their time by inescapable sunlight, frigid winters, and almost constant wind. Within a day of immersion in this climate the lips become chapped and ones face turns a dark pink from wind burn like the rosey-red cheeks of a drunk. It's hard to imagine that tribes of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho (among others) flourished in this surprisingly rugged landscape and that there are still poor farming families that struggle through each winter today, using dried cow chips and corn stoves to stay warm.

Despite the palpable brashness of the climate there is boundless beauty for those who take the time to look. The glaciers that plowed their way south only to retreat 10,000 years ago combined with the meandering Missouri river have etched out a very diverse topography over the millennia across the land known as South Dakota. There are grassy buttes, impenetrable thickets, cattail-choked potholes of water, rolling plains, pancake-flat crop land, and rugged ravines that dare anyone foolhardy enough to trespass upon them. There are plenty of people, metropolitans and the like, who would turn their nose up at this landscape and retreat to the concrete refugem they call home. However, to the outdoorsman and specifically, pheasant hunters, South Dakota is a place of beauty and promise. Admittedly, the palette of the plains is a muted one, but the earthy tones that well up from the rich black soil compliment each other and please the eyes. Perhaps the lack of color is why the gaudy ring-necked pheasant stands out so brilliantly in this stark environment; its brown, blonde, auburn, and sky-blue bodies somehow flatter their blood-red cheeks and almost formal white collar. The raucous event of witnessing one of these beautiful creatures flush out of impossibly thick cover and straining for altitude and distance from its pursuers is one that plays out thousands, nay, millions of times every fall in South Dakota; and it is because of that fact that autumn in South Dakota is never too far from my mind.

The Hunt

To give you an idea of just how ideal the pheasant hunting is South Dakota the picture above was taken less than two hours after our first hunt Thursday morning- 6 birds in 2 hours! That's my buddy Lance in the background, my black lab, Nellie, on the right, and my english setter, Rose, on the left. If you think Rose looks tired that is because she is. Rose will be 10 years old this year and recently tore her ACL, but hunted fairly well over the three day stretch. It took a 2.5cc shot of Cortisone injected directly into her knee to get her out in the field, but once it took effect she was good to go. Now she is only a shadow of what she once was, but her nose is still as sharp as it was 5 or 6 years ago. It breaks my heart to finally realize she's nearing the end of her life, in fact this was most likely her last pheasant hunt. Oh, we'll go on a couple of quail hunting trips here in Missouri this fall & winter and with luck she'll grace me with a few more staunch points; back legs quivering with bridled restraint, her nostrils filled with the scent of birds, and her old eyes fixed upon the location she believes the quail to be holed up. During this hunt it became evident that her prime has well passed her by, as the the thick cover that is commonplace in South Dakota quickly tired her 10 year old arthritic body. She will live out the rest of her life on pillows in front of the fireplace where she will sleep and dream the dreams that all hunters have; misty recollections of perfect flushes and filled limits.

I probably make the pheasant hunting in South Dakota sound a little too easy. Rarely does a limit of birds fall without much effort, indeed it is often some of the most physical demanding hunting there is. Part of what makes South Dakota the Mecca of pheasant hunting is directly related to the abundance of thick ground cover in a variety of forms. There are soggy cattail marshes where musty black mud and duck weed sticks to your boots. Then there are the grass-choked shelterbelts of dark green cedars and plum thickets with branches at the ready to knock off your hat or slap you right across the face. 6 foot forests of horseweed; tangled masses of cane; cockleburrs; unharvested corn and milo; crp; brome; prairie grass; and common weeds all grow in loathsome tangles and cling to your legs and feet until it feels like you're walking through a thick mire of mud. After all that, there are still badger and jackrabbit burrows to keep an eye out for lest you disappear over your head or turn an ankle. In South Dakota walking distances aren't usually measured in yards, rather in miles or sections (a single section being a square mile or 640 acres).

Can you find Nellie and the pheasant?

The three of us brought back 22 roosters over a 3 day hunt. Yes, we should have easily brought back our limit of 27, but hey, that's hunting. We all had our share of misses and non-lethal tail shots, but you have to remember that even when you know a bird is in a specific location the flush can be a little unnerving and awe inspiring as well. In fact, Lance was thrice so enamored with the process of a rooster flushing that he failed to take the gun off safety; happy just to point at the departing pheasant with the barrel of the gun and give a little flinch, as if practicing with an unloaded gun. I often expected him to shout BANG! during these lapses, but he never did, opting instead for other more colorful interjections.

That's the place where we take our birds to get cleaned there in the background. Yeah, that's right we don't clean our birds. Your standard South Dakota hotel has a "pheasant cleaning station" i.e. a table and a hose, but we opt for a more, um, lazy way of doing things or smarter perhaps. Locals charge anywhere from $2.00 to $2.50 a bird to clean, wrap, and freeze your birds- a convenience too tempting to pass up. There's quite a bit of downtime too, I mean you can't even hunt until 10:00 am. This allows plenty of time in the evenings for food, cocktails, and laughs although we usually pass out well before midnight. As fun as the hunting is, it is probably the camaraderie that will be looked back on just as fondly when we're all too feeble and old to go hunting. Where else besides a hunting trip can three grown men sing a stirring medley of the BEP's lady lumps song and honky tonk badonkadonk (AKA slap your grandma song)in anonymity... I've probably said too much. We sleep like babies, eat like kings, and laugh like school girls and that is probably the best part of the whole trip.

Todd M. post 40 yard dash sans rooster

While we had plenty of pheasants that flushed early or simply ran ahead of us we were lucky enough to have a good number hunker down in thick cover and wait to be ousted. One privately owned strip of matted brome & weeds no wider than 30 yards in any one spot netted three roosters in a matter of 30 minutes. The hell of it was that about the only way you could get them to flush was to not move. Once the dogs got birdy we simply stood still and waited for the bird to flush. It is nearly an indescribable feeling that comes over you when a rooster busts through cover at your feet and tries to become airborne right in front of your face. I can't begin to put an estimate on the number of pheasants we saw. In just one small tract of milo on some public land we hunted a conservative 30 birds flushed out of a very small patch of woods. Then, as they flew over a private field of crp, already roosted birds became nervous and started to flush with them. We simply put our shotguns down and watched the show with mouths & eyes wide open. Once everything settled down, I'd say we saw around 75 pheasants flush in a matter of minutes... standard fare in South Dakota.

Nellie, after the retrieve of a wounded, but a very alive and very fast rooster.

That's all I got for now. Good luck this weekend all you Missouri deer hunters!