I got to spend 4 quality days back home in central SD for the holiday. Spent some time out in the field chasing whitetails with my father, which was long overdue. I can’t wait for next fall.
As we spent time around his farm and area farms, one thing I noticed was the total lack of pheasants. In this same area last year we would literally see 1000’s of birds a day. This year was less than a 100. In the past as the sun was setting in the west you can sit in my dad’s yard and watch birds coming to roost in the trees by the hundreds from the neighbors. Not this year, saw less than a dozen in 3 nights of watching.
I’m sure there are still great pockets of hunting and if you are willing to work you’ll score some birds. However, in my home area, the numbers are definitely down.
Now the deer were a different story. We didn’t see a large number, but we didn’t invest a lot of time either. On Thursday night we were driving into an old abandoned farm when a 130 + class buck jumped up in front of us. As luck would have it, he sneaked away without a cap being fired. We watched him slowly work his way to posted ground then stood in the middle of it. Needless to say this would have been my Dad’s best deer ever. Friday morning after we delivered 50 pheasants to a neighbor, we spyed a buck and doe out in the middle of some ground we had permission to hunt. We put the sneak on until we were about 250 yards. Keep in mind this is SD and it’s flat and the only cover we had was 4″ grass. The deer gave dad perfect broadside shot, but he shot high by inches. He missed the deer running once also and it was gone. This deer I guessed in the 110 range, not huge, but decent for our country. I had a blast with the old man and can’t wait to go back next year.
