Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

Sam Mozak, Elk Point, left, Woody Skuodas, Hinton, and Bill Curry, Elk Point, pose with our group’s limit of pheasants. (Staff photo by Larry Myhre)

KENNEBEC, S.D. — If you’ve never hunted in the land of 11 million birds, you owe it to yourself to make the trip.

Right now, pheasant hunting in South Dakota is the best it has been since the Soil Bank years.

And that, dear readers is saying a lot.

Last week, Gary Howey, Hartington, Neb., and I made a day trip to a hunting lodge near Kennebec that we had been hearing a lot of good things about.

Dakota Hot Spots didn’t disappoint.

In terms of numbers of birds seen, I counted it among a handful of the top  hunts I’ve experienced.

And that, dear readers, is saying a lot.

I’ve carried a gun in the field for pheasants every year since 1955, most of that in South Dakota and most of that in the most pheasant rich parts of the state.

When you see 200 to 300 birds take to the air in one field, it’s a memory that tends to stick in your mind. And that’s what we saw here.

We joined a group of hunters from Texas and some others. I soon learned it was like “old home” week.

When Bill Curry of Elk Point, S.D., came over and introduced himself I learned that Dakota Hot Spots was not unknown to local hunters. Sam Mozak, also of Elk Point, and Woody Skuodas of Hinton, Iowa, were also there and they were just the forward guard. Others from our area would show up later that afternoon.

Bill said he remembered that I had interviewed his father back when I was farm editor. I’d done a story on the Curry Seed Company which is headquartered in Elk Point.

At lunch I learned from General Manager David Bogue that I had interviewed his sons on their lamb operation back in the late 1970s.

But, back to the hunting. I joined the blockers on the first drive hoping to get some good photographs of flying pheasants.

I wasn’t disappointed.

That first walk kicked out at least 300 pheasants.

There were so many birds in the air at the same time that Gary’s cameraman, Mike Hackett of Sioux City didn’t know which way to point the video camera. I had the same problem with my Nikon.

What we saw over the next two hours is  what can happen when you farm for pheasants and not for bushels of corn.

Bogue said they had been in operation for 13 years now and it showed.

The habitat is so good here that pheasants from surrounding miles migrate here to constantly replenish the population.

“We’re up about 10 percent this year with pheasants,” Bogue said. “We’ve had mild winters the past three years.”

Mild winters and high pheasant numbers can add up to tremendous amounts of birds real fast.

“We figure we have 3,500 to 4,000 hens in the fall,” Bogue continued. “If they raise just three roosters each, that adds up to a lot of birds in the fall.”

And we were seeing the fruits of that production.

We only hunted three fields on that 12,500-acre spread before limiting out. Percy Lieuwen, Sioux Falls, acted as our assistant guide during the hunt. He’s a part owner and has spent a lot of time at the ranch this summer building a new lodge.

“Tough duty,” he acknowledged.

The lodge is just north of Kennebec and the landscape is  mostly level making for easy walking. Timber-lined creeks cut through the landscape making for great mule deer and whitetail hunting.

Two deer hunters were butchering two large bucks they had harvested that morning.

The hunt proved one thing to me. The “good old days” of hunting pheasants in South Dakota is right now.

Believe it.