2014 Pheasant Outlook

[lindy rig]

Anybody know anything?

[rundrave]

you can get all the 2014 brood counts and surveys here:

http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/small-game/pheasants.aspx

My take is yes there will be an increase of birds in some areas but we are still 50% below the 10 year average. There will still be birds to hunt but you will have to work for them.

Enjoy it while you can, the numbers etc are going to continue to get worse before it gets better. No more blame can be placed on bad weather etc. We had a mild winter and great spring and look what it netted us for increases. Not much.

*EDIT*

Been doing my own road side counts also hehe . Nothing better than wild bird contacts while roading and conditioning:

[lindy rig]

We had an absolutely brutal winter here in most of MN. Glad to hear SD fared better.

I've been coming out to central SD for several years now. Last year seemed tougher to get on land. We were also bumping into other hunters which hadn't really happened to us much before. Had a good first day, followed by a couple hard days. And for the first time, public land was almost worthless in terms of finding any birds.

Land going out of CRP and into production is the biggest problem from the pheasant hunter standpoint then?

[rundrave]

Land going out of CRP and into production is the biggest

problem from the pheasant hunter standpoint then?

[creepworm]

you can get all the 2014 brood counts and surveys here:

http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/small-game/pheasants.aspx

My take is yes there will be an increase of birds in some areas but we are still 50% below the 10 year average. There will still be birds to hunt but you will have to work for them.

Enjoy it while you can, the numbers etc are going to continue to get worse before it gets better. No more blame can be placed on bad weather etc. We had a mild winter and great spring and look what it netted us for increases. Not much.

*EDIT*

Been doing my own road side counts also hehe . Nothing better than wild bird contacts while roading and conditioning:

Where the h$ll was I for this mild winter. Evidently you live in a different SD than I do. It started with the October blizzard West River which killed many pheasants and from mid-November until mid-March was brutally cold. Rarely was the actual air temp above 0 for 24 hours straight. IT WAS A BRUTALLY COLD WINTER IN SD, THAT IS ALL, THERE IS NO POSSIBLE ARGUMENT OTHERWISE.

Spring was cold. It did not warm up until mid-late May. As soon as it warmed up it started raining, and it did not stop. Not ideal for pheasant broods.

[rundrave]

fine...mild winter in regards to snow fall, ice etc, blizzards. I plowed my gravel driveway once the entire winter. Yes we had some cold temps, but those birds can hunker down and survive cold temps with not too many issues. They cant survive with lots of snow or ice on the ground. Yes it got cold but for the most part those birds were still able to get out and scratch around for food.

Did we lose birds over the winter, of course we always do and always will but as far as massive blizzards burying birds etc they were few and far between. I never had issues hunting in deep snow in any part of the state I hunted last year. I never even busted out the snow shoes.