What has been your success in South Dakota?

[Schloogs]

Sounds like you had alot of fun Ken. I was born and raised in Aberdeen and I spend alot of the fall in SD hunting. In all my years I have never seen pheasant numbers like this, it has been pretty amazing. I am looking forward to my final hunt when I go back for X-Mas.

[SDbowhunter]

16 guys 48 birds in 3 hours. It was quite impressive.

[BLACKJACK]

Good report Labs!!! It IS amazing the number of birds out there!!! We call it 'the wave' as in look at all the birds waving out the far end!!

A couple of questions:

1) When you hunt do you ever put posters/blockers at the end or do you always assume that a few birds won't wave out? It tends to get frustrating when you see all those birds flying out at 150 yards, you want to run up there... They really are a flock bird, once a few birds escape out the side the rest zero in on that spot and wave out.

2) You talked about cooking up a meal, so where do you stay that has cooking facilities? A private house? A motel with a kitchenette?

3) You talked about giving small gifts to farmers - what do you consider a 'small gift'? I've always struggled with how much is enough. Where I deer hunt in MN we give the guy a pretty substantial Cabelas certificate, other places in MN and SoDak I give a quart of MN grown honey. Curious to see what you give.

[LABS4ME]

BlackJack,

1) At times on the right piece of cover (long and narrow with some kind of backdrop) we will employ posters, otherwise we feel it's a waste of an opportunity for the standers as most of the birds out there have seen posters enough times already through the season, that they can avoid them easily. Usually each piece of cover is hunted the same way each and everytime a group hunts it too. So we always look at how we should attack it, figure out if that is the way most guys would do it, (usually based on the easiest place to park the truck and enter the cover) and then do it 180 degrees different than that. We like to make the birds uneasy. If they hear a push coming from a directing they heard a couple dozen pushes before, they already know their escape routes... coming at them from a new direction causes them to freeze up or run in an opposite direction and take away the 'sure bet' escape route.

We also utilize 'pinches' the majority of the time we are out there. We find they can't handle hunters coming from opposite directions, one of the groups is usually cutting off their escape route. Luckily most of the cover we've hunted before and we know where to drop off a couple guys and where the other group will enter from. We find even if birds are busting out the middle, enough of them are turned around enough that they sit tight and offer very easy, close, killing shots.

2) We used to rent a private house every year when out there and that is where the dinner idea origated. Since then we've been invited to stay at the farmer's place... for free! It's a BIG deal for us and we really feel the need to reciprocate. He built a bunk room in his new pole shed and his office in the shed has a kitchen... so it works out fantastic! The dogs stay in the heated shed, we have a bunk room that sleeps 6 and a kitchen with internet and satellite TV!

3) My gifts have varied over the years. The 1st year I made contact with them, I sent them one of Cabelas bigger meat packages... I thought it was nice, but needed it to be more personal. Since then, we do much simpler gifts... My favorite is a Minnesota shore lunch kit. My buddies and I keep some walleyes from a fall trip, fillet them and vaccum pack 6-8 fillets per farmer (all the farmers have one kid or are empty nesters). Get a gift bag, put in the fish, a big can of baked beans, some Gary Roach's breading mix, a couple bags of Simply Potatoes hash browns, a jar of tartar sauce or cocktail sauce, and a loaf of ciabatta bread. That usually goes over well. If we didn't have time to get some walleye fillets, we did a sample pack of venison sausage one year. We gave each one some summer sausage, Italian sausage, brats, breakfast sausge and sticks. 5-8 pounds in a gift bag is a nice gesture. We also did Wild Rice pancake mix from Northern Minnesota with real maple syrup and some good butcher shop bacon one year. All gifts were all well recieved and I even get Thank You / Christmas cards from a couple of them. That makes me know that they really do appreciate it, as I never gave them my address and they had to take the time to look it up to send me a card. We really concentrate on a small area to keep our name in good standing as they all know each other and when 4 farms are seeing us and getting a Christmas Gift from us, they all talk and our name is out making us in good standing in a 10 square mile area. I don't think it's so much the size of the gift, but the sincerity of it. To take time to put a gift together with a personal touch and to hand deliever it and take a little time out of your hunt to visit goes a long ways with them. They know then that you aren't only out there to rape and pillage the birds and that you really do appreciate all theat they do and offer. My main farmer gets a little more treatment as we really do pretty much stick to his 10,000 acres. He gets a Christmas Ham too and a hunt or fishing trip in MN too. But it's quickly becoming more out of friendship than swapping an outdoor activity.

As I've said, get out there and knock on some doors... the opportunities are still out there. It may take some work to get your foot in the door, maybe even a couple of seasons, but the fruits of your hard work will pay off in future hunts. My buddy out there guides a few big groups a year for the 1st month of the season... he charges them $150/day per guy. He called me the 1st of November to find out when we are coming out as he was still getting calls for groups to line up hunts and he didn't want to book one when we are out there. I told him he has to take paying customers before us, and he said talk... we had 1st dibs! This is a guy I didn't know 6 years ago! We still made sure he got his paying customers out of the way and we didn't interrupt his deer hunting... Besides I love hunting rooties in December! It's my favorite month to chase them!

Good Luck!

Ken

[mmw]

Labs 4 me you are quite the guide.

[BLACKJACK]

Labs, sounds like you guys do it up right!!! I liked your idea about personalizing the gifts. As far as the hunting goes, we have a couple of older guys without dogs that we need to work into the hunt, usually as posters. Sometimes they leave early and then we can hunt 'Minnesota style' and go hit some of the bigger areas. We've also tried that hunting toward each other to confuse and hold the birds, with some good success. Unfortunatly a lot of the area that we have to hunt is more shelterbelts and smaller grass areas, anything bigger gets hayed off, unless it has rocks or water in it. But its excellent hunting, as you mentioned a lot of the times the hunt is over too fast.

I love hunting those roosters!!!! I've always said, when I die and goto heaven I'll have an older lab that plods along 20 yards ahead of me while we hunt pheasants for eternity! Or if I die and goto he11 I'll have a young lab that busting the birds up 100 yards ahead with the look over his shoulder 'boss I found all the birds, where are you'??!

[rundrave]

was out today. woke up expecting snow and 30+ mph winds.

Turned out to be a great day for a hunt. Was a little on the cold side but was perfect for hunting.

2 guys and my GSP had a limit in a hour and half of hunting. The land we hunted today hadn't been hunted since early November so most of the birds weren't too educated yet.

I think I saw more birds today than I ever have in a single day of hunting. The rooster's that sight tight over my dogs point were surely taken advantage of.

Only a few weeks left, and I will be out again tomorrow.

[paintbrush]

A buddy and myself just got back yesterday from a 4 day hunt up by Eureka SD. We saw thousands of birds and shot our limits each day.We never saw another hunter in those 4 days!Hunted both public and private land,and actually took more birds off of public then private even though we hunted both about equally.Birds were not down in the heavy cover but on the edges.Very little snow on the ground. Nice to see all those birds. Hope the winter and spring are easy on them.

[UGUIDE]

Paintbrush, I can also confirm those numbers as in talking with my owner at the Aberdeen Pheasant Camp. they really need to thin them out up there.

We do an annual father/sons hunt at my place in Charles Mix County and we hunted with 6-8 guys for each of 3 days. We ended up with 54 birds total which is not too bad consdiering we didn't even hunt with dogs on the 3rd day. Our 2 shorthairs had a lame paw and got a barbwire cut. So, on that last day we got a new appreciation for what is it is like to "be the dog".

Some spots were looking pretty thinned out whichs is good and others were loaded with birds. In one spot right off a main road there was 10 roosters sitting in a tree. We had permission to hunt and we wen't though it once and I went through a box of shells blocking. Then we walked through it again in opposite directions and got more birds out that the first time.

Here's a pic