South Dakota resident-only pheasant opener recap

I love South Dakota’s resident-only pheasant season. 

More than just an excuse to get out, stretch the legs and scratch the itch to shoot a bird, I look forward to the three-day resident-only season for few reasons.

For starters, it gives me an opportunity to drive roads I haven’t been down since last fall and winter. I’m a firm believer in scouting, and each year I make it a point to check on public and private acres I hunt to check habitat, see the crop rotation and also check on surrounding habitat. While I try to get out and scout in the spring and summer, I’m not always able. So, the three-day window the resident-only season offers to hunt the state’s public lands literally allows me to kill two birds with one stone — scouting and hunting.

This year was no different, and scouting played a role in finding success. A majority of the walk-in areas I typically hunt in the southeastern part of the state were mowed or had been grazed to emergency management practices brought on by drought. However, I was able to find a couple public areas where the habitat was intact. 

Even better, the first CREP I wanted to walk was surrounded on three sides by corn. Parts of one field had been cut a month ago for silage, while the other field had been freshly combined right before the resident-only season kicked off. And, as luck would have it, there wasn’t another hunter or vehicle in sight. In other words, the stage was set.

I recently wrote an article for the fall 2023 issue of Pheasants Forever Journal where I went through the process of how I break down big blocks of habitat. More specifically, I wrote about what I look for in a property and how I proceed to hunt it. 

As part of that article, I explained how I think hunters — especially those flying solo or in small groups of two or three hunters — often make the mistake of thinking they have to hunt the whole property. Instead, it’s my belief hunters should key on certain habitat features and go to the areas where pheasants are likely found. Simply stated, hunting habitat seams and microhabitats is meeting the birds where they’re at.

Hunt the Seams

A common mistake hunters often make is trying to hunt the entire property instead of focusing on habitat seams.

And that’s what Gauge and I did on our first walk as we massaged an edge that ran between a stand of head-high switch grass and a ribbon of reed canary bordering a cattail slough. It had rained the previous two days, and there was little to no wind, which meant scenting conditions were above average. That being said, we had barely stepped into the CREP area when Gauge’s pace quickened before he kicked up a couple hens.

I only had a little more than an hour to hunt before sunset, but that was plenty of time. In fact, I rarely stomp through public areas all day long. Instead, I typically only hunt the golden hour, saving the best habitat for the last walks of the day. When it’s just me, I’m confident in my dog and in the location to the point I rely on quick hunts to produce consistent results. With an aging dog, this guerilla-style hunting also matches what he can do physically. 

Plus, it’s far less time-consuming than all-day ventures. As a regular guy with a wife, four kids and a full-time job, it’s hard to find time to sneak away for half- or all-day hunts. I’m sure many of you can relate, and that’s one of the reasons we built this site, because we want to educate and empower other hunters so they, too, can be successful and make memories hunting pheasants in South Dakota.

Speaking of memories, after the initial flurry of hens, it wasn’t long before Gauge was locked in again. I’ll never say he points, but he does this thing where his ears rock forward, his body tenses and his tail slows down from the whirlwhind motion to a more steady, metronome-like cadence. It isn’t a point in the classic sense of the word, but it’s absolutely sign that pretty much guarantees he’s starting right at a bird. When that happens, he won’t budge. But if that bird so much as twitches, he’ll flush it. Otherwise, he’ll wait for me to turn him loose. A quick “Get ’em” is all it took to send him headfirst into the cover, and we were rewarded with our first rooster of the day. 

That scene repeated itself twice over, and we were able to scratch out a limit on our first walk of the 2023 season in just under an hour. All three birds were hatched this spring and summer, and two had just enough color where I was able to recognize them as roosters.

Did I mention I love the resident-only season?

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Hunt stats:

Date: Oct. 14, 2023

Time: 5:45-6:30

Temp: 62 degrees

Wind: Slight WNW breeze

Birds harvested: 3

Birds flushed: 15+