My Father has been making the 16 hour journey every year for about 15 years now and he always has some good stories upon his return. I've always wanted to go but they were always there in the last week of October which seemed sinful to me as that's the week the Whitetail woods comes alive. I saved up some extra vacation days from 2010 and rolled them over into this year just for this trip. We were going to leave on the 14th of October and stay through the 20th. This was actually perfect. It keeps me out of the woods until the time was right and I would be back in enough time to spend a few extra days with the Mrs. for her fall break. I didn't really know what to expect, other than the "fairy tales" of hundreds of birds leaving the same ditch and how they would limit out for the day in 30 minutes. Pierre, South Dakota the mecca of pheasant hunting, there were 6 of us who would be hunting together, my father, my uncle David, my buddy Brian, Nick "Hunt Master" Jarnagin & Fred, and of course the two most important individuals, my dog Tex and Brian's dog Harley. The 4 older guys piled into Nick's full size Dodge van and Brian, the dogs and I into the pickup and we headed West. It was a long drive to say the least. Day one was possibily the best day we had, 12 birds down. Now if any of you have never been bird hunting or never been to South Dakota, you probably won't believe this. Don't worry I didn't either until last week. Most of the ground out there is privately owned, farmed for bird seed and leased to outfitters which in return bring hunters to their ground to take advantage of the strategically harvested row crops which allow 6-10 guys to hunt effectively in an area where they might see 200 birds at a time. Now for us low budget hunters we rough it out on the public areas. Part of public ground is the road, yes the road, which involves the road itself and 33 feet to either side from the center of the road. This style is called road hunting. Typically this involved Nick dropping my Dad, David, Brian, myself and the dogs off at one end of the road and then driving to the next break in the cover, which might be the next road crossing, a ditch that intersects or where the grass has been mowed down, and Fred and Nick would stand at that point and "Block". Basically wild pheasants are tougher than most deer and smarter than a coyote. When you walk through a thick weedy ditch and they see or hear you coming they RUN, not fly so you can shoot them, they duck and run. So without blockers they'd just run out the other end and get away every time. The blockers force the birds to either fly or turn back towards the dogs and us. It really ends up being a militia strategy to try and outsmart these birds. 90% of the time, they found holes in our attack and escaped un-harmed. The same strategy applies for large open fields, sometimes they would be 200-400 acres of rolling open grass lands. This case we would form a "V" or a "U" and keep the dogs working back and forth in the middle, this forces the birds that try to run out the ends to either fly or turn back into the hounds who are gladly awaiting the race. We got a few birds in the fields and a few in the ditches. We also got a few by the term that was taught to me called "Arkansasing them" which really meant as the last 2 hours of the day would come we would drive around the roads, which are even really roads I might add. They show up on the maps and have road signs on them, but I've cleared nicer four wheeler trails before. Once you leave the highway all the roads are basically dirt and gravel tractor trails. They would have the occasional, section line road, which really is just the farmer’s way of getting to his other fields, but in South Dakota, that's public domain. So anyway, we would empty the guns, only because it's the law. And hold as many shells as your gun would hold in the other hand and drive around until we spotted roosters (a male pheasant) in the road getting gravel to grind his lunch with or see them standing in the ditches and then the driver would speed to the spot they were at and slam on the breaks. Now typically all doors were open before the vehicle stopped, and sometimes we were exiting the vehicle as it was still rolling, but as your feet hit the road you load up your gun as fast as possible and begin to fire at the birds as they flew away. Now by law also, the doors got shut and the engine turned off before anyone fired. This was definitely heart pounding and a good way to get a few more birds in the bag before the day ended, but I enjoyed watching the dogs do the work better, but that's just me. But all in all it was effective when needed to be. With a few scares, a lot of laughs, some great exercise and a trip I won’t soon forget, I'm already looking forward to next year.
-ASMS
