Wow! David covered that pretty thoroughly. Like David, I prefer the weeds and reeds and slews to the cornfield bird drive type hunts. Unfortunately, I am part of a group that hunts that way on private land. The good part is that often our group is too large to be compliant with the max limit of hunters in a field and the landowner knows several of us like to hunt in small groups with our dogs and he sends us off on our own.
SD Game & Fish dept identifies the areas of the state and the bird counts. Most of the birds are in the eastern half of the state with some really hot spots along the I-90 in the central area.
http://www.sdgfp.info/Wildlife/hunting/Pheasant/BroodReport.pdf
