doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com South Dakota Increases Nonresident Hunting Fees

Then please consider my opening paragraph. It is the SD's Game and Fish Commission's version.

Go a little later. Then you can start at 10, and there won't be as many hunters.

I've hunted sunrise states, I've hunted SD, and mostly I've hunted IA--which has been 8 for a very long time. 8, I think, is a pretty good compromise. Sunrise on a dark morning . . . good luck telling a hen from a rooster. By the way, having driven around quite a bit in pheasant country before sunrise, I can confirm that pheasants are often up and on the move well before sunrise.

Now if you want a really stupid reg on pheasant seasons/hours . . . why does the IA season always end on Jan 10, no matter what day of the week that is? Why not make the last day the 2nd Sunday in Jan, thus giving hunters with normal jobs 2 Jan weekends??

Or if you don't like the way things are done and can't understand the logic behind when in Rome do as the Romans do, don't go.

Once again, it is hard to argue with the success of the SD's G&F in managing pheasants, so why question their methods when you come to share and enjoy in their success?

Geesh!

A guy states an opinion about some goofy regulation. The next thing he knows out come the mean spirited comments. If you don't like it stay home, or wait a couple of weeks then you can start at ten. Or if your so dumb that you can't understand the logic don't go. Please stay away, please, please, please.

All I'm stating is my opinion and it's only my opinion. The late start time makes no sinse!! It has nothing to do with why SD has great bird numbers. The bird population and the harvest numbers come from all the planted birds the big commercial operations raise & release, plus the benifit of all the habitat dollars we hunters & tax payers helped the state, Fed's, & private farmers put in the ground over the last two or three decades.

One of my big objections to the noon start on the opener is the health of our canine friends. There has been several opening weekends in SD with very warm temperatures. Starting at noon makes you hunt into the hottest part of the day & this is hard on a lot of dogs. It was only a few years ago that over a hundred dogs died on opening day because of the heat. Maybe if they could have started in the cooler part of the day, some of those dogs wouldn't have met such a fate for just trying to please their human hunting buddies.

Now I've probably opened myself up to something like. If your dumb enough to hunt your dog when it's so hot you shoudn't be allowed to own a dog or something along those lines.

Dogon, you're fighting against success and tradition. Since SD attracts something on the order of 100,000 nonresident pheasant hunters a year, and since they kill about twice as many pheasants as the next best state, what they're doing obviously works--as far as they're concerned.

Re all the dog deaths a few years back . . . well yeah, dog owners ARE responsible for where and how they hunt their dogs. (And for what kind of condition their dogs are in, going into the season.) I go to SD pretty much every year, a month ahead of the pheasant opener, to hunt prairie grouse. If the hours were the same for those birds they are for pheasants, I'm not sure I'd go. And we hunt them, for the most part, in a lot lighter cover than you hunt pheasants.

Re the impact of the big lodges and outfitters, it'd be interesting to see a breakdown on the number of birds they shoot. If they classify themselves as a preserve, then the limit increases from 3 a day to 5. I don't know how much that affects the total harvest numbers released by the state. But when SD does its pre-season pheasant survey--which is before those big lodges start to release birds--they often report incredible bird densities in the best parts of the state.

Back not so many years ago, we used to shoot more birds in IA than they did in SD--and IA doesn't have any big lodges or outfitters. If the habitat is there and the weather breaks right, pheasant numbers can increase very quickly. CRP was first authorized in 1985. By 1987, the pheasant harvest in Iowa was 1.5 million, which was twice what it had been in 1984.

dogon, I stepped on your toes and I will apologise. But stop a minute and think how your opinion, when stated publicly steps on those toes of us who are residents.

SD is once again my declared state of primary residence and for decades there, here in Montana and around my property in ND, I and my neighbors have listen to out of staters whine or [censored] about this or that.

It is like having a dinner guest who complains that the meat is to rare or tough or because it was broiled rather than grilled, as well as several other small nags.

Let me share with you an encounter I had at a Cenex station, four or five years ago.

A gent of maybe 45 and with a companion of about the same age pulled up to the adjacent pump in a new Suburban.

He looks at my PF sticker, my MT license plate, my garb and the dogs in my rig and says something like "I bet you got birds."

I nodded and he takes off on a real rip. "Well if these damn landowner appreciated how much we spend coming here to hunt, maybe they wouldn't be so bitchy about letting someone hunt."

Rather dumbfounded I say "Pardon me". He goes on and on about me and my neighbors not liking out of staters and refuse permission to hunt and tell him to go hunt the blocks; that is what they are there for. For two days that was how they had been treated.

Now I come uncorked. I point out that he is driving a rig bought out of state, wearing the best from L.L. Bean, bought out of state, putting gas in his rig from a station that belong to a MN corporation, has his dogs sitting in a WW. Western Crate, bought out of state. I told him I was pretty sure the dogs and the guns in the gun vault were bought out of state and the ammo too, since I could see Fioche Golden Pheasant boxes on the back seat.

So I ask him just how "grateful we all should be that he and his buddy bought two dinners and two breakfasts and drop two nights lodging with the motel owner from Billings?

His retort. "God, you are all alike. If the state didn't want us here, they wouldn't be selling licenses."

Well dogon, the state doesn't spend much around Sidney, certainly not enough that we should have to endure opinions that would best be left unsaid.

As I went back to pumping gas, I told him I had no doubts as to why my neighbors sent him down the road.

Now I grant you, this was the worst of all I have heard. Most out of staters are a pretty decent sort. In fact, I host near twenty of them every year, many of them from this board, others from the Shooting Sportsman board and the Nots board. I rather enjoy their company.

In short an out of state hunter is not a guest of the state, but of the little community he hunts around and it's inhabitants.

Guests should be mindful of what they say, no matter how insignificant it may be.

So, since I stepped on your toes, please let me apologise.

(Back not so many years ago, we used to shoot more birds in IA than they did in SD--and IA doesn't have any big lodges or outfitters. If the habitat is there and the weather breaks right, pheasant numbers can increase very quickly. CRP was first authorized in 1985. By 1987, the pheasant harvest in Iowa was 1.5 million, which was twice what it had been in 1984.)

Thanks Larry!

You made my point exactly. It's all about the habitat. Your also correct in, It's also about the wheather. Bad winters combined with the wrong kind of spring & summer can affect birds numbers dramatically as well. We all have proof of that this year by seeing how the dry weather has affected things. Good quality habitat can soften the affects of weather as we all know.

Question Larry: Why doesn't Iowa still harvest over a million birds a year or out-pace SD today?

I'll answer it for you. It's simple, The loss of CRP acreage, or put another way, the loss of quality habitat.

All states are suffering from the same loss of CRP. The difference in South Dakota is the commercial operations that recognize the value of quality habitat and the raising & releasing thousands of birds into it every year.


As far as the dog thing goes. Human nature takes over in most cases. When the average person antisipates a trip to a place like SD for the opener & has done all the planning, travel, etc. I can assure you that most guy's will hunt thier dogs even if it was 100f at noon on opening day. All I'm saying is it would be better to start earlier in the day, before the heat really set's in.

I've hunted prairie grouse myself several times on the opening week of the grouse season in SD. One year it was over a hundred degrees each day & it would get in the high eighties by 8am. That year you could only hunt your dog's safely for the first two hours after sunrise & even then you had to really watch your dog's and keep them hydrated while you had them on the ground.

I know I'm tilting at windmills when I talk about SD's pheasant hunting hours. But I do still have my opinions about it and those are based on years of hunting most of the western/ mis-western upland bird hunting states. I still say "South Dakota's rules are goofy" for a lot of different reasons!

We get all kinds here RCC. The one that tops my list happend to my neighbor this pheasant season. A nice rig with Washington state plates pulls in his yard during morning chores. The guy asked my neighbor permission to hunt his ranch. My neighbor thinks it over, says yeah what the hell, and started to walk away. The hunter hollers at him to wait a minute then goes to his rig and brings out a big box of fresh Washington cherries and apples as a gift. You can bet that gesture will insure a hunt next year. Why does my neighbor get the good guys and I get all the idiots? J.R.B. jerb

jrb,

More of them are OK Joes than not. It just seems that there is always a whiner among the gentry when they arrive each year. Sometimes you listen to them in the gas station, sometimes at the PF Banquet, someimes at the diner.

We had one last week at our PF banquet that wanted to know why we didn't play a bingo game for a gun, like they do at home. He went from committee man to committee man with it.

It just gets old after a while.

Bob,

I also didn't mean to step on anyones toe's & I apologise as well.

I watch your posts on all the boards and believe it or not we have way more in common than we do differences in opinion. We both hunt the same states, have the same love for the people, land & lore of these places. More importantly though is we share the love of our dogs and the adventures we have with them.

Let me get this straight. I truly love the state of South Dakota!! I've hunted the state alot over the years and do accept the rules & regulations for hunting there. I'm not trying change a thing. All I've been doing is stating my opinion on an internet discussion board of the things that makes me scratch my head & I believe they could do better job with. The late starting time is one of those IMO.