How big of an area if affected by the oil field work in regards to to lodging, food etc? I am considering a trip north with the bird dog next year if bird populations are decent. I have hunted the Dickinson area of ND and The Glascow/Plentywood are of MT in the past. I have heard lodging can now be a real problem around Dickinson. Any input greatly appreciated.
Steve

My experience in NE Montana over the last 3 years is that Bakken related activity is increasing a lot. To the point where we are considering looking for a quieter area to hunt.

Forester

Not only will there be a problem finding lodging etc., but I suspect a lot of those Bakken workers might like to find some hunting while they are staying in the area.

My friend RCC can speak more directly to it, but think "Gold Rush": prices and people. Five dollars for a tomato, four or five bucks for a gallon of gas, and not a place to stay for 500 miles.
Bob moved out of Eastern Montana because he was sick of the oil boom, and I flew there to chase roosters with him one more time a year and a half ago.

Your biggest challenge will be lodging- there isn't any. Drive up in a motorhome or pulling your camper- about the only way to insure you'll have a place to lay your head when the birds are cleaned and the dogs are asleep.

Hi Mark, I'm just going to address your question as my feelings on the oil boom here will turn into a rant and how it's been a curse for my beloved state.

So.....

1) Place to stay: Good luck finding any decent place to stay, there just isn't any. The places you may find are flea traps and they will charge you an arm and a leg. Better to bring camper or stay in Bismarck and drive a hour or two to hunt.

2) Food: The prices do reflect a "gold rush" attitude. A 20oz bottle of pop here in central ND is about a $1.29 or so, out in the patch it's close to $4.00 Cost of food in a store is also high as is cafes or other eating establishments. Much higher than normal.

3) Place to hunt: Still some areas, but a lot are getting harder to get on to due to oil leases, roads tore up by trucks, man camps. It's a different world there now.

4) Personal Safety: Be damn careful. The crime rate has gone thru the roof. There are a lot of dead beats, crooks and slimy people who came out here to work thinking it was easy. Couldn't hack it...so they do what they did best before they came here....prey on other people.

The best thing you can do is to start to plan now or hunt in the central part of the state, untouched...... so far!

It's not a pretty picture, those are the facts. I do wish you the best of luck and if you need any help, let me know.

Best!

Greg

Thank you all for the input. I did speak to a couple of motels in Plentywood and they do have rooms. I'm thinking that might be an option, or more central ND. Thank you all for your input.
Steve

Drag a camper. I did this a year and a half ago. You pay a bit usury rates to camp in a public hookup, but that's just part of the game. Taking your own housing is the safest option, PLUS, and this is a tremendous benefit - you can hook up and leave an area without having to worry about finding a new place for your head.

Still plenty of places to hunt. Still plenty of birds. We based out of Stanley.

I will second what Greg offered you for advise, Steve. I will add to it that the hunting around Plentywood and Froid is much tighter now than it was as recent as two years ago.

Vandalism from those parasites that have followed the money to the Bakken has caused a huge number of local landowners to either shut down their grounds or limit access to those who have hunted on them for years.

That has forced the huge number of Canadian hunters who hunt that region the first couple of weeks over on to the blocks. Between the normal pressure on the blocks and the added pressure of those hunters and those who work the Bakken hunting the blocks, the hunting to say the least is discouraging.

Two years ago, I took Daryl Hallquist, Dr. Bob and another gentleman into that area. All morning long, across maybe a dozen blocks, we found two or more rigs of hunters already pounding the cover in every block we looked at in a 60 mile radius.

I finally call a landowner I know and was able to get us on his farm where we shot a limit or two of roosters.

Finally let me warn you of staying in a camper. The occupants of such are principle targets for armed robberies. The parasites capitalise on the isolation of a camper from help and the lack of cell service to call for help.

Since June of 2013, in the little town of Sidney, MT, the FBI, the DEA and the MBI have all opened full service field offices.

That many major law agencies being put into a town of 5,500 residents should tell everyone something. BTW, Sidney has and has had for decades, both a very good police force and a sheriff's departments.

So how far east does someone need to drive into ND to miss the madness of the oil patch?

Roughly? Bismarck. The pay to play grounds around Mott, Regent and New England are more or less insulated from the madness, as are some areas north of Hettinger and around Stranton.

I will tell you for certain, that other than the pay to play operations in SD, ND now has the best pheasant hunting. MT has never had pheasant hunting on the same level as SW ND. Less so now, what with the patch madness.

Ethanol has caused the SD East River farmers to drain every slough and bulldoze every shelterbelt that will give them another acre for corn.

As such, it is just a matter of time before the flood of people going into ND causes landowners to drop out of their PLOTS program and go to daily fees.

Lots of out of staters are in large part what caused ND to go to a specific number of days permitted on a non-resident license about a decade ago and it is what grew the play for play status of SD.

Please! Let no one go ballistic over that last paragraph, but the truth is that the pheasant cover that is productive is no where near the miles and miles of prairie on the High Plains and being finite it will only accommodate so many hunters. As the traveling hunter finds less in SD and MT he will concentrate on ND and ND will respond to the pressure.

Hi, first off , sorry Steve for calling you Mark, don't know what I was thinking. For the most part, Bob has nailed it about here in ND. The areas he stated for fee hunting is in large part due to folks from out of state. The farmers here are not the dumb rubes some folks think they are, they're smart business people. If they can make an easy buck, they will. The status of PLOTS has also changed, at one time we had a million acres in PLOTS, but no more. Raising crop prices took care of that and CRP acres as well. The only thing about PLOTS is for the most part, they were never that good. A lot were hayed and grazed down to nothing or cattle were in them and the cover was not that good. There still is some good PLOTS, but they get hit hard early to mid season. Late in the season, when most fair weather guys are done, they can pay off. WPA's can also be great, but all are non-tox shot.

What gets my goat is, this year the Game and Fish raised all the fees for fishing and hunting. A resident combo license went from $32 to $50. Why? To better habitat or so they say. The state has $$ coming out their a$$ from the oil companies, yet they won't give anything to improve the public hunting this state prides itself. Just don't understand some of the thinking.

Bird number have been down the last couple of years due to bad winters and poor nesting conditions. This winter was damn cold, but not a lot of snow and they did well. We just had a major storm come thru two days ago, high winds and a lot of snow, I hope they made it thru ok. One good thing is, it was not a mid or late spring storm, so they were not on the nest yet. Hoping for a good spring, but time will tell on that.

As Bob said, if you want to pay to hunt, go to the Mott area, if not, I'd look to places north of I-94, but not to far east of Bismarck.

Best!

Greg

Speaking as a land owner in West Dakota, all of the two legged bad apples have stretched my kindness and generosity to the max. I look at ALL out of state license plates with suspicion. I'm sure most West Dakota land owners feel like me.

I spend lots of time in the fall most years hunting west river in SD. We have been going to the same areas for a dozen or so years. Last year was the worst I have ever seen for both Deer and Pheasants. I'm not looking to kill my limit in 2 hours nor am I looking to pay big bucks for access. I just want a place to run the dog without being over run by other hunters and with a decent chance of putting a few wild birds in the bag. The search continues.....

Steve,

Larry Brown and I have been telling people since about 2000 that we were in the last of the great haydays for wild pheasant hunting and if we all didn't get into as much as our time and resources would allow, we would see it disappear without enjoying it.

I am afraid that those days are here. The high price for corn because of Ethanol, CRP disappearing with the termination of the farm bill that supported so much CRP, the Bakken Oil Boom and three killer winters in a row starting in October of 2008 has pretty much sounded the death toll for wild pheasants on the High Plains.

What happened to the superb pheasant hunting around Sterling and Holyoke CO in the mid to late 70's is now wide spread from Kansas to the Canadian line.

If it was me and all I wanted was a place to run the dog without being over run by other hunters, I would hunt the Highline in MT somewhere west of Shelby, perhaps. You would have to put in some miles per rooster, but you could shoot some birds and the MT birds of opportunity, the Hun and the Sharpie are always a maybe for the bag too. You might want to do it this fall, though. The oil play is sprawling it's way to Cut Bank.

You mention west river and for years I hunted a 12,000 acre farm that straddle both sides of the ND/SD line. The landowner invited friends in for the SD opener and 20 or more hunters would harvest 60 birds on each side of the line and we would not even dent the bird numbers.

That land has been sold and is now farmed from bar pit to bar pit and I know that three hunters are now hard pressed with good dogs to get a limit in either state. I still have access to adjacent lands over there and that is just what it was this past season.

I had a good hunt on the Musselshell North of Billings a few years back. Decent numbers of Roosters and some sharpies and Huns. I might look into that too.

The area I hunt West River has not changed due to Ethanol or a change in farming techniques. Many places are unmolseted grasslands for large stretches but last winter was brutal on the birds. I'll keep looking and make a decision closer to fall.

Interesting topic as I am from Plentywood have lived in Az for 28 years. Family Farm is 7 mi West of Plentywood (sorry small farm not much to offer hunting opportunities to anyone)
I can ask some friends back home about the situation.
Hope to be driving a Hummer with bull horns on the hood if we get an oil well or 2.

Wannago,

Things have changed with bird numbers way down, maybe the lowest in over a decade and increased numbers driving the roads and knocking on doors.

The tribal council closed the Upland season on the Rez in its entirety for the 2012 season. I don't know for sure that they did this last season, but I think someone told me they had.

Their management decision speaks volumes about the status of the pros and cons of Upland hunting on either side of the hwy from Culbertson to Plentywood.

This whole situation just makes me ill... I started bird hunting as a teenager, living in Williston, back in the mid-60's. It was so great, both upland and waterfowl. Have not been back since 1994, and probably won't go back again.

I'm a geologist who's been researching unconventional oil plays, such as the Bakken, for the last two years. Unfortunately, the Bakken is one play I haven't thoroughly researched yet. However, a simple google search using Bakken Formation quickly found this image.



I'm certain there are images that can define the area better.

BTW the Bakken Formation is found in the Williston Basin, also outlined on this map. As the price of oil goes up there's a chance the area marked Extent of Bakken Formation will expand outwards.

Steve

Steve, Russ Atkins the senior Geophysicist for Continental in the play, told me that extensive drilling would be as far west as Cutbank MT, south to Hardin MT, south by Southeast to Buffalo SD, East to Lemmon SD and north from there through ND, back into Canada by 2018.

He also told me that if the political climate of our Country changes in the next 20 years, the estimated longevity of this play, the oil companies will drill more aggressively below the Bakken for there is more oil there than in the Bakken, perhaps as much or more than whats under the Saudis. That would make a hundred year play in the Williston Basin.