Treb,
09 sounds about right. Seems like our hunting got a little boost right around that year, or the year before. Overall, no matter the state reports, the highest quantities of sightings of birds was at its best 20 yrs ago, on our hunting land around Huron. Much better. The worst I've seen was last year and the year before. There were still pockets of them in decent numbers. Again, just on our friend's properties...probably 10 sections total, scattered southwest of Huron. The Chamberlain area always seems to have higher numbers reported. I'd like to hunt some of the public areas there with the new dog.
This sounds familiar. We hunted around Huron in 2008 and 2009 but in 2010 we headed to Chamberlain. The hunting around Chamberlain was 'ok' and in 2011 it was very poor. We even hunted areas around Webster with similar results. In 2010 Chamberlain was a zoo with hunters. The hotel in town was not even half full in 2011. What hunters were there had similar poor results.
Either way, it's another year and we can only hope the bird situation has improved.