What has been your success in South Dakota?

[BLACKJACK]

Labs, sounds like you guys do it up right!!! I liked your idea about personalizing the gifts. As far as the hunting goes, we have a couple of older guys without dogs that we need to work into the hunt, usually as posters. Sometimes they leave early and then we can hunt 'Minnesota style' and go hit some of the bigger areas. We've also tried that hunting toward each other to confuse and hold the birds, with some good success. Unfortunatly a lot of the area that we have to hunt is more shelterbelts and smaller grass areas, anything bigger gets hayed off, unless it has rocks or water in it. But its excellent hunting, as you mentioned a lot of the times the hunt is over too fast.

I love hunting those roosters!!!! I've always said, when I die and goto heaven I'll have an older lab that plods along 20 yards ahead of me while we hunt pheasants for eternity! Or if I die and goto he11 I'll have a young lab that busting the birds up 100 yards ahead with the look over his shoulder 'boss I found all the birds, where are you'??!

[rundrave]

was out today. woke up expecting snow and 30+ mph winds.

Turned out to be a great day for a hunt. Was a little on the cold side but was perfect for hunting.

2 guys and my GSP had a limit in a hour and half of hunting. The land we hunted today hadn't been hunted since early November so most of the birds weren't too educated yet.

I think I saw more birds today than I ever have in a single day of hunting. The rooster's that sight tight over my dogs point were surely taken advantage of.

Only a few weeks left, and I will be out again tomorrow.

[paintbrush]

A buddy and myself just got back yesterday from a 4 day hunt up by Eureka SD. We saw thousands of birds and shot our limits each day.We never saw another hunter in those 4 days!Hunted both public and private land,and actually took more birds off of public then private even though we hunted both about equally.Birds were not down in the heavy cover but on the edges.Very little snow on the ground. Nice to see all those birds. Hope the winter and spring are easy on them.

[UGUIDE]

Paintbrush, I can also confirm those numbers as in talking with my owner at the Aberdeen Pheasant Camp. they really need to thin them out up there.

We do an annual father/sons hunt at my place in Charles Mix County and we hunted with 6-8 guys for each of 3 days. We ended up with 54 birds total which is not too bad consdiering we didn't even hunt with dogs on the 3rd day. Our 2 shorthairs had a lame paw and got a barbwire cut. So, on that last day we got a new appreciation for what is it is like to "be the dog".

Some spots were looking pretty thinned out whichs is good and others were loaded with birds. In one spot right off a main road there was 10 roosters sitting in a tree. We had permission to hunt and we wen't though it once and I went through a box of shells blocking. Then we walked through it again in opposite directions and got more birds out that the first time.

Here's a pic