As South Dakota celebrates its 125th anniversary, SDPB is telling the stories of people, places, and things that give our state its identity. South Dakota is known across the country as the place to go to hunt pheasants. More than 132,000 people took part in the pheasant hunt last year, harvesting nearly a million birds. Seventy five thousand of those hunters were from out of state. And that was during a down year.
Take a trip to northeast South Dakota, especially this time of year, and it’s not difficult to see that pheasants are kind of a big deal around here. Driving into Huron you’ll spot the “world’s largest pheasant,” a 22 ton bird made of fiberglass and steel. A pheasant is also featured in that city’s logo. If you visit Redfield’s website and click on the “hunting and tourism” link, you’re greeted with the sound of a pheasant.
Redfield also has a pheasant statue. And at the Historic Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Depot Museum and Visitors Center, travelers can purchase a variety of pheasant themed items: t-shirts, potholders, mugs, and more. It’s one way to remember that they’ve been to the “pheasant capitol of the world.” During hunting season, visitors can also stop at the Depot for coffee and cookies and chat with Kathy Maddox, Redfield’s Tourism Director.
“ It’s very fun to have the guys come back that haven’t hunted for a few years because they can go back into the 50’s to when it was really a big deal,” Maddox says. “A lot of airplanes in our airport, a lot of hunters driving in big cars that we’ve never seen in this area.”
Maddox says Redfield was the place to go, because this is where South Dakota’s identity as a pheasant hunting destination began. The first successful stocking of pheasants took place near Redfield in 1909. And the first pheasant hunt occurred ten years later, on a one day long season in Spink County. These days, Maddox says about 700 to 800 out of state hunters come to her community each week for the first three weeks of the season. She says they make a lasting impact.
“Well of course like everything else it’s a financial gain for the town,” Maddox says. “But there are people that have moved back here, moved to Redfield, and moved to the area in Ashton, Frankfort, and some of those other little towns because they came hunting and they liked this area. They found out that it’s more relaxing. And the people are friendly.”
The pheasant season can mean money for all sorts of businesses in communities large and small in northeast South Dakota. Last year hunters spent about $150 million in the state. Some years they’ve spent close to $220 million. The hunt is especially important for people like Loretta Omland. As a supervisor at Gisi Pheasant Farms, the state bird is her livelihood. Her father started the operation nearly 30 years ago.
“Sometimes I tell our workers, I say we have to be very respectful of our birds because those birds feed a lot of families in this state. They literally do. In more ways than one,” Omland says.
Omland says the birds are raised to not know they’re not wild. The roosters live in pens that are up to amile long. They look like mini corn fields covered in netting.
“And we use different kinds of crops in our pens, to give them some variation so that they learn the difference,” Omland says. “They’ve got plenty of room to learn to fly. They’re nice birds, aren’t they? You won’t see a bird without a tail in here. If you do I’ll be surprised.”
I’ve never seen so many rooster pheasants in one place before. And there are a lot of them here. Omland says the pens near Ipswich can hold 50,000 birds at one time. And another location near Wessington Springs holds 150,000 birds. Most of them are sold to game preserves each fall for hunting season. Omland says it’s rewarding to be a part of something that brings people together.
“You’re in the outdoors, you’re with people that you want to be with, you’re usually on vacation and that’s always fun,” Omland says. “Just the sportsmanship, and the comradery and the, what, do guys get the warm fuzzy feeling when they’re out hunting? I don’t know, but that’s what we see.”
There are more pheasants in South Dakota than any other state in the US. Travis Runia, Senior Upland Game Biologist with the Department of Game Fish and Parks, says that’s because the habitat here is like nowhere else.
“When we have over a million acres of CRP on the ground like we’ve had in the past, that extremely important grassland cover is where pheasants rest and raise their young,” Runia says. “And then on the rest of the landscape we have a lot of cropland where pheasants can find food, and then we also have a lot of shelterbelts, tree belts, and large cattail sloughs where pheasants can survive the winter. So when we have all these habitat components and the right configuration of the landscape like we do in South Dakota, pheasant numbers can reach extremely high densities.”
But ensuring large pheasant numbers takes planning and work. Runia says over the last five years there’s been an increase in the loss of grasslands, and a steep decline in the pheasant population. He’s hopeful that recommendations outlined in the recent Governor’s Pheasant Habitat Workgroup Report can benefit the state bird.
“One of them that really caught my eye was the recommendation to establish a dedicated conservation fund,” Runia says. “This is kind of a new way of generating money. I don’t think the details have been completely worked out, but just a way to generate money to put habitat on the ground.”
Runia says last year was a tough year for pheasant hunting. The decline from 2012 to 2013 was one of the largest on record. He says this year’s roadside survey was up 76 percent from last year. He says he expects hunting should be much better this year, but not as good as it has been in the recent past. Still, the pheasant hunt remains better here than anywhere else.