The Wonderful World of Sout Dakota

About two weeks ago my dad asked me if I wanted to go to South Dakota for a pheasant hunt with my cousin Jay and some friends from Indiana. I wasn't overly eager to jump at the opportunity, because of a few things. One reason was "the rut" was just around the corner and I had a great deer on my trail cam, and the though of missing my opportunity at a shot at him made me sick. The second reason was Kari and I had just bought our first house and she was doing most of the moving herself. Lastly, I was very skeptical about South Dakota as a whole. I had never been there but all I could think of was a flat chunk of nothingness with little to offer besides a rich history of native culture and Mount Rushmore. On the other hand I don't get to spend a lot of time with my dad away from work, so I decided to go on the trip. At the time I viewed the trip as a huge sacrifice for me (like any man would). Along with not being much help to my wife during our move I was stepping away from a chunk of prime time deer hunting and Shrek (Shrek is what I named the deer that has been showing up in my trail cam and haunting my dreams for the last month).

From the moment we arrived at Wagon Wheel Ranch in Kimball, South Dakota my expectations were exceeded. The lodge was beautiful, the rooms were more than comfortable, the food was great, and the owners Curt and Maureen and their son Michael were awesome right form the get go. We arrived on the evening of the 6th and were scheduled to hunt the next morning. Because of regulations we were not allowed to start hunting until 10am (I don't know why the regulations are set this way but when your cousin wakes you up at 5am it makes for a long morning). Before we headed out Curt went over some safety rules and explained how we would be hunting. Curt also explained to Jay and I that it was only legal to shoot roosters (male pheasants) and the rest of the crew all chimed in on how you could tell the difference between the two. They said there was nothing to it at all... roosters make a clucking sound when they get up to fly, roosters have longer tails, roosters are way more colorful, roosters flap their tail when they take off ect (sounds pretty easy). Curt gave the best tip and said that the easiest way to tell the difference between roosters and hens was that roosters had a thick white ring around their neck and hens do not.  We would be walking rectangular food plots, driving the pheasant with walkers and dogs while each side of the food plot would be occupied by flankers, and blockers at the end of each.

After our pheasant orientation we hopped on a school bus painted like a tiger and headed out to our field. On the first drive Curt and Michael set me up at the end of the plot blocking. Once again I wasn't sure what to expect but as soon as the drivers started walking around 300 pheasants kicked up out of the field. It was remarkable! Just to clear things up a little bit, despite what Indiana boys may say, when you are pheasant hunting for the first time and 300 pheasants are flushed out of a field it IS NOT easy to determine roosters from hens. In fact out of the 200 birds that flew within shooting range of me all 200 made it out safe and sound. I was so in awe that I didn't get a single shot off. Fortunately for me, one rooster stayed in the field about a minute longer than his buddies and when he flushed up I was ready and able to make a good second shot (note: Curt was right. The white ring on the neck of the roosters is one of the best ways to distinguish roosters form hens). The rest of the day was filled with similar action. Every field was filled with life. Lots of birds and the occasional deer. We had 10 guys hunting in our group, and with the limit of 3 pheasant per-person, our group limit was 30 birds. We had our limit by 12:30 despite me going 2 for 10 on my shooting... It was crazy. We hopped back on the bus and headed back to the lodge for a great lunch. After lunch we walked out to the skeet shooting range they have at the ranch to brush up on our trap skills.That night we had a great dinner, shot some bull and headed off to bed to do it all over again.

Day two, three, and four were almost identical the the first day. There wasn't a day where we didn't have a limit before 1:00 pm. It was one of the best hunting trips I have ever been on in every way.  I highly recommend the Wagon Wheel Ranch and this trip to anyone who loves the outdoors (I will definitely be making another trip). Curt, Maureen, and Michael are amazing at what they do and their hospitality is second to none. Last, I have to put my foot in my mouth and admit that South Dakota is beautiful and flat.

Sorry about the pictures. They were taken from my I-Phone but I will put better ones up as soon as I get them. 

Wagon Wheel Ranch
www.dakota-pheasant-hunting.com/index.htm
curt@dakota-pheasant-hunting.com
(605) 830-2925

    

Catching Up and Ghosts of the Fall

To everyone who reeds this, I owe you a huge apology for the inconsistency of my entries. August was busy, busy, busy (with three weddings), but I did manage to spend a fair amount of time on the water. The beginning of the month was a little tough for trout, walleye and bass, but the northern on Whitefish Bay were nothing short of amazing. We blasted a bunch of them that averaged from 9-16lbs and a few that came close to the 20lb range. Whitefish Bay is remarkable for big northern and is one of Northwestern Ontario's best kept secrets for monster northern (it's the only place that I have ever found northerns in schools). Most of my success, that time of the year, comes from trolling deep diving crank baits (10ft or deeper) over top of 30-60ft of water. Deep points and deep secluded islands are usually the places to troll.

September also produced a lot of great fishing. Actually it is one of my favorite times of the year to fish. The fall generally produces good numbers of fish and gives you a great chance of catching a monster of any species. This happens because fish usually go on a big food binge before the winter months. They usually start their food bender in mid September until ice on. These cold weather months have contributed to some of my best fishing days, but this time of year can be a pain in the butt to fish because of the cold weather. You have to dress like your heading out ice fishing in order to make it all day.

October has been bitter sweet. Its always the month that I make the transition from fishing to hunting but this year I spent the first half of the month on a reserve (Kasabonki) helping my dad fly out moose hunters. We got to Kas on the Sept 15th and left there on Oct 11th. Just before we left I reset my trail cams and when I came back I was a little disappointed to find that there was very little that had moved past my cameras. Prior to leaving I was averaging around 1400 pics a month between two cameras but the whole month I was gone I only had a total of 200 pics between the two... Not what I was expecting at all. Honestly I was shattered... I have spent a lot of time putting up stands, cutting trails, and scouting and to come up with hardly anything on the cameras so close to season was depressing to say the least (I all most pulled my cameras from the two areas altogether).

The next week was just as frustrating. Byron, Kari, Tinker, and I guided a couple of moose hunters out at Krooked Lake and came up short. Over the 6 days that we spent out there we only saw two cows. The weather wasn't in our favor and it seemed like wherever we went we were always a step behind what we were looking for. There were fresh tracks on every section so shoreline that we touched but there was never anything standing in the tracks. On the last day Byron and one of the guys we were guiding went for a walk through the woods and when they came back a bull had walked between where they had parked the boat and the tree line. It was enough to make me want to pull my hair out, but it's a part of hunting. When we lose as hunters its always a tough pill to swallow (getting outsmarted by an animal with a smaller brain capacity never goes well).

When we got back from the hunt I was ready to get back in the boat and forget hunting for the rest of the year, but yesterday afternoon I decided to head out to the tree stand and check the trail cams one more time. I got out to the stand around 3:00pm and sat there until dark. At about 5:45 I saw something that looked like a doe about 300 yards away. I thought she spotted me because she wasn't moving at all. After 5min of her not moving I pulled up my scope and saw that I had been looking at a brown shrub. It's sad to say that the shrub was the most exciting part of my trip out to the stand. As I was leaving pulled the camera card out of my camera and shut my camera off. When I got home I plugged my camera card into the computer and saw that a great buck had been in the area every day this week (what was kind of depressing was that it had been standing in front of my camera an hour before I got out there).  Last night I could hardly sleep. I got up this morning at 5:30am and headed out to my ground blind at daybreak. The whole morning I froze my tail off and to make things worse I didn't see a thing. I took a short break at 11:00am, put some more clothes on, and was back in my blind at 12:00pm. The afternoon was almost as slow as the morning. I saw a fox around 2:00 and by 3:00 I had made a little squirrel my friend. I shared my Triscuits with him and in a few hours he was almost eating out of my hand (I have a short attention span). At 5:45pm I was busted. A deer got wind of me and all I could do was listen to it run of and snort at me. I didn't even get to see it but it couldn't have been more than 50 yards away when it caught wind of me. What is so amazing to me is how such large animals can be so quiet in the woods. They are just like ghosts that haunt hunters all fall and leave many of us heartbroken at the end of the year.

I'll keep you all posted on how the end of the season turns out. Thanks again for reading.