A Hungarian Partridge Story

I just got back from South Dakota releasing Hungarian Partridge and doing some habitat management. If you’re wondering why we need to release Hungarian Partridge in South Dakota when we have so many pheasants, I wonder that myself sometimes too. But seriously, we are just trying to make our already outstanding bird hunting even better. Who doesn’t love a mixed bag? Hunters at our operation will soon be able to hunt pheasants, sharptail grouse and hopefully Hungarian partridge as well.

The “Partridge Plan” has been in the works for the last three years and we finally have things rocking. We built two Johnny Houses, each supplied with a Total Recall System and two Covey Base Camps. The object is to get the birds to become “wild” while providing some form of food, water and shelter to give them a head start. We bought adult “huns” (locally known as partridge, but we call them huns in Idaho) from Cranberry Creek Gamebirds.

After a 28 hour road trip, they (the huns) showed up alive and healthy and I ran around like my head was cut off trying to get them placed throughout the property before they all died on me. After a long, stressful day I got all the birds out, watered, fed and the callers set up. The Total Recall Systems send out a signal every seven minutes throughout the day to keep the birds in the area. Now the only things we have to worry about is the weather and predators.

For habitat, we have re-seeded native grasses as well as thousands of trees and shrubs for cover. Along with all of the cropland, the pheasant habitat is awesome! While I was there, I checked our trees for any loss and was pleasantly surprised at how well the new seedlings are doing. I think that one more year of re-plants should do it, and boy am I glad because planting thousands of trees by hand isn’t a fun job.

As a side note, I’ve never seen so many pheasants in one area as I did during this trip. The amount of young birds is mind-boggling. It’s going to be a great season. We do still have a few openings available, so if you’ve ever wanted to hunt in South Dakota, you couldn’t pick a better year. Check it out.