Pheasant History in South Dakota

In the Beginning
I doubt the one-day season in Spink County carried much resemblance to the festive atmosphere of opening days of modern times. It’s hard to imagine that a bird that currently numbers somewhere near the 10 million mark was once non-existent in this state.

This arguably most prolific game bird known to man didn’t make its appearance on the South Dakota landscape until some 20 years after statehood. In fact, this bird was found nowhere in the wild in North America until 1881 when pheasants were successfully introduced to the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

In South Dakota, initial stockings occurred in 1898 and 1903 near the junction of Split Rock and Big Sioux Rivers indicate that these introductions likely failed. Likewise, the initial attempt to establish a population in Spink County in 1908 was foiled by heavy winter snowfall. But the couple dozen birds that hit the ground a year later on this same farm are believed to have been the start of something special in this state.

Early Seasons
Ten years later that first pheasant season was held in Spink County on October 30, 1991. The estimated harvest that date was around 200 roosters. But that was just the beginning. Trap-and-transfer efforts facilitated a rapid expansion in pheasant numbers in the state. So rapid that by 1926, all but a handful of east-river counties were open to pheasant hunting and for the first time, the harvest surpassed one million. By 1935, statewide pheasant numbers exceeded 12 million and the entire state was open to pheasant hunting. By the time the state legislature labeled this transplanted resident the state bird of South Dakota in 1943, it was apparent that this bird was here to stay.

The expansion in popularity of pheasant hunting closely followed expansions in pheasant numbers. Resident hunter numbers surpassed 100,000 for the first time in 1928. While the habitat provided by idled farm mields o fthe dirty thirties proved beneficial to pheasant abundance, the accompanying national economic depression likely inhibited the ability of citizens to fully enjoy the boon.

Once again in the early 1940s idled farms and ideal weather provided for a boom in pheasant numbers. Resident hunters enjoyed the bounty but the attention of our nation was focused on the Second World War and nonresident hunter numbers remained relatively low. The first pheasant season following allied forces victories overseas attracted national attention when nonresident hunter numbers surged to a previously unheard of 87,000. the next year, 84,000 nonresident pheasant hunters returned.

Residents Only
The surge in nonresident hunter numbers in 1945 and 1946 was more than resident hunters could swallow and they convinced the legislature to ban nonresidents from hunting during the first 10 days of the next two (1947 and 1948) pheasant seasons. Despite a strong pheasant population, only 13,000 nonresidents returned to the state to hunt pheasants in 1947. Pheasant numbers were also strong in 1949 when the prohibition expired yet most nonresident hunters looked elsewhere for their recreation. From this period through the early 1950s, an average of 109,000 resident and 21,000 nonresident hunters bagged an average of 1.7 million pheasants per year.

Ups and Downs
Then along came a U.S. agricultural department program called Soil Bank. Soil Bank was much the same as our modern-day version, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Pheasant response to habitat created by the Soil Bank program was nothing short of phenomenal. the impact of Soil Bank peaked from 1961-63 when an annual average of 200,000 (141,000 residents and 59,000 nonresidents)pheasant hunters bagged over nine million roosters.

When Soil Bank left, so did the pheasants. For the next 20 years, there were some good years but a lot more poor years for pheasants and hunters in South Dakota. Places like Iowa and Kansas were dubbed teh premier pheasant hunting destinations.

By late 1980s critical grassland habitat was returning to the South Dakota landscape with implementation of the CRP program. Yet many of the acres enrolled during the infancy of CRP were outside of the best pheasant range in the state. Modifications in the CRP program enrollment provisions that put over a million acres of habitat in eastern South Dakota turned the state into a duck factory when this habitat ws coupled with the wet weather trends of the 1990s. Pheasant numbers improved, but the ducky weather trend kept pheasants from responding to their full potential.

The devastating winter of 1996-97 gave pheasant numbers one last kick in the gut before the fortunes of pheasant hunters turned. by the turn of the century, excellent habitat aligned with favorable weather conditions and we were on our way to the modern-day record populations that we currently enjoy.

by Tony Leif

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