Spring nest success in South Dakota points to a promising pheasant season ahead

It’s nearing the end of August, and for the fourth year in a row, upland game bird enthusiasts are without an official pheasant brood and habitat survey from the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks.

In the spring of 2020, the GF&P abandoned the survey, having partnered with the state Department of Tourism to develop a marketing campaign aimed at attracting more nonresident hunters to the state. So, in preparation for fall, hunters are largely left to anecdotes to gauge the upcoming season in South Dakota’s uplands.

At the beginning of this month, I reached out to GF&P communications staff with a number of questions surrounding the survey, including whether or not the department has any future plans to generate an official, scientific assessment of pheasant numbers and related habitat. I was also interested in speaking with Alex Solem, the new senior upland game bird supervisor for the GF&P, to visit with him about his role with the department and do a deeper dive into habitat and weather conditions, the Conservation Reserve Program, and more.

My request to interview Solem was denied, and the questions I had about the survey were not answered.

Instead, I was given a general statement from Nick Harrington, a member of GF&P communications staff, and provided with a link to a podcast produced by the department. In it, Harrington and fellow GF&P communications staffer Chris Hull speak with Solem about the outlook for pheasants and other upland game birds this fall.

It’s a good podcast that includes great information, some of which I’ll summarize below, and I’d encourage you to listen to it. Harrington and Hull ask the right questions, and Solem does an excellent job covering a wide variety of topics.

That said, it’s not the same as being able to conduct my own interview, and it is yet another example of the lack of transparency and openness that has come to define the current administration in Pierre. But I digress … this concerted effort to control any and all narratives regarding our natural resources is a topic for another day.

Instead, let’s talk pheasants, sharp-tailed grouse, and more.

The good news, according to the conversation with Solem on the GF&P podcast, is that, in spite of the harsh weather that socked much of South Dakota during the winter months, there is reason to be optimistic heading into fall.

“The winter was certainly a challenge – we can’t not acknowledge that – but we’ve had such a good nesting season that I think our (pheasant) production is going to be pretty good this year,” Solem says in the podcast.

The peak of the pheasant season typically arrives in the third or fourth week of June, and timely rains during the spring and early summer helped set the stage for ideal conditions at that point in time. With soil moisture levels boosted because of the snow during the winter and the landscape refreshed with gentle rain showers rather than torrential downpours, hen pheasants across South Dakota’s primary pheasant range were greeted with lush cool-season grasses for nesting, and, once hatched, the young pheasants had the cover and insects needed to grow and survive.

This likely increased the brood survival rate, Solem said, which is exactly what the birds needed to overcome winter losses and the overall dry conditions that were affecting much of South Dakota heading into 2023.

As a result, Solem says that reports coming into his office in Huron include staff seeing pheasant broods with greater numbers of chicks – an indication of a larger year-class of pheasants, and meaning that more young birds are likely to flush in front of hunters.

“I think we’re setting ourselves up for a pretty decent fall,” Solem said.

Regarding sharp-tailed grouse and prairie chickens, Solem said that spring lek counts for the native upland birds were largely unchanged from last year, although grouse numbers, specifically on the Ft. Pierre National Grasslands were “down a bit.”

Still, the results of the spring surveys were encouraging, Solem added, despite the winter of 2022-23.

“Our spring lek counts aren’t really indicative of how the fall is going to be because it is kind of assessing what our overwinter survival was,” he said. “So, if it’s unchanged from last year, I would assume that survival was pretty normal (and) that carryover, hopefully, into the nesting season was pretty good.”

South Dakota’s prairie grouse season opens Sept. 16 and runs through Jan. 7, 2024, with a daily limit of three birds.

Youth pheasant hunters (ages 12-17) get first crack at South Dakota’s pheasants on private and public ground beginning Sept. 30 and ending Oct. 8. The resident-only season runs Oct. 14-16, and the traditional pheasant season opens Oct. 21 and closes Jan. 31, 2024. Daily bag limits for all pheasant seasons are three birds.