Revisiting a century of South Dakota pheasant hunting

South Dakota’s first pheasant-hunting season opened Oct. 30, 1919, with about 1,000 hunters harvesting about 200 birds in Spink County in one day.
Now, fast-forward to 2024, when 1.4 million birds were harvested by 140,000 hunters in the state. The roots of South Dakota’s pheasant-hunting heritage trace back to 1909 – the same year the South Dakota Department of Game and Fish was created – when hunters and farmers made the first successful releases of ring-necked pheasants, a colorful game bird native to Asia.

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