GROTON, S.D. -- More than a dozen pheasants erupted like popcorn, flushing helter skelter into the sky one after another from a cattail slough. Six hunters swung their shotguns and fired a barrage of shots, dropping a couple of the birds. But most sailed over the South Dakota prairie unscathed. "Holy cripes," Mike Smith, 56, of Cologne, Minn., said with a wide grin. "Could you believe how many birds were in there? Oh, that was fun. I missed about a dozen."
Said his son, Jeremy Smith, 33, of Plymouth: "It was a blur. I was out of shells and trying to reload and they just kept coming."
Welcome to the South Dakota pheasant opener, an annual celebration of bird dogs, shotguns and wily roosters. An army of hunters clad in blaze-orange descends on virtually every gravel road, slough, cornfield and grassland. Motels, restaurants, bars and grocery stores are packed with hunters, and signs welcoming them are ubiquitous. Why? Because South Dakota is to pheasant hunters what Las Vegas is to gamblers or Colorado is to skiers.
It is overwhelmingly the No. 1 pheasant state in the nation. Hunters -- including thousands from Minnesota -- journey here from every corner of America to roust roosters.
Last year, they bagged 1.8 million of them -- way more than any other state and about 1.3 million more than were harvested in Minnesota.
Friendly get-together
The opener also is all about tradition. Friends and family reunite beneath an endless prairie sky in an expansive and beautiful landscape.
Our group of six Minnesotans journeyed here for the opener, rekindling our own tradition of heading west at least once each fall to pursue ringnecks and renew friendships. Besides Smith and his son were Jack Rendulich, 54, and his son, Dan, 24, of Duluth, and Mike Porter, 53, of Minneapolis. Also along was Derrick Herther, 50, of rural Aberdeen, S.D., Mike Smith's brother-in-law and our local connection to the area. Friends of Herther allowed us to hunt their land.
As usual, South Dakota didn't disappoint.
The local Lions Club started us off right with a $5 all-you-can-eat breakfast in tiny Groton, S.D. Most of the 100 or so who showed up were hunters, anxious for a new season to begin.
Then at noon, when South Dakota's legal shooting hour arrived, the seven of us surrounded a small patch of grass and cattails. Soon the first roosters of the season squirted out the end, evading us. Then one got up and flew west toward Herther.
"I've got him," he hollered, as if calling for a fly ball in the outfield. Then he fired his .12 gauge once, and the bird tumbled to the turf.
Soon two other birds fell, both retrieved by one of our five hunting dogs.
"It's amazing a little bitty pothole like that can hold so many birds," said Mike Smith.
We hiked draws, grasslands, edges of cornfields, tree lines and patches of cattails -- flushing birds and occasionally bagging some.
There were shots to remember, and shots we'd rather forget.
Then it was time to rest the dogs and break for a mid-afternoon lunch of sandwiches, chips and homemade pickles on the tailgates of our trucks.
outdoors
resize text 
Newspaper Subscriptions
eEdition
RSS
Newsletters
