South Dakota may boost late-season pheasant bag limit

Doug Smith

Even if the fish aren’t biting, the ducks aren’t flying and the pheasants aren’t flushing, Doug Smith says any day spent outdoors is a good day. A Minnesota native, he’s been covering the outdoors for the Star Tribune since 1995. He considers walleyes fried over a campfire to be gourmet cuisine.

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South Dakota may boost late-season pheasant bag limit

Posted by: Doug Smith Updated: November 25, 2009 - 10:37 AM

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Pheasant hunters: How about a five-bird daily pheasant limit, with a 25-bird possession limit?

In your dreams?

Well, it could happen in South Dakota beginning next week.

Due to the delayed harvest of crops this fall, the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Commission plans to act next week on a proposal to raise the three-bird daily pheasant bag limit to five cock pheasants daily.

Under the proposal, the current 15-bird pheasant possession limit would increase to 25. The emergency rule would take effect Dec. 5 and remain in place until the current pheasant season ends on Jan. 3, 2010.

The reason for the change: The late harvest of crops has reduced hunting success since the season opened in October.

“The ability of hunters to harvest pheasants in the first seven weeks of the 2009 pheasant hunting season has been severely inhibited by lack of row-crop harvest,” GFP Secretary Jeff Vonk said in a news release.

So won’t that hurt the pheasant population? Officials say no, because only male pheasants are being harvested. Pheasants are polygamists, meaning one male pheasant will mate with many female pheasants.

Added Vonk:

“As crops are taken from the fields, the refuge that pheasants found in oceans of cornfields will disappear, and birds will be concentrated in the remaining cover,” Vonk said. “The addition to the limits will allow hunters the ability to make up for opportunities that were lost in the first part of the season.”

Of course, pheasant hunting is an economic boon to South Dakota, and undoubtedly officials hope the late-season boost in bag limits will attract more nonresident hunters from places like Minnesota.

We’ll update this after the commission meets.