After moving to South Dakota and having younger kids, the opportunities to travel and explore new areas to hunt have been few and far between. This year I was ready to get out and go exploring again. I spent a lot of time this summer talking with friends and family trying to convince them to meet me somewhere new this fall. I had a few friends and my dad draw a non resident waterfowl license for South Dakota before to come hunt with me by my house, but I never really dove into the process of this too much. This summer changed all that and I had to really learn all the details with South Dakota’s non resident licenses. The most important is to make sure you purchase your habitat stamp when applying for the license. The purchase won’t go through until you actually get drawn. And if you don’t do this, you will not get entered into the drawing. I had one friend and unfortunately my father (and myself helping him fill out the application online) make this mistake. We both had a very hard time when we discovered this when the results came out. It created another year where we couldn't get together for a few hunts. We are both still trying to get over this. That being said, I had one good friend actually get drawn for a 3 day license in a zone that is more in the northern part of the state. What we didn’t realize until after he was drawn was that this zone was one of the zones/licenses that allows him to hunt on private land only. I gave him the option, to meet me out there and give this a go or just say we will try something else another time. Thankfully, he is also as adventurous as I am and we decided to give it a go.
When looking for a place to stay we found a rental by owner that looked really nice and was reasonably priced. I booked a 3 night 4 day stay, giving us a day to get there early and get scouting. When seeing the rest of the week still open, ideas started going through my head. I realized that the week we picked was the week after the traditional pheasant season opener and the area the rental was in, happened to be in a pretty good spot for pheasant hunting. I convinced Kristin to just pack up the whole family and come with me. We could drive around scouting and pheasant hunting for a few days, and most importantly it would be a perfect opportunity for our kids to get their first experience of a hunting trip. After getting the idea ironed out, I booked the other half of the week prior to when my friend and I started our duck hunting trip. It wasn’t too much later when Kristin’s parents decided to join us for the exploring and pheasant hunting.
It seemed like before we knew it, all the time to prepare for this was gone and the trip was only a week away. Thankfully, before the pheasant season started this year, learning from our experiences last year, we geared everyone up a little better. Kristin and the (older) kids got a good pair of pants and boots to really be ready for this season. The week before the trip was spent getting dog gear, hunting equipment, and travel necessities ready. Then came the hard part of packing everything, even when driving two separate vehicles. We left on a Sunday, so the Saturday before the trip we all got to go grocery shopping together, and then I spent the entire afternoon packing and loading vehicles. The place we attend Mass every Sunday is about 45 minutes from our house and for our trip it was directly on our way to get to the lodge. It is also at 7:30 in the morning, so we knew Sunday morning would be an early start. So getting everything as ready as possible on Saturday was crucial. It was quite impressive what we got into both vehicles.
Sunday morning came quickly, I got up earlier than normal (5 am) to get the cooler filled and everything that couldn’t be packed the night before loaded up. We made the trek to Mass in the dark (I was in a vehicle by myself saying some extra prayers that everything went well) but the nice part is we were now a quarter of the way there. When Mass was over, we took turns changing into comfortable clothes in the bathroom and then fired up the walkie talkies and took off for the lodge. The drive was beautiful, and it was fun to see all the people out pheasant hunting on opening weekend. It became a small contest to find the hunters and annonce to the other vehicle where they were before they announced it to you. With one quick stop for gas, chapstick, and a couple take and bake pizzas, we got to our destination a little too fast. We had a little time before we could check into the lodge we rented. So we found a playground and let the kids, and our dog Tate stretch their legs and get a little energy out.
When we checked in, we were pleased to see we chose by far and away the nicest place to stay I have ever stayed in when on a hunting trip. We took our time getting unloaded and all setup for the rest of the trip. After eating pizza, we all took a walk through the little town we stayed in before hitting the hay.
Monday morning brought lots of excitement. Unfortunate circumstances made it so Kristin’s parents couldn’t join us until Monday afternoon, so we started the trip by ourselves. After bagel egg and cheese sandwiches, we loaded up into the yukon and headed almost an hour northeast to look for waterfowl and pheasant hunting spots. The first minimum maintenance road we turned on we were greeted by a rooster staring at us. It was still a little bit before shooting time (10 am) so we tried to sit tight and let the minutes pass by. Kristin got her gun ready, and as soon as shooting time hit, she was out loading up and walking down the road to the spot we saw him go in. Unfortunately, he saw us and ran off before she could get to him. But what a fun way to start the trip.
We spent the rest of the morning exploring and finding a few good spots to try and walk. Kristin took Tate and the two older kids to hunt while I sat with the younger kids watching at the parking spots. We switched once and I took Tate through a spot while they ate. We didn’t see any pheasants when hunting but it's amazing how much the kids enjoyed driving down the minimum maintenance roads. They were encouraging me to try out the sketchiest roads possible, but I had to explain to them that we can get stuck and on our own at the moment, would not be a good time for that.
After a fun morning seeing new places, we got back to the lodge and waited for Kristin’s parents to show up. When they got there, we helped them get unloaded and then all got ready to go back out and hunt in the afternoon. It was tough to get all the kids back in the car after so much driving the first two days. This was probably the hardest part of the whole trip. I have no problem pretty much living in my vehicle on hunting trips and keep exploring, but this is tough for younger kids. And that is understandable. We looked at a few spots, and ran into some other hunters and really nothing that looked good for a small group of hunters. Finally, we found a spot with good cover, bordered by standing corn. We thought for sure there had to be some roosters coming back into the cover for the night. Brooke got to go on her first pheasant walk along with Eli and Caleb next to Kristin’s mom. Dan and Annie watched from the bed of papa’s sweet new truck, and then we took the stroller down the road running parallel to the spot so we could keep watching. Sure enough they got into a nice bunch of roosters, but the shooting was a little rusty and Kristin and her dad could not cash in.
Tuesday morning came and I got up before light to try and go track down a place to hunt ducks later in the week. I made a little bit of a drive over to an area by a large waterfowl refuge that was known to hold ducks. After not seeing much right at first light, I followed a group of geese to an area with lots of geese and ducks. I found myself right on the border of North and South Dakota. I used my phone app to start looking at which landowners could be potentially tracked down and then kept driving around. I found three options. Two of the three owners lived in North Dakota. So I decided to start with the local owner, which had a field that was just loaded with ducks and geese. And I mean loaded. After talking with a worker for the farm, he told me the farmer has never let hunters out there. After this I decided to take about a 40 minute drive to the town in North Dakota where the owners of the other two options were. It turns out it was a father-son ownership of both spots. And both spots were leased out to hunting guiding operations. I talked with the guy for a while and he explained to me that he had too many issues with hunters in the past, which led him to lease out their ground. This was disappointing and I felt like I had wasted a whole morning. I was beginning to get a little nervous about just having a spot to hunt. It wasn’t until that evening going back out with Kristin and her dad pheasant hunting, after they had an unsuccessful hunt in the morning, while trying to watch to see if there were any ducks/geese flying.
We went the other direction from where we were staying. I was walking around with and letting our youngest kid rest while they went hunting. The older kids, sick of the car, stayed back with Grandma for the afternoon. I didn’t see many ducks/geese moving until we started driving back to the lodge after another pheasant free hunt. There were some big flocks of geese flying around and we sidetracked a little to see if we could go find where they were going. This led us to a field that was surrounded by water that had quite a few geese in it and even some specklebelly geese in there too. I looked up the owner and he only lived a few miles from where we were at, and in the direction of the lodge too. So we stopped by. He was super nice, asked which days we would like to hunt and I told him the upcoming Thursday and Friday to which he told me to “have at it”. Needless to say, the pressure was off and the excitement kicked in.
Wednesday morning, I helped get my family and inlaws packed up and headed out towards our place for the rest of the week. As they headed out, I welcomed my good buddy there to waterfowl hunt with me the next two days. It was a pretty rainy, yucky day, and we only had one spot, so we decided to go exploring that afternoon. I showed him the spot I had gained permission for and when we pulled to the field up my heart sank. It looked like a bunch of decoys were set up in the field. After examining for a while with binoculars my heart beat picked up. It was not decoys but the whole bottom part of the field was covered in geese. I have never seen them sit that still before in a field. We let them be and then headed in a new direction to explore. It was really hard to see due to the low foggy sky but I wanted to go talk to a connection I had through church. They were very welcoming and said we were welcome to hunt any of their land the next two days. Which gave us some other options.
Thursday morning came and luckily we got a little break in the misty rainy weather. Up well before sunrise we loaded up the truck and made the drive over the field. The first thing we did after picking the spot in the field we wanted to hunt, was get an a-frame blind setup, and then stubbled really well. After that we deployed our decoys and before parking the truck way out of the way, we got everything nicely set up inside of the a-frame with a little tote to keep things in and set stuff on in between two nicer blind chairs, making this a pretty comfortable hunt to be on. It didn’t take long (10 min) and we were looking at the first flock of ducks coming in. We dropped two gadwalls and a drake mallard. We got them picked up right away, and it wasn’t too much longer after getting back into the blind that another flock of mallards were locked up and came in just perfectly. We dropped three, two hens and one drake. This is where things got interesting. In South Dakota, you can shoot 5 mallards, two of which can be hens per person. We each had 1 hen, determined we better start picking out drakes. This being said, I am not used to good hunting. Growing up, you took advantage of every opportunity you got because you never knew how many more ducks you were going to see the rest of the day. Well, the next flock started working and a hen mallard led the charge. We identified she was a hen and said let her land and see if the others come behind her. Well she could not have come into our decoys any better and was pretty much hovering 10 yards from me for what seemed like forever. With the other birds behind her not looking as interested my instincts just kicked in and “aaaa… I have to take it” came out of my mouth and without much thinking I raised up and took her. My buddy immediately started laughing, because as soon as I did this I gave him a dumbfounded look as I was wondering what in the world I just did. The only good part of this was that it literally forced me to slow down and pick out two more nice greenheads. I was also fortunate that my friend had 4 of his ducks already at this point, and was having better luck slowing down and waiting on some nicer ducks. So he really helped me calm down and watch some birds work and confirm which ducks we should take. When I shot one of my remaining drakes, I was walking back to the blind, when a nice drake widgeon came in on his side of the blind. Being pretty fired up, I yelled “nice drake” and said “take him” in a very encouraging manner. He stood up, saw the duck and dropped it very quickly. Before we could shoot the rest of our ducks, we had a few canada geese start working. I was interested to see if they would come in with the spinner decoys on. To my surprise they came in right on the left side of the spinners (our right looking at them). We got them both and the mixed bag in ducks and geese began. We were able to finish up our ducks shortly after this, me getting a drake widgeon to go with my 5 mallards, and my buddy getting another nice drake mallard. This was the first time I have ever been able to say “let's pull the spinners and wait on the geese” on a hunt.
Not long after taking the spinners down we had a single goose pretty far out but definitely looking at our spread. I started calling not knowing exactly what it was. Well as it got closer and started locking its wings, it made the goofy sound only a specklebelly could make. We got down and just watched it come right in. After hits from both of us, it came down, and I had now seen my first spec harvested ever. I was beyond excited.
We didn’t have to wait much longer and we had another small group of canada geese starting to lock up. As pretty much everything had done, in a way I can’t say I have ever really seen before, they came in again just perfect. I know I am repeating this, but that's just the best way to describe how well all these birds decoyed. We each got another goose and our blind was beginning to fill with birds. At this point, I was just trying to soak this up. As these hunts are not easy to come by. We finished off the morning with a pretty nice group of geese coming right in adding one more goose to the bag. We probably could have stayed in the field a bit longer and shot more geese, but hoping to let the geese back in there the rest of the afternoon we decided to pick up and get out of there, praying we could get another hunt even half as good as this one out of this field the next day.
I have been on a handful of hunts in my life that were pretty awesome, but this hunt really sticks out to me. I have had days where ducks worked well for us in the field, and I have had other days where geese worked well for us in a field. But this was the first time I have had the combo of them both working well in the same morning. And to say they came in well, is an understatement. I have rarely, if not ever, had hunts like this where we could wait to watch the birds work this well. To experience this with a friend that I really enjoy hunting with, takes the cake. This hunt alone has added so much fuel to my fire, to find another hunt like this so I can do it again.
That night, a cold front moved in. Temperatures dropped well below freezing, and we got a couple inches of snow. The morning was brisk, and the north winds were howling. We were hopeful for a migration day and tons of action. We got the migration day, but not much action. It seemed all the birds we were working the day before moved south, and all the migrating birds were on a mission to get further south. This would have been quite disappointing had we not had one of my best hunts ever the morning before.
Saturday morning came, and it was time to head home. This trip was quite the adventure. It was in an area I had never seen before. And to be honest, I fell in love with it. All the potholes in this area were beautiful, and just seeing the vast number of waterfowl was an experience in itself. This trip kind of summarized where I am at in my journey as a waterfowl hunter. When I was younger I just wanted to shoot a duck. A good morning was 1 duck. As I got a little older, high school/college aged, I started chasing after better hunts with for the most part not much luck. When I was doing this, I would just pick random spots and hunt as much as I possibly could. Getting a little older and wiser, I would say you are better off scouting twice as much as you hunt. I often enjoy scouting more than hunting. This trip, we only got the one good hunt and spent more time scouting, but it was worth it because you just never know when you are going to find that next honey hole that will lead to one of those hunts, like the one hunt we had on this trip, that you will never forget.
Great read!