New from South Dakota

[charliecoyot]

Thanks for the forum everyone and accepting new members. Look forward to learning from everyone here. Hopefully I can contribute at times.

Live in western South Dakota - grew up in eastern SD. Have a new Vizsla - she's 11 weeks now. Look forward to getting in the field throughout SD.

So far so good - but a long way to go (more for me than her!).

[nikegundog]

Welcome aboard, I live about an hour away from Watertown.

[Rmgariador]

I been thinking about moving to sd is there a lot of public land to hunt on or do you need to find farmers to let you on their fields to get good hunts?

[charliecoyot]

RM:

There's a lot of public land available - gets worked over pretty well. But if you 'study' it a bit - you can find some of the more remote stuff that doesn't get hit too badly and can actually be quite good.

I grew up in eastern SD - because of the long standing ties, I've never had any big issues getting access thankfully.

Asking farmers for permission can still work (not quite like it used to where they'd tell you where the birds were and wish you good luck, we'd drop off a couple cleaned birds when done for the farmer and say thanks......the good 'ole days). You can still find that - it's just not the norm anymore.

The SD Game Fish and Parks at the following link provides some great maps showing public access areas: http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/areas/maps/default.aspx

[ckirsch]

Access to private ground is becoming more and more difficult, but we do have some good public ground to hunt. This year was tough with the drought, and with so much CRP coming out, the future of our pheasant hunting is a little shaky right now. We've been pretty spoiled over the past decade or so, hopefully we'll eventually get back to the good old days at some point down the road.

[Rmgariador]

Sounds like it would be fun