Have you heard what the conditions are like in SD? Parts of that state got up to 33" of snow a couple weeks back!. I just got back from the SW part of ND. It was wet from 18" of recent snow melt, then raining off and on since. One entire day was hard rain during our stay, that has never happened. Have not seen anything like this, making a trip back every year since 88'. Roads muddy, 4 wheel drives were crippled in the stuff. Not venturing onto primitive roads, and therefore not reaching normally hunted fields. Riding a 4 wheeler, the gumbo type mud would kick forward off the front tries, and the wind would blow it upward into your face! Never experienced so much standing water or wind. Because of moister than normal soil, the sunflower seeds and corn are still a month from being harvested. Those crops are normally harvested when we arrive for opening day. What area and type of cover do you hunt in?

Nice fish buddy, it might be time to hang the shorts up though, little chilly out there.

I know what that gumbo is like in those states. I lived in and hunted in eastern Montana for 5 years in the 70's. One time hunting deer near the crazy mountains, driving the roads was just fine in the morning when the ground was frozen. It was cold, close to zero but sunny and it warmed up in the afternoon and the roads turned into gumbo. We had to sit around in the dark until 10PM and wait for the gumbo to freeze up so we could drive out of there.

Hahahaha!!! I'm cracking up right now! Love the shorts comment iliketofish2. I have a couple buddies who have some land in Pierre and wilmot. The east side of the state is pretty bad for birds right now. Hard winters and wet springs have done a number on the birds. Pierre is still pretty good but my buddy says the numbers are down there too. This is our tenth year in a row and the first year my dog isn't going. They wanted about $940 bucks to fly him out and back. I just can't do it. Buddy has a wire hair but leaving my old dog behind feels like I'm abandoning a friend. Ouch.

Barchaser, what a story! That mud is the strangest stuff. Slimy slick when wet, like cement on anything it is allowed to dry on. Runnin around on the 4 wheeler. I went down some primitive roads normally traveled by trucks to get to huntin spots. Some roads were not traveled at all. While others had truck tracks, but not very far before the tracks showed the trucks wheels spinning. Then the tracks showed the truck do a 4 wheel drift and u-turn into a field, with a lot of wheel spin. Talked to a regular that was going home after 2 days of crippling conditions, and add to that crops not harvested, and hard rain in the forecast. If you bird hunt the mid west, you know crops need to be harvested to move them to CRP. Had a freak snow storm in April. Which is chick hatching time. That sufficated a huge number of birds. The crow counts were down 41 percent in August! Sounds devastating, but there are more birds left from after that devastation than WA state could ever dream of harvesting.

I pheasant huntiat a game farm called Cooke Canyon Hunt Club near Ellensburg. Its fun, but I haven't been there for a couple. My buddy was the member but he is in bad shape now and doesn't hunt. Guess I'll have to to get a membership. We used to buy 7 birds and always got shots at another 3-4 birds that somebody else had missed. Cost for the birds and a guide with two dogs... about 90-100 each for two guys.

I want to check out CCHC this year, I can hit that place at least a half dozen days with my dog for the cost of flying him to SD for a weekend. No brainer. I've had some buddies hunt there and it sounds like a good operation. As for getting the crops out, that's a tough deal. If the ground's too wet, the combines get stuck. Even if the ground is dry enough to harvest, if the moisture content in the crop is too high then the farmer has to burn a lot of their profit paying the grainery to dry it. This was the first year ever that my buddie's dad lost a crop to hail too. Not exactly cheap to replant. Definitely not a good situation for a lot of farmers in the upper midwest. For hunters it's just as bad. Like you said motoboat, if the crops are still in, then there's a LOT of additional hiding places for the birds. That's usually my first question when heading out there, "are the crops out?" Pretty good guage on the availability of birds. And we hunt all wild out there, no kick and shoot stuff. Those birds are so damn tough we've come to nickname them "war chickens"

doc, Bar, nice chattin with a couple of feather pluckers! doc, you huntin in shorts this year? Just Joshin, this time of year I am usually traveling to ND in shorts. Not this year, too cold. Usually get hassled for wearing my shorts when I get back there. But then again, most years are t-shirt weather. Are the crops harvested in the area of SD your huntin? I guess some farmers allow hunting in standing fields. Not where I hunt. In fact, most farmers are pay only. $50 to 200 per gun, per day. I usually take 2 GSP's with me. Could only take one this time around. Was interesting to split the dogs up, and see there attributes when solo. Totally different dogs when hunted solo. 2/3 of the first day gone. My dad and I bring gold balls to pound out into the fields. Every year we see balls from the previous year that are half berried from the disc. Anyway, at this point we have seen 5 birds, shot at 2 and got them both. One of which was wounded and running full tilt in a wheat stubble field. My dad say's uh oh. Out of the corner of my eye I see the streak of a GSP in hot pursuit. Dog and bird collided a 100 Yards out. The bird getting off the ground just high enough to evade the dogs jaws several times. What a long distance retrieve. Back the golf balls. I hit a few, so did my dad. I kept hearing hen pheasants talking to each other, in a standing corn field, across the street from where we teed up us. The birds were close to the edge. So, I took my dog over there to see how he would handle standing corn. Lot's of dogs are lost if let hunt in the corn. I was shocked at first. My dog would go into the corn 40-60ft, and run parallel to me as I walked the outside edge. We would walk 60 yo 100ft and he would come out and check on my location. Which, most times was right where I was. We continued on like this until groups of birds would flush from his location. No shots, but now I knew where the birds were, and might develop a strategy. We smacked some balls, and decided to hit some fence rows. I dropped my dad off, and head to the other end, working towards each other. Only I get diverted, seeing several birds on a access road around 3pm. This road divided a standing sunflower crop to the North, standing corn on the south. My plan, walk the primitive access road. Let the dog run in, parallel me, flush birds, me attempt some passing, crossing shots, he comes out to check on me, and repeat. The birds flushing in the seeds, wanted in the corn. The corn flushed birds, went deeper into the corn. A half hour into this, 6 shots later, 2 birds in the pouch. Needing to catch up with my dad, who is wondering where I stumbled off too. I share with him what I was doing, as he heard the shooting. We walk another edge of the corn, as the dog goes in, runs paralled to us. A pod of 50 birds gets up, into the low hanging sun. Can't pick out color at all, only tail length. The last bird of the bunch is 30 yards out and peeling away. I take that one, ask my dad to mark where it fell. I go in looking for it, nada.....gone. Look some more by going in deeper....nope. Learned a long time ago to look at the dogs mouth when searching for a downed bird. The dog was running around proudly with a mature, dead pheasant in his mouth. Nice tail, long sharp spurs. Not ivory tipped, but a nice bird just the same. We ended the day 1 bird short of a 2 person limit. But this technique held firm when large groups (8-9 guys) were reporting, taking 5 birds in a all day hunt. The groups that did well had permission to hunt standing crops. But those groups were very rare and paying big bucks to hunt that way. We hunt on no charge land, that is hunted hard by large groups from all over the country. Las Vagas, Minn-e-sota, Oklahoma, Wa, a basketball player from Oregon is seen and chatted with every year, Tenessee, Goergia, the license plates go on and on.

Sounds like your dog was working like a pro. That's the best part of it for me, watching the dogs work. I went to dental school at creighton so I was very lucky to become great friends with some absolutely wonderful people from SD. I'm not sure whether the crops are in or out to tell the truth. It'll be a topic of discussion as we drive from Sioux Falls to Pierre I'm sure. I think I might give that hunting in shorts thing a try. Ill post a pic when I get home. I don't get too cold, I'm very well insulated as my double chin in this picture clearly shows. Good luck on all of your hunting and fishing pursuits guys!