Celebrating South Dakota’s Unofficial State Holiday
By Sen. John Thune
As the crisp fall temperatures begin to break through, an unmistakable anticipation builds in the air for our state’s unofficial holiday. The days and nights get cooler, the leaves change colors, and South Dakotans start counting down the days to the third Saturday in October: the start of pheasant season.
Growing up in Murdo, my family and I always looked forward to getting out in the fields and bagging some roosters. My dad passed this tradition on to us, hunting with us into his nineties. We have proudly passed it down to our kids, and I look forward to sharing this heritage with my grandkids someday, too.
A morning in the field is made better with good bird dogs and good company, and coming together at the end of a long day offers a perfect opportunity to thank God for His many blessings and hopefully enjoy a plate full of pheasant. One of the things I cherish most are these moments with friends and family in our great outdoors.
In food plots, sloughs, and shelterbelts across our state, shouts of “rooster!” can be heard all season as locals and visitors alike take part in our famed pastime. For more than a century since that first hunting season commenced, generations of South Dakotans have taken up the mantle of providing suitable habitat for ringnecks and other wildlife, and it’s this spirit of conservation that has sustained our state’s proud tradition for so long and made South Dakota the “pheasant capital of the world.”
In Washington, I’m working to preserve and modernize the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a historic program that has helped keep our pheasant population bountiful. I’ve introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen CRP, and I will continue fighting to support this and other land conservation efforts in the U.S. Senate.
This season, I hope you enjoy some quality time with family and friends, take in the rich beauty of our wonderful state, and, of course, bag a limit of birds. To hunters across South Dakota, here’s to a safe and successful hunt.
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It was a great opener. I had excellent numbers on Saturday and ok on Sunday; Sunday was just too hot.
I hope South Dakota can maintain its’ position as the number 1 pheasant hunting environment in the US. As we farm intensively, wild pheasants have migrated to less intensively farmed grasslands. I’m hoping they can continue to avoid pesticides and environmental degradation, and find places to thrive.