By two weeks into the season, I’m convinced that every pheasant in South Dakota has handily passed a Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program worthy of any of our elite special operations units. These birds are sneaky smart by nature and, with their sharp eyesight and keen hearing, are as likely to bust up at least 80 yards in front of you as to tiptoe past you, right out the back door. Native pheasant are strong flyers and shrug off the kind of bitter winter cold and snowy conditions that have caused most of their feathered friends to have beat a hasty retreat to warmer climes.
As much as a wily rooster makes for a challenging hunt, finding a place to hunt truly wild birds, even in South Dakota, is no easy task these days. Most all lodges simply do not have the acreage—or sufficient natural cover – to sustain all-wild hunting throughout a season.
That’s what makes Brown’s Hunting Ranch – located some 60 miles north of Pierre – a truly unusual find: Part of a family-farm operation, Brown’s holdings encompass 100, 000 acres, mostly all in sunflowers. The farm is the largest producer of sunflower seeds in America and, as one of my hunting partners quipped, the biggest bird feeder anywhere.
To underscore just how big this farm is, I recently hunted two full days in several portions of the farm that have not been hunted at all since Brown’s opened some six years ago. Amazing.
This was rolling country where the sunflower fields were creased by cattail sloughs that easily ran for several miles. We pushed at least several hundred birds out of each slough. Most, of course, flushed well out of range but there’s often a rooster or two who decides to hang-in instead of bust out. You have to stay focused and ready to shoot every step of the way.
If you’re a bird shooter who wants to stretch your legs and stretch your wing shooting skills as well, Brown’s is the place for you. The season runs through the first Sunday in January, so there’s plenty of time to book a late season hunt. Check it out at brownshuntingranch.com.