MITCHELL, South Dakota – South Dakota is the best state in the union to hunt pheasants.

I did not know that until I visited here during pheasant season. I am not a pheasant hunter but you can’t escape the enthusiasm for this sport when you come to South Dakota in the fall.

In fact, the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks states, “Without a doubt, South Dakota is the pheasant hunting capitol of the world.”

Mitchell, South Dakota, is famous for the Corn Palace but overall, the pheasant hunting and Mount Rushmore are the two big tourist attractions in the entire state.

South Dakota had a rough winter and, like Oklahoma, had a very wet spring. As a result, South Dakota had a 17% drop in its traditional pheasant roadside count/brook survey, according to Tom Carpenter, editor of Pheasants Forever.

The rains washed out nests and broods were lost.

The rural area around Mitchell dropped 36% from 2018 but there are still an estimated seven million pheasants in the state (there are only 892,631 people in South Dakota).

Birds are plentiful because of a perfect habitat and the state’s sparse population. Roosters apparently like to hide in corn fields and the late corn harvest (due to the rains) made it a little tougher for hunters this year. It also indicates a good hunt late in the season. The birds were introduced into South Dakota successfully for the first time in 1908. Pheasant hunting soared in 1919 and now the pheasant season draws hunters from all over America.

Carpenter predicts hunters will bag one million pheasants in South Dakota this year. One million. In fact, the harvest has been under one million only three times in the past 20 years. It never drops under 900,000. That’s a lot of pheasants.

You can find pheasants all over South Dakota but the best hunting is in the eastern two-thirds of the state, especially around Mitchell. Hunters generally use a 12-gauge or 20-gauge shotgun. The pheasant season in Oklahoma opens December 1 and ends in January. The best hunting is apparently in the Oklahoma Panhandle and it has the greatest amount of land with open public access.

A non-resident pheasant hunting license in South Dakota costs $120 and is good for 10 days. You can shoot 15 rooster pheasants, with a limit of three per day. Unlike Oklahoma, hunters are not required to wear orange in South Dakota (unless you are under 16). The state recommends hunters wear an orange cap.

The South Dakota pheasant season traditionally opens on the third Saturday in October. This year, it was October 19 and it ends on January 5. Shooting hours are noon to sunset for the first week and 10 a.m. to sunset for the rest of the season.

This is a big deal in South Dakota.

In the Sioux Falls Airport, one of the stores inside has a full wall display of pheasant T-shirts, coffee mugs, magazines, caps, etc. 

Mitchell, with a population of only 15,680, is home to a Cabelas store. Cabela’s is very similar to Bass Pro (we have one in Broken Arrow). But it is amazing that a city as small as Mitchell has such a big sporting goods store. The pheasant hunting is part of the reason for its success. (There is also a Cabela’s in Rapid City, South Dakota – on the opposite end of the state from Mitchell.)

People drive all the way from Iowa to shop in Mitchell because of Cabela’s.

The state bird for South Dakota (you guessed it) – the Chinese ring-necked pheasant. (By the way, I love the state motto: “Under God, the people rule.”)

I have never tasted pheasant but apparently it is delicious. It is a delicacy in some countries.

Plus, it is lower in fat, saturated fat and cholesterol than chicken, domestic turkey or beef. They weigh between two and four pounds. Pheasant meat is generally darker than chicken meat.

They really are like chickens, quail and partridges. Pheasants have very good eyesight and hearing which makes them more challenging to hunt. Pheasants can run up to 45 mph.

Pheasants don’t live very long – about three years in the wild. About one third of the chicks die before they have lived 10 weeks. They are not endangered even though their wild habitat has been shrinking in the United States. These are beautiful birds. The roosters are very colorful and the hens are chestnut colored, which makes it easier for them to hide in brush.

I have only been hunting once in my life (for squirrels) and I am not sure that I would want to go to the expense of traveling to South Dakota to hunt pheasants.

But if hunting pheasants was a hobby for me, I would head to Mitchell.