BigBendFishing.Net

Had a great trip with my son (Ronnie) to South Dakota for 4 days of pheasant hunting at my buddy's lodge. He opened the Granite Springs Pheasant Lodge about 3 years ago and it's doing well. He has about 10,000 acres he can hunt. He has an 8,000 sqft lodge and just built an additional 7 rooms adjacent to the main lodge to handle the bigger numbers.

Arrived in Sioux Falls at 14:30 Tuesday afternoon and started the 45 minute drive west to the lodge. Weather was in the high teens at night and mid/high 30's during the day. Had two days with 15-20 mile an hour winds, so the wind chill was tough at times.

Didn't get 20 minutes down the road from the airport when we noticed a cloud of Snow Geese lighting into a small pond and field next to I-90. Pics/video don't do the numbers justice. Couldn't come close to getting all of them into the camera lens.









Day 1
Ronnie's first pheasant


Day 1. Got our total of 9 birds fairly quickly. My buddy, Kevin, his dog Ringo and I.



Ringo with Day 1 totals. Ringo is the dog I trained and took to the Mike Lardy seminar this Spring. He's only 1-1/2 years old and has had a couple hundred birds shot over him already. He's a machine.



Pic of the lodge's dining area. Main thrust of the season is over, so we had the whole lodge to ourselves. Timing was perfect. He had folks coming in today and the rest of the week to hunt.



Pheasants in the road. We hunted the field to the left where we limited out pretty quickly.



Day 2 hunting the corn fields around the lodge (Ronnie with the birds).



Me and Woody. I gave Woody to Kevin 3 years ago when he started the lodge.



Another dog (Malley) I gave Kevin when he started the lodge. One of the better noses in the lodge. She doesn't come from pointing lab lines, but locks it up at times when she's got a bird pinned.



Day 4 birds on a hay bale.



Another pic of Ronnie and I at the end of Day 4.



Where all the lies are told



Had a great time with my son and an old friend.

Have fun Bud, be careful. Take plenty of pictures.

Edited.

WOW!!!! Thanks for the pictures! What an awesome experience.

hell of a trip Ron. Bring me back some of those feathers next time

BH,
Didn't even think about potential for fly-tying. If you are serious, I can get you all you plenty. Have my buddy sending me some stuff in a couple weeks and he has plenty of birds in the freezer (still whole) he can pull some feathers off.

Ron

That is grand country out there but that white stuff on the ground made me turn up the heater here.
Great looking birds and dogs.

thats awesome Ron. just pull some of the marabou off the belly of those Geese, and any of the neck/saddle from the Pheasants

Heck of a trip, Ron. Looks like the dog work has paid off.

Great trip Ron. I'm jealous.

Nice looking pics, looks like a h311 of a time

birddog wrote:Great trip Ron. I'm jealous.

That makes two!! A pheasant trip is high on my "to-do" list, one day I'll get off my a$$ and do it.
Awesome pics

rocket wrote:

birddog wrote:Great trip Ron. I'm jealous.

That makes two!! A pheasant trip is high on my "to-do" list, one day I'll get off my a$$ and do it.
Awesome pics

Rocket,
I shot a couple pheasants during a very quick hunt 3 years ago when I drove some dogs out to my buddy. Took me 3 yrs to get back out and do it right. We had a great time. I am definitely going to plan for next year. My son could not stop talking about how much fun he had. My recommendation is if you go and can manage it, stay as long as you can (3-4 days min). Reason being is you get to experience a lot more and the cost (marginally) isn't that much more than 1-2 days.

Hope you get a chance.

Good advice, thanks Ron. Now I just need to figure out the "right" place(s) to go, time of year...all that good stuff so I don't waste an opportunity.