Pheasant hunting in South Dakota with my aging gun dog, Sally of Seboeis! A dream come true. During the long drive to Sisseton, Diane and I pictured it all. Brightly colored rooster Ringnecks exploding from the endless high- plains grasslands. Sun-drenched afternoons along corn fields. Well-trained English Setters on perfect points, like in a Hennessey watercolor. With Sally snoozing in the back seat, we made it safely through downtown Chicago. The Wisconsin farmlands urged us on, and the anticipation grew with each passing green-mile marker.

We finally made it and set up shop at a campground in Sisseton, a small farm community in northeastern South Dakota. Our neighbors and hunting companions were our longtime friends Ron, Mary Jane and their setter, Lady. Buying our licenses and shot shells, we discovered something special about Sisseton. Folks there, many of them South Dakota Sioux, are about the warmest and most hospitable townspeople we had ever met. They shared the good hunting spots with us. Imagine that!

The week went fast. How was the hunt? Well, it was everything that we had imagined, and much more.

On Day One Ron’s setter, Lady, chased a ground-running rooster into an uncut cornfield and never came back out. Dakota cornfields can be swallow-up scary like the Maine North Woods. You can get turned around in this sea of corn, nose or no nose, and there are no roads to lead you out. A Dakota gun-dog breeder tells of dogs spending days amid the acres of corn running in circles. But, alas, Lady turned up the next day to a tearful reunion. But she – Ron calls her “Ladybug” when she is being good – was not out of the woods, yet. The afternoon of the reunion we decided to steer clear of the corn. A few minutes into the hunt, Lady pounced on a skunk in the tall grass and caught the little critter’s wrath full bore. It was two days, three baths and two birds later before that gun dog earned back from her master his nickname of endearment for her, “Ladybug.”

As things turned out, Ladybug wasn’t Ron’s only problem. There was the unexpected issue of marksmanship, which, frankly, plagued all of us. Now South Dakota wild pheasant are not your run-of-the-mill gamebird. They are not fed in pens, brought out in boxes, spun around by a gamekeeper and planted in the grass. These birds are truly wild. Most of them hold doctoral degrees in predator avoidance. Some of them, especially the ones that I missed, were equipped with small booster rockets. These rockets ignite automatically when a dog goes on point. The additional thrust gets the bird from the cattails up into the wind stream in a nanosecond. South Dakota’s prevailing wind (Northwest at 45-50 knots) provides a wicked tailwind and rounds out the Ringneck’s evasion tactic.

After a lot of birds and too many misses, the dogs got judgmental. If looks could kill. They didn’t yell epithets at us like we did them, but there were looks of derision. They let you know that they knew we weren’t performing. Of course the kill equation is complicated by the fact that you can only shoot male pheasants in South Dakota. Hens are off limits. Roosters tend to get a head start while you are wasting precious split seconds sexing the fleeting gamebird.

Although Diane and I only brought home a couple of birds, other aspects of the hunt shall remain forever etched in my mind. On the third day, Sally got into some cattail tangles and made her exit minus one borrowed E-collar ($100 plus shipping and handling). On the last day, after finally bagging my second bird, I decided to try getting over to a good looking cover that had been kept from us by a cavernous, high-banked brook. (My feet were already wet from recovering a downed bird, so what the heck). “You can make it with those long legs,” Diane said encouragingly. Sally seemed fired up about the scents coming downwind from the opposite side of the brook, too. “Here goes nothing!” I exclaimed to my wife and dog, and executed as mighty leap.

Yes, I wound up on my back in the brook.

On the last day, Ron managed to kill a bird that tried escaping into the bright sun when its booster rocket misfired. Diane and I witnessed the kill from the other side of the corn field. Diane knew something was up when a shower of spent BBs rained down on her from above.

“Ouch, I’ve been shot,” she grimaced.

“Ron, you shot Diane,” I growled with contempt.

“Wow, did you guys see that point?” he answered back.

“You meathead,” I yelled again into the wind,” Watch where the hell you’re shooting.”

“That bird went down, didn’t it? I know I hit it,” he exclaimed.

Pheasant hunting in South Dakota. I love it when a plan comes together.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].