In this episode we headed out to SD to pickup a puppy and attend Pheasant Fest. It was great to see conservation in action, but I was also disappointed for my first time going to SD to see the lack of wild pheasants. For some reason in my mind I imagined driving down country roads and just seeing a good number of pheasants along the road. The whole time driving through SD I saw one pheasant and it was dead on the highway. Lots of ducks and geese on the ponds, but pheasants it was a big let down. Listen to the podcast to hear what we learned and what Pheasant Fest was all about. Thanks for listening everyone!
In this episode we headed out to SD to pickup a puppy and attend Pheasant Fest. It was great to see conservation in action, but I was also disappointed for my first time going to SD to see the lack of wild pheasants. For some reason in my mind I imagined driving down country roads and just seeing a good number of pheasants along the road. The whole time driving through SD I saw one pheasant and it was dead on the highway. Lots of ducks and geese on the ponds, but pheasants it was a big let down. Listen to the podcast to hear what we learned and what Pheasant Fest was all about. Thanks for listening everyone!
Hey folks, welcome to the Bird Dog Podcast. I'm Tyce Erickson, I'll be your host today as we bring you this podcast. And, uh, hope you are having a great day. Uh, I have my son on here with me. His name is Crew Crew, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Well, I've been on the podcast a little bit before, but I'm just Tyce's son. And I like bird hunting. game and waterfowl and big game hunting. So I like outdoors and everything about it. Thanks son. It's fun to have you on the podcast and it's fun to talk with you. And thanks for, thanks for being on. Uh, we are actually, if you can hear some road noise and car noise, there's a reason for that. Uh, we are actually driving back home from South Dakota, South Dakota. So we. We made a trip out here to South Dakota to pheasant fest. And at the same time we picked up a new pup puppy, uh, for ourselves, uh, a field bred golden that we're excited about. Uh, familiar with the bloodlines comes out of two master hunter parents and she's going to be hopefully part of our breeding program one day. So, um, we're thinking about calling her Covey, um, as we were leaving pheasant fest. Uh, we, uh, There were some young women that were asking, they saw the puppy and they were saying, what are you going to name it? What are you going to name it? They said, what do you, what do you guys think we should name it? And they said, Covey and quail. And I was like, I kind of like Covey. So we were kind of thinking we're going to name this little girl Covey. So, um, I think it's kind of a cool name. I've never trained a Covey. The dog named Covey and uh, I think it'll be fun. So let us know what you guys think. Uh, anyhow, uh, some of you have never heard of pheasant fest. Um, and so, and maybe some of you have, so just kind of go into detail. Uh, pheasant fest is what this year was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So from Utah, our homestead, It was about a, um, it was about an 18 hour drive roughly with stops. And, uh, so it was a good drive all the way through across the state of Wyoming and pretty much all across the whole state of South Dakota. Now I've been, I've been invited to go out to South Dakota before and hunt, um, pheasants and upland birds before, but I have never made it to South Dakota. And so I kind of wanted to see what, uh, South Dakota looked like. And, and, uh, yeah, Kind of want to experience that road trip and then check out pheasant fest. So again, pheasant fest is put on, uh, by pheasants forever and quail forever. Um, they're an organization here in the United States that supports conservation for, uh, obviously it sounds like, you know, pheasants and quail. So and, and keeping our upland game heritage alive. So pretty cool, pretty cool event. Um, it was pretty big. It kind of took up three. areas of a building. Um, and uh, I don't know how many booths there were there. I could double check. I could check and see, but quite a, quite a few booths, a lot of attendees. I, um, I know just in the live auction yesterday, they had kind of the numbers they raised, but I know they raised 85, 000 and just the live auction. Um, the numbers aren't posted for the raffles, but then imagine for the auction hunts that they had last night at the banquet. just guessing, kind of thinking about the hunts and stuff like that. I'm guessing they raised another a hundred plus a hundred thousand dollars roughly in those hunts. And, uh, and so I imagine all said and done, there was probably a raising of money for conservation. Uh, I would say around 200, 000 or more, um, just in this one banquet that they had, uh, for conservation. So that was, that was cool to see people. putting money kind of where their mouth is, um, you know, getting behind wildlife conservation, you know, when we obviously support conservation and, you know, we want it for hunting, but also supports a lot of other wildlife. So I don't, I don't know anyone out there besides hunters that put more money into conservation, that conservation not only pays for animals, we get a hunt, but it also pays for, it also Also, obviously when we make areas, um, to hunt wildlife, it brings other wildlife right in songbirds and it, you know, obviously trees and, and when we take farmland and put it back to prairie, you know, it just a whole Mecca of wildlife and habits, those spaces. So it was pretty cool that the key speaker they had at the bank will last night or one of them was Donnie Vincent and, uh, Donnie Vincent's a guy that I don't know him personally. I did meet him last night. Got to take a picture with him. Just seems like a really cool guy. Um, has the love of the outdoors like all of us too and wants to see that be handed down for future generations. But he just told some of his hunting experiences and he was a great storyteller made you feel like you were just right there. So humble guy, super good guy, just a really, really cool experience. So, um, if you guys don't know Donnie Vinson, He does a lot of big game hunting, um, in the Northwest and Alaska and documents and videos, a lot of that. So shout out to him. Uh, he's go getter. He's get a little bit older like, like myself, but he's still in great shape and still looks like he's, he's crushing the hills and getting after it. So, um, the banquet was really cool just to see that money being raised. Um, uh, just kind of talk, talk you through a lot of the booths. I'll kind of let crew talk here. What booths did you see that what kind of stood out to you or is any of them that stood out to you that you, you liked, or you're like, I saw a lot of this or a lot of that just kind of share with the audience, kind of what you saw. Well, there's a little bit of Ruffland kennel crates. Some of you guys might know them. There's Crispy Boots, and there's also Purina Pro Plan, and a lot of your good dog food brands, and I saw a lot of, yeah, there are a lot of dog foods there that People were trying to get out to the market. Pro plan was a big sponsor of it. Purina, Purina was a big sponsor. And then there was also, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of booths there. Obviously I can't keep track of all of them, but yeah, there's a lot of like drinking energy, well, there's a little bit of that and there is tour, like guiding outfitters. Yeah. Yeah. And just a lot of the stuff that, a lot of guns. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of shotguns and some other guns. Yeah. So they had, they had one building that was kind of set aside a lot, had like even just like agronomy and stuff for, cause there's a lot of farmers and stuff like that attend to it or conservationists. So obviously with, with upland birds, they live on the land and they need that habitat that really basically provides a home or. So a large part of one section was really working with farmers and how to help their land become more conducive for upland game. And there's a lot of booths and companies that can help with that, you know, and maybe weed control or, you know. Just trying to, we didn't look at all those super heavy cause we personally don't have a ton of land that we're obviously trying to change into upland game habitat, but that was really cool. And then the other two sections, uh, were a lot of just, we're a lot of dog stuff. So I'd say there's a lot of, you know, firearms. There's a lot of jackets, vests. Yeah. There's definitely a lot of, there's some clothes booths, like Bass Pro Shops was there. Yeah. Shills because it. It is called pheasant fest. It's mostly geared towards upland game hunting. So really anything that's geared around, I'd say dogs, guns and hunting equipment for upland game. Yeah. So, um, there was some waterfowl stuff like banded was there. I'm trying to think of some of the other You know, of course some of your firearm lucky duck was there And so it was cool just to you know, but again, they carried just dog stuff Not really there was a little bit of big game hunting Usually the big game hunting was like hey, we do pheasant hunting plus whitetail hunting You could kind of come and hunt the ranches and stuff like that. But again, it was geared So i'd say you had a lot of outfitters that were you know provided land for pheasant hunting now there's in south dakota there is There is public Um, again, I haven't hunted it, so, but I have a friend that lives out there in Sioux Falls, and he has hunted the pelvic ground. Um, and, uh, you still have to work for your birds. Now, it's some beautiful country as we came across from the Black Hills. You kind of have this rolly, just kind of describe it. Just in Wyoming, it kind of goes from sagebrush. And then as you start going towards the block Hills, it turns more towards grassland. And then you kind of get from around the block Hills. It's these rolling kind of Hills of pine trees on it, or just coming up on the block Hills right now. And just to kind of describe what we're seeing and you have these rolling Hills with valleys and grassland and where the rivers are, there's. You know, cottonwoods down through the bottoms and just a really beautiful part of our country that it's cool to see how things kind of turn to grass. And then as you start leaving Rapid City, South Dakota and head out, it turns more plains and kind of cropland. And but there's still grass and trees mixed in patches of trees. For some reason, my head always thought it'd be a lot flatter. I think when I've gone through Kansas, it seems like it's very flat. but South Dakota has actually, it's very kind of a rolling topography, um, with a lot of grass and cropland today. It was kind of stormy as we were heading back and there's all these water holes too. There's all these water holes out mixed into the cropland, which according to my friends, there's a lot of farmers are draining them and stuff, which gets rid of that riparian habitat around those. wetlands, which produces space for upland birds. And, and that's, and that's affecting the bird populations, but the, on those water holes, they were just load. Most of them were just loaded up with geese, Canadian geese and ducks. And it was really fun to see that just tons of ducks down there. On our way out, we only saw, I think, one really big flock of snow geese. Uh, there was probably, there had to have been at least 10, 000 birds in it or more. Huge flock of snow geese. And then as we were coming back today, it was, It was windy, storm front was pushing through and we saw tons of snow geese, just, you know, we wouldn't have to go very far, maybe another 5 10 minutes down the road. There's another big flock of snow geese, so there's a flock of snow geese. Saw two or three groups that had. You know, two, three thousand birds and it landed in fields right off the road. So it's really cool to see, you know, be in the heartland and see heartland of our grain fields and our water and see that waterfowl. Um, I was a little disappointed, you know, you hear stories of South Dakotas and the Dakotas and in my mind, I just painted this vision. I'm going to be driving even on the main highway and I look over and there's just like pheasants walking along the road. and unfortunately I saw one dead pheasant on the highway and I did not see one pheasant along the road, which is pretty, honestly, it was kind of disheartening. Not granted. I know they're, they're probably smarter, you know, they're probably get educated, not run along the highway, but you just think of the Dakotas. There's like, they're like grasshoppers is what you're hoping, you know, kind of almost everywhere, even along the roadsides or you'll see pheasants here and there. I didn't see any. I was hoping kind of as we're starting to get. It hit spring. I'd see roosters out in the fields, croaking, stuff like that. But I did go one day with a friend. We kind of drove out in the country. Trey did a little training with his dog and I didn't see a pheasant, saw some whitetail, which was kind of cool. Um, tons of waterfowl on the, on the water, but the pheasants I, I didn't see. So I was a little, little bummed on that. Um, not seeing that now I know the birds I'm sure are still there, but kind of talking to people. People that live out here and even just listening to the presenters at the booth, there is a push to bring wild populations of pheasants in South Dakota. They are struggling from what they have been. Now the population estimates I've heard is you have about a million and a half birds are killed a year in South Dakota. That's a lot of birds. But, a million of those are preserved or planted game farm birds. They're not wild birds. So only about a half a million are actually truly wild birds. And those lands that have wild populations that are, that can be hunted are pretty special. And you pay a premium to go out and hunt full on wild birds. You can pay, I mean, one guided outfit, it was 800 a day to, you know, and you can kill 3, 3 birds per person. So obviously if you have a group, you can kill that amount of birds. But a lot of It's just the price is still not cheap to come on South Dakota. Um, but talking to my friend and he hunts the walk in access areas, he has to still hunt and he works hard, but it sounds like if you come out and you have a good dog and you put in the time, he's like, I can pretty much have chances at limits every day if I work hard and he may cover six, seven, eight, 10 miles. You know, I mean, as This is not like easy work, but you can find birds. I'm sure it's still a lot better than Utah, where our bird populations, at least pheasants, are very much struggling, but uh, I don't know, I was just, you guys will have to let me know what you think. If you have hunted South Dakota, shoot me an email. Give me your opinion. See if I'm completely wrong on this, but just being at pheasant fest, there's a big push to leave more natural ground or bring it back onto the landscape. So pheasants can be forever or quail can be forever. I talked to my friend Tanner as we were out there, he works in agronomy and soil and helps out. It's actually where they put in pipelines, stuff like that, to actually put natural habitat back in there and seed and all that stuff. And they work closely with pheasants forever, but he has never seen a bobwhite quail in South Dakota. And to me, that's wrong. Like there should be quail. There should be pheasants and we're doing something wrong. We need to leave more linear edges along the fields to allow these birds to survive. And so hopefully farmers can get on board, can keep those barriers, those buffers and not clean their fields. So it ain't clean with their tractors that no feed is, you know, that there's nothing left for the birds to hide or nest in. And, um, so we can't have these, these. populations that still exist and future generations can enjoy them. So I'm kind of on my soap horse, but I'm just giving you kind of just my feel what I saw and talking to people that it's kind of a little scary and it's, it's not like the future is bright because there's a lot of people want to get behind it, but we need more people to get behind it to be able to keep these populations where they should be. Because as everyone knows, you hear North Dakota, South Dakota. You think pheasant capital of the world, like you go there, you're going to see birds. And, and unfortunately, there's so many people that love this resource. The supply and demand is the supply is less than the demand. There's this wise, yeah, less than the demand. And so people are going out there, but the private land that people are hunting, there's just not enough. wild birds to, to, um, provide enough for hunters to come out there. So places are having to, they call them preserves out there. They're having to put birds on the landscape to help out with that because of the bulk of the land, South Dakota, at least in a lot of the areas I was at, a lot of it is private property and the farmers are draining a lot of the water. They're cleaning off, they're cleaning it off with the crops. Because that's where they make their livelihood, right? Is corn and soybean. And they're taking out these CRP grass and those things. And the birds just have nowhere to live. So they just die. There's nowhere for them to get out of the, you know, to make nests and to raise babies. And so we really need to, You know, I don't know, try to get behind it as much as we can. Um, I was talking to one of the guys who worked with Pheasants Forever. He's going to get me in touch with, there's no one over the state of Utah. I want to get involved with quail forever. I think Utah has a lot of potential for our quail population. Unfortunately, I think our pheasant populations, um, I just, I have a hard time seeing them come back. They, the state puts out a lot of pheasants. on our public grounds and they're just decimated. They're not used to being hunted. People come out and hunt them because that's the reason we put them out and the birds of prey, they pick them off and just nothing really stays on the landscape. We need to trap more, our foxes, our skunks, maybe do a tail bounty. I know they're doing that out here, which is like 10 a tail to trap, uh, these, you know, you know, skunks and raccoons and turn them into. Which is really cool to get, have kids and youth get behind trapping these animals so they're not destroying our nest. And, and they have, I think it's the state, don't quote me on that, has, is paying a bounty for these predators. And it's just to hopefully save some of these birds. So I think Utah itself, um, lately I've seen the Valley quail when they're been released in certain areas. I had a friend that worked. and did, uh, some dedicated a hundred hours, went and trapped Valley quail on the benches where they couldn't be hunted and transplanted them out into the country. And I've seen these populations do awesome. So it kind of gives me hope for upland game populations that even around out in the country in huntable areas, these populations are still making it and the birds of prey are not getting them. So I personally feel we really need to focus more on Chukar. We need to focus on quail. So I'm going to get involved with quail forever. So if any of you guys are interested in doing that, reach out to me and see if we can kind of put a chapter together here in Utah and, and, and really try to put some quail on some landscapes where, you know, we can go out and hunt them and have fun with it and, uh, and get some good dog work and, and not have to hunt everything, you know, like Chukar grouse on the steep mountains. Slopes and everyone physically can't always do that. But quail and pheasants and have it a lot of the same territories. And so I think we really have a lot of quality habitat for Valley quail and gamble quail in Utah. So I think, and there's nothing happening right now with that in Utah. So as far as I know, or as far as quail forever or pheasant forever, there's nothing happening. If you guys have heard something, let me know, or if the fish and game are doing something. Trapping and maybe moving some quail for dedicated hours, which I think is great. We need to do more of that But we need to do more. We really I believe we need to raise quail and get them out into the landscape I think that that and our I think our land can hold that that's just again This is Tice's opinion and just seeing what I'm seeing out in the field as I'm out working dogs and stuff like that So anyhow, it was great There was a lot of a lot of great food You know, final rise out of Utah, give Matt Davis a shout out there. They had a booth there with Onyx and, um, and Upland Gun Company. There's a lot of cool companies, but again, it was primarily dog training equipment. DT was there, Garmin was there, Dogtro was there. Um, and then they had an area where they had a lot of different breeds of dogs. We saw muster landers, large, small German. They, uh, they had wire hares, they had vishlas, they had setters, just kind of these clubs or organizations representing a bunch of different breeds. So that was, that was pretty cool. Um, they had stuff for youth crew. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Um, so yeah, well like the youth section. Yeah, the youth section. Um, so. So you can take your kids out there and they have a little, a youth section with some fun stuff. Yeah, so there's like, it's like about like 50 yards long, just a little small spot. And there's just this section in the middle where you could get activities and coloring and then there's also some activities. There was some like tic tac toe trivia that you could do. My dad did. And then there's also like matching stuff. It's like, you know, and then there's like some games and some, you know, snacks. Yeah, that was mostly like what it was just a little tiny spot. Yeah, it was, it wasn't huge. It was a room, you know, like, I don't know how big the room was, but they had a bunch of booths and they, they did, I feel like they did still try to cater to kids, you know, they had tons of stickers, all the booths had candy and stickers and, and, and the people there were really good about talking to the crew and, Hey, how's it going, bud? And, and trying to, you know, involve him. I was impressed. I was impressed with that. I thought that was cool. And then. Today, they had different booths set up around the show floor where it was for kids 18 and under that cookies and Rice Krispie treats and like Pretzel mix that you get for the kids to eat and stuff like that. So they they did try to cater to the youth. Again, who doesn't? There was a lot of dogs at different booths, which was fun. You walk around and people had dogs in their booths. So yeah, you can go, yeah, go pet the dogs and see the different dog training equipment. So, um, overall I felt like it was a really positive experience. Um, size wise, I didn't know what to think. I, It's as big as, um, an area, I guess, as you can, biggest gathering of upland hunters, they were saying in the world at one time. So, um, pretty cool to just see people come out that are like minded. They love dogs. They love birds. They love conservation. They love guns and just everything that's mixed in behind that. So, um, I didn't see any ground breaking products. There were some cool different products that we did. Um, but I guess being in the training world, I didn't see anything that was like, wow, I've never ever seen this before, but there's a lot of, you know, cool leashes and collars and things you could, um, just training equipment. People have their own custom little training equipment, stuff like that. They did have three different sets. One was, uh, the dog training seminar stage, which we went and listened to, um, some professional trainers also share, share stuff about training. Um, I like that stage. They had the training stage, and then they had, um, the conservation stage, and then they had, I think, another stage where they talked. Wasn't there, wasn't there four stages? Because they had like, it was broken into like, yeah, those three sections. And there's one, one stage in the middle section. Another in like, the right section, if you would. And then there's like, two in the corners of the left far section. Is there two stages there? Yeah. Were they combined, or? No, they were separate in the corners. But? Oh. Anyways, there's plenty to do. We were there for, um, two half days basically and one full day. And I mean, I definitely felt like we saw everything, you know, in a day and a half or so, but if you want to talk to people and get to know people and you're really into looking at products or, or listening to the different seminars, there was always, Something to do even if you were there, you know every day so, um So anyhow, that was pretty much pheasant fest this next year. They announced it's going to be in kansas city Um, I think I didn't get the exact dates, but if you just put pheasant fest in Um, it's, uh, it's going to be in Kansas city next year under pheasant or it'll propagate and you can see the date. So I'd recommend putting it on your calendar. If it's something you're passionate about upland game hunting and you really love it, I'd recommend coming out, checking it out. There was probably four or five different, um, dog training booths there. Different trainers were there. Again, I mean, there's, again, if you're into dogs, you're into upland game hunting, you're into conservation, you're into anything in that world, that's what Pheasant Fest is about. So, I had not ever been out to it, so it was fun to come check it out for a first time. And, uh, join up with those like minded individuals and have a good experience and see South Dakota and see the wildlife that was here and see the rolling hills and see everything that it was about. So, the people were very kind, they were very welcoming, uh, they were, you know, just a good group of people to be around. So, before we wrap this up, crew, is there anything else that came to your mind about Pheasant Fest? Or how you felt about it or thought about it? Well, I mean, yeah, like my dad said, like, it was really fun for kids. Well, me and, yeah, I think it was, it was pretty well put together. And they had some, a couple of food places around. Just, if you got hungry and then they had stuff. A little bit of things that you could, like, little couple giveaways and just free things on a table that you could snag and yeah, it was just really fun, so. Thanks, Crow. Thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing with everyone your thoughts. Uh, thanks everyone for listening. Thank you. Again, if you have any, uh, If you have any, um, comments or things you'd like us to talk about, go ahead and shoot us a, um, a question at the, uh, the bird dog podcast at gmail. com or you can DM us on Instagram at the bird dog podcast. Go ahead and follow us everywhere you can, um, you know, share with your friends. And, um, if you're interested in training, you can check us out at Utah bird dog training. com. That's our training website. And you can also go to fieldbredgoldenretrievers. com. That's our breeding website. If you're looking for a really nice hunting golden, that's healthy, has good drive, has proven bloodlines. And that, that again was one of our main things here to come out. We were picking up a puppy out of, uh, you know, from Minneapolis and the And the breeder drove down and met us and brought the pup to us. And we were able to kind of time it just right. Kill two birds with one stone, check out pheasant fest and get a puppy and bring it home. And we went into pheasant fest after she dropped the puppy off and crew had all the, all the people swarming him, all the cute girls swarming him with that puppy. So if you're, uh, if you're into that, take a puppy to pheasant fest and you'll be a popular person. Um, so. Uh, it was, it was a fun, fun experience. Great people. We're on the long haul back now, back home. Uh, we had a storm come through that looks like the roads are clear and we're going to drive as far as we can here tonight. So anyhow, thanks everyone for listening. Have a great day and we'll see it in the next show.