Lots of pheasants found in natural habitat are among the reasons often given to hunt ringneck roosters on a commercial pheasant hunting farm in South Dakota or any other state in the pheasant country of the Upper Midwest.

For those who want to hunt pheasants in South Dakota but don’t care to fight the crowds on public land or don’t have the connections for free access to private property, there are plenty of fee hunting farms operated by commercial outfitters who specialize in ringnecks. There are, in fact, over 200 registered hunting preserves in the state and probably more than a thousand non-preserve hunting businesses. All these outfitters offer a variety of hunting opportunities and accommodations at prices that start at an economical $150 per gun per day to over $3,000 for a three-day stay at a luxury facility.

Reasons To Hunt Pheasants With Outfitters On Commercial Operation
1. “We’ve got pheasants!” is the way one pheasant farm operator explained the reason for the surge in business in recent years. “Sure, there are birds on public land, but there is lots of competition for them early in the season and later the remaining roosters are sometimes too hard to get,” he added. “On most commercial hunting property, there is good habitat designed to hold pheasants in places that almost everyone can walk, no matter what their age or physical condition.”

2. Harvest success can be better when hunting with an outfitter whose job is to be sure everyone gets a good chance to shoot at many birds each day. Anyone new to hunting and many older hunters may need several chances to actually kill a limit of three roosters.

“A pheasant hunt at our place, however, isn’t easy because you still have to shoot straight and walk a ways. But hunting here means the odds on getting a limit are better than working hard all day in other places to maybe see only a few birds but not kill many,” says one outfitter.

3. BYOD, or “bring your own dog” to a commercial pheasant hunting farm with the expectation of major exposure to ringneck roosters. “Meg, my old Labrador, saw more pheasants here in five days than she’s seen in six years back home,” a visiting pheasant hunter from Ohio said last year after a trip to a pheasant farm in central South Dakota. “I just wish I had gotten Meg in better shape before we got here because she was totally pooped out by the end of our trip,” he added as advice to other hunters getting their dogs ready for a similar experience.

4. “This is a full service facility,” one pheasant hunter said to describe the way his trip had been organized by his outfitter, who had provided a place to hunt, to sleep and to eat. And some of the most upscale hunting lodges will provide single rooms with private bathrooms and gourmet meals prepared by master chefs and served by waiters with a wine list. In addition, transportation was available from the airport to the farm and from the farm to the surrounding fields.

Some pheasant hunting operations will, likewise, include cleaning, packaging, freezing and boxing up of all the birds harvested for the trip back home. Other commercial hunting farms, however, will offer access to pheasants on the property and leave arrangements for room, board, transportation, and bird cleaning up to the client. There are plenty of full service and partial service pheasant hunting facilities in South Dakota.