Rolling hills, endless draws and mile-long fields of grain sorghum will hold upland game birds, while waterfowl will be found on man-made dugouts and natural sloughs.

For gun dog owners interested in hunting a readily available combination of plentiful upland game birds and waterfowl all in one day and all at one location, there are several top destinations throughout the Upper Midwest. One of these places is in south-central South Dakota on the Dick Smith Ranch.

"Excellent South Dakota Pheasant Hunting: Also sharptail grouse and prairie chickens," Smith's ad reads.

"Yeah, we do have some waterfowl on our ranch, but hardly anyone bothers to shoot them because most hunters come here for pheasants and sometimes prairie grouse," Dick Smith said on the phone when asked about the prospect of shooting both ducks and upland game on his property.

Though ringneck roosters and prairie grouse (which include both sharptails and chickens) are what Smith features in his advertisement, the prospect of working gun dogs on puddle ducks sounded good to Curt Shreve and Chuck Wilson.

Fort Pierre National Grasslands in central South Dakota has 250,000 acres of ideal habitat for sharptailed grouse and prairie chickens, and the area is open to the public.

Shreve, a Large Munsterlander breeder from Prior Lake, Minnesota, and Wilson, a Llewellin setter owner from Waco, Texas, both had wanted more details about this combination hunt before signing on.

Located a few miles from the little cow town of Vivian (population 148) and in sight of the east-west running Interstate I-90, Smith's cattle ranch is made up of the usual West River (that's the "Missouri River") landscape.

"On our place, we have mostly big pastures up to five miles square with rolling, grass-covered hills and long brushy draws covered by buffalo berries, kosha weeds and prairie grass. Across the flatter land, there are half-mile narrow strips of waist-high forage sorghum for cattle feed and along the hills and down in the bottoms there are big man-made dugouts and even some good-size natural cattail sloughs filled with water this year," said Smith.

"You can stay at the motel in town five miles away or right here in the ranch house," Smith offered. "Either way, once you're on our property, you can hunt on your own or hunt with my family and friends.

"And, if you want to, you can try some hunting on no-fee public property such as Fort Pierre National Grasslands just to the north of our ranch. Or you can go to some hunt-for-free Walk-In Areas in our region of the state," Smith said.

Shreve and Wilson signed up with Smith and made the trip to South Dakota the last week in October. Here's how things went.