Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Halfway to the South Dakota Grand Slam Today I spent a couple hours hunting at Tumbleweed Lodge with Lee Harstad, SD Dept. of Tourism rep who helped arrange my trip. We flushed a bunch of pheasants, or I should say, Lee's yellow Lab, Maggie, did. My shooting fell apart today, however. I missed four roosters and dropped one on preserve land near the lodge, while we watched dozens more skedaddle in every direction. Tumbleweed has a very nice layout, with good food and holding cover and tons of birds, but we needed another gunner or two today... Lee and I then spent the last two hours hunting the old Tumbleweed property several miles west of the lodge, where we walked though high grass and cattails around a big stock dam and then pushed two cedar shelterbelts, where we flushed some hens and a half-dozen Hungarian (gray) partridge. I managed to miss two Huns and drop two, while Lee got one and missed a couple. I also dropped a nice rooster that Maggie flushed from some dense cattails. The Huns gave us the second leg of a South Dakota Upland Grand Slam. All that remains is to bag a sharptail and a prairie chicken. I'll hunt pheasants tomorrow again with Lee and some other writers, then Friday I plan to try for the prairie grouse with Gari Sisk, a gal from Alaska who is staying at Tumbleweed. Gari runs pointing setters, so that should be fun. Lee tells me some folks hunt sharptails on horseback here. I'd love to try that on a future trip! (Tumbleweed owner Michael Bollweg told me there are also some antelope and one small herd of mule deer in the area, and we saw a flock of eastern wild turkeys picking up gravel on the road as we drove out to hunt the old place. No shortage of game here!) I stayed at Tumbleweed for a delicious prime rib dinner, shot a bunch of photos of guests enjoying themselves and then headed for Pierre and the Ramkota Inn. Tumbleweed is definitely a first class establishment. Check out their Web site! Later... Once again, I'm bushed from all the driving and a little walking. 11:58:32 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Dan Small. Last update: 10/22/05; 10:48:06 PM.