Written by HLRBO Staff|
Last updated
South Dakota's pheasant season opens October 17 without the number hunters used to plan around: the state discontinued its annual roadside brood survey in 2019, ending decades of August counts, and has not brought it back despite a public that keeps asking. One state north, North Dakota just published its 2026 count, 80 pheasants per 100 miles, up 3.8 percent, with the southwest leading again. Between a state that tells you and a state that will not, there is still a way to read this season.
The absence is the story in South Dakota, and the department has been candid about why. Officials have argued the survey was resource-intensive and that publicizing low brood counts sometimes discouraged out-of-state hunters, which is an honest reason and also exactly the one that makes nonresident hunters uneasy. What the state publishes instead is a qualitative outlook. Its 2026 preview says the season is expected to be much like 2025, with an abundance of hens available for nesting after a strong year and drought confined to the southern edge of the range. For reference, 2025 was the season state officials predicted would beat the 1.3 million wild roosters harvested in 2024.
What the neighbor's count says
North Dakota still counts, and its 2026 numbers are the closest thing to a regional instrument panel. The late-summer roadside survey found 80 pheasants and 9.6 broods per 100 miles statewide, up slightly from 2025, with average brood size holding at 5.3 chicks. The southwest produced the highest counts at 112 pheasants and 13 broods per 100 miles, essentially flat with last year's strong showing. The southeast slipped, from 72 pheasants per 100 miles to 64. And the northeast, historically secondary pheasant range, has been growing beyond its traditional footprint, according to upland biologist RJ Gross.
The spring set this up. North Dakota's 2026 crowing count ran 23.2 crows per stop, up 9 percent, and Gross credited three straight winters of unusually high adult survival, noting the state typically loses up to 75 percent of its pheasants over a normal winter and has not lately. Mild winters plus wet nesting cover is the pheasant recipe, and both states sat under the same sky.
The sharptail line is the caution flag. North Dakota's grouse had another year of poor production, which upland supervisor Jesse Kolar attributed to extremely hot, dry stretches this summer. Pheasants in the primary range shrugged it off. Birds on the drier fringes did not.
How to read South Dakota without the number
Nonresident hunters pour into South Dakota every October on faith and a hotel deposit. Without a count, the faith has to be built from parts.
Weather is the first part, and it was favorable across most of the range: good moisture into nesting, drought limited to the south, mild winters behind it. The state's own outlook leans on that, and the North Dakota count tends to confirm the pattern held on the northern Plains generally.
Cover is the second part, and here the news is mixed in a way no brood survey would catch. Contracts on roughly 1.5 million Conservation Reserve Program acres expired nationally on September 30, with owners of about 518,000 acres having never re-offered. South Dakota and North Dakota are among the heaviest CRP states in the country. Grass that was pheasant cover on September 30 is still standing on October 17; what happens to it after this season is the open question, and it is a question for landowners more than agencies.
The third part is local knowledge, which is the part a state survey was always a proxy for anyway. A landowner in Beadle or Hand or Tripp County knows whether the hatch came off on their ground in a way no statewide average ever did. The hunters who do well in a no-survey year are the ones who ask that question directly, early, and of the person who owns the grass.
Where the birds are, roughly
Put the two states together and the map reads like this for mid-October: strongest in southwestern North Dakota and across South Dakota's traditional east-central and central pheasant range, where idle grassland sits next to row crops; softer in southeastern North Dakota and along the drought-touched southern fringe; and better than most hunters expect in secondary range that has quietly filled in over three easy winters.
South Dakota's opener is October 17. North Dakota's is October 10. Both will be judged in the field, not in a spreadsheet, which this year is the only place South Dakota is willing to be judged at all.
Pheasant hunters booking Plains ground this fall can see what a property actually holds before they drive: HLRBO lists upland leases across the Dakotas and the Midwest with landowner-posted habitat details, and its Trail Cam Network puts cameras on listed properties. Find a lease.