Pheasant Season Has Opened!

South Dakota's pheasant season opened on Saturday at noon. Our boss here in South Dakota hosted a John Deere Risk Protection hunt. We thankfully were invited out to take part in the most impressive Pheasant Hunt either one of us has ever seen. With us having our own hunt at home, we didn't see this to be that big of a deal, BUT, things are a little different here in South Dakota. We arrived at 11:00 a.m. and everyone was preparing to leave the house. There were 14 licensed hunters and 5 extra to help block. We were at the first field promptly at 12:00 nooon to get started. Back in Texas we expect to sometimes hunt all day for 2-6 birds to be found and shot---here in South Dakota--15 minutes 11 birds down---DOWN--not how many were seen. We traveled to the next field 13 birds down. We haven't even spent 2 hours out and the limit was two thirds there. To make the day last longer they took what was killed back to the house at 2:00 to have some lunch. We women stayed behind to cook and get ready for the men when their day was complete. They were gone 1 more hour and came back with 50 birds total. They felt sure that they had shot well over 60 birds total, but finding them was a problem. With the corn harvest being so late, a lot of the corn is still standing in the field, so you must walk the tall corn to get the birds pushed up. Curtis and I were some of the blockers and it was so amazing to see 20-30 birds fly up at once--it literally sounded like a war zone. The dogs worked themselves to death.
This being an annual hunt, the food consisted only of pheasant. We cooked pheasant 3 different ways and then just added the trimmings. We really enjoyed gettting to eat in a kitchen/dining room setting. Curtis requested I make macaroni and cheese--and I cooked my pheasant chicken fried and cream gravy--so we did get to have some Texas cooking. The 2 women that were in the kitchen ask me what we would cook with the pheasant and I told them that we would definetly have red beans to go with that kind of meal---neither one of them had ever cooked much less seen a pinto bean. They requested next year that was to be my support for the meal--they wanted to try red beans. We also missed iced tea--they folks don't serve iced tea. Beer is the staple to the meal---and if you don't drink beer or water, you must bring "POP" along. We have laughted alot about how different our ways are, again!!!
With it being a John Deere pheasant hunt, we were able to meet the top dogs of the company and put faces with voices that we have been speaking with on the phone. So that was very nice-we all gathered at the end of the day to sit in a circle and our boss drug out the guitar for some just old fashion singing. It was very enjoyable to see so many just bellar out those old country songs. Lots and lots of laughter!!
We know we will stay in South Dakota for at least 1 more week--we never know how long we will be in any one place--but for now we have a lot of audits to work on. I will be crunching alot of numbers this week and believe it or not we still have an appraisal to do on corn. By now all of that should be complete but the weather has been such a damper on things--we didn't see sunlight for 5 days this week due to the rainfall.
Never know where our next weeks blog will come from--

Until then..........................