Mount Blogmore Hunt: 12 Guns, 36 Pheasants, 60 Degrees in Hyde County

I ventured west to Holabird and the Nemec farm yesterday for the annual Mount Blogmore South Dakota Blogosphere Hunt. Most in attendance pursued the wily pheasant with shotguns; a few of us limited our shooting to camera. (Jeremiah Murphy, Kevin Woster, and Todd Epp used both!) Below is my humble photostream of a day well-spent walking fields in greater Holabird.



Perhaps the best moment of the day for the hunters: walking Nick's sunflowers and flushing so many pheasants I probably could have thrown my camera and knocked one down.

The best moment of the day for the birds: when Kevin jumped up on his truck at the east edge of the sunflower field and shouted "Done!" as our twelfth shooter took down our 36th bird. "Done! Limit!" rang the cry across the windless field. And as our voices faded, the pheasants raised their own cry, hundreds of them to the south, cackling, laughing at us and at their escape. It happened exactly that way, honest.

Nick and Mary Jo Nemec are gracious and generous hosts—thank you, Nemecs! And thank you to Kevin Woster of Mount Blogmore for organizing the day.

Bucks Before Birds: Farmers to Plow Almost Half of SD CRP Acres

While I lament the loss of a couple dozen good trees, South Dakota is on pace to lose 44% of the wildlife habitat previously held in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Patrick Morrison reports in yesterday's Yankton Press & Dakotan that "300,000 acres of CRP were converted to production ground last year, reducing the overall number of CRP acres to 1.2 million." Biologist Chad Switzer of Game Fish and Parks estimates farmers will convert another 120,000 acres this year and 240,000 next. That's 660,000 acres -- over a thousand square miles, equivalent to almost all the land in Lake and Moody Counties -- where pheasants won't be able to nest, breed, or roost as they did just two years ago.

Why the decrease? Simple economics: with farm prices up thanks to ethanol and Asian demand, CRP just doesn't pay like it used to. And with America's failed energy policy driving up costs for fuel and fertilizer, farmers have to put short-term payoffs over long-term habitat protection

Oh well -- with ammo prices going up 50% or more, you don't want to shoot as many birds anyway, did you?