The South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks released their brood route survey over the weekend, and as expected things look pretty good for the upcoming year. You can read the full report here.
Overall, the state showed a modest increase of 3%, but local trends increased 22% depending on which region you want to look at. We have two routes in Lyman County that are considered part of three different regions. The Pierre region saw a 22% increase, while Chamberlain and Winner showed 12 and 26 % decreases. The number of broods counted and brood size did increase which will have the biggest impact on our season. This correlates pretty well to what we have been seeing in the field.
After a little harder winter we are happy with what we are seeing, which will be very similar if not better than the last two years. The number of birds/mile in one route across the county nearly doubled, while the other decreased slightly. We're looking forward to getting out there and kicking around. We take out the first group tomorrow for the opening of the Preserve season which will be a good tune-up before the regular season. Fall is here, and although we can't put up the concrete tools completely this is a step in the right direction.
