Cheyenne-Country Roosters

As dusk fell across the farthest reaches of a seeming- ly flat earth, I turned off of Interstate 90 onto US Highway 281, an arrow-straight line of asphalt that traverses the state of South Dakota from north to south. The tiny town of Plankinton sits a mile off of this junction. At least one of the town's 600 people is a cleverly sarcastic soul, for here a large homemade sign reads: "Plankinton-Next 3 Exits." The chuckle kept me awake momentarily. My eyelids already had begun to droop, and I still had three hours left to drive.As you travel north and west through South Dakota, you have the strange sensation that the world of people is slowly receding from your path, leaving you alone. The state's motto is "Great Faces, Great Places," but between the places and the faces are considerable spaces, and the night makes them feel all the more empty and wide. By the time I reached US Highway 14 and turned west toward Pierre, occasional farmhouse lights were the only imperfections in an otherwise perfect darkness. Three hours after dark, I finally pulled into the parking lot at Cheyenne Ridge Lodge, 18 miles north of Pierre. After being welcomed by the lodge staff, I unpacked my gear and then drank one ample glass of wine in a vain attempt to cancel the coffee that had gotten me there. Two wrongs don't make a right, so I spent the night in shallow sleep. I woke with a mild headache, dressed and stumbled to the lodge's great room for a cup of coffee. When I entered the room and looked out the floor-to-ceiling glass that forms its west wall, my jaw almost dropped. The soft light of sunrise revealed a breathtaking vista that had been totally obscured the previous night. The spacious two-story lodge sits atop the rugged breaks of the Missouri River and overlooks miles of prairie hummocks and draws that deliver scarce rain to the shores of Oahe Reservoir. I went out onto the patio to take in the view. Sunlight had just touched the ridgetops, and the reservoir was still in shade. Dotting the water were thousands of white specks-the voices from which told me they were snow geese. Somewhere down in a yucca-studded draw a cock pheasant crowed. At breakfast I met the party that I would join for the hunt: six men from New Orleans who were all either friends or family. Among them was John Besh, a renowned chef and restaurateur whose Restaurant August is justly famous far beyond New Orleans. Hunting with John would prove immensely enjoyable-and not only because he commanded the lodge's kitchen at one point during my visit. John is serious about hunting and handles his Beretta Silver Hawk as well as he handles a wooden spoon. Over a delicious and voluminous breakfast we met Harry Stiles, head guide and manager of Cheyenne Ridge's hunting and fishing program. In addition to hot gunning for pheasants and waterfowl, Cheyenne Ridge offers excellent fall fishing for walleyes on Oahe Reservoir. Harry is a former professional walleye angler and a man obviously in love with the big lake and the surrounding country. Cheyenne Ridge leases three major tracts of land totaling 3,200 acres, all within 20 minutes of the lodge. All three leases are covered by a state preserve license, which permits hunting from September through March. Lodge packages allow a limit of five rooster pheasants per day, but additional birds can be purchased up to the daily South Dakota preserve limit of 15. Like many South Dakota outfitters, Cheyenne Ridge transports hunting parties via a custom-conversion school bus. After only a few minutes in the bus we arrived at the site of our first hunt-a gently sloping complex of alfalfa fields interspersed with strips of milo, corn, switchgrass and other geometric habitats plus the occasional cattail slough and brushy fencerow. Harry runs Labrador retrievers, and the dogs performed very well on our drive-and-block shoots. It also became clear right away that the Cajuns were on their guns. Most pheasant hunting at Cheyenne Ridge is typical of that at other pheasant operations in the state. That is to say, parties divide into groups of walkers and blockers to drive a mixture of wild and pen-raised birds into the air. Over two days of gunning, I was impressed both with the meticulous grooming of the preserve habitat and the sheer number of birds. Cheyenne Ridge conducts a major release of 1,800 birds in early August followed by additional releases, if needed, to satisfy the state requirement that the annual harvest not exceed the number of birds put out. Throughout the season, Cheyenne Ridge releases approximately 4,000 to 5,000 roosters. Despite the large releases, approximately 30 to 50 percent of the birds we took on my early November hunt were wild. Even when they are well flight-conditioned-as most of the pheasants at Cheyenne Ridge are-released birds can be distinguished easily from wild ones by examining the nostrils. Pen-raised birds have widely flared nostrils, which are opened by the blinders worn while they are still in the pens. (Blinders are used to prevent fighting.) Wild birds, by contrast, have tightly folded nostrils. Few visiting hunters know or care about this difference, and the combination of ignorance and indifference accounts for many tales of amazement. "The bird numbers were unbelievable," says the typical nonresident pheasant hunter. Indeed, that is a good choice of words. If you want to swing your gun a lot and do so amid panoramic prairie views, you'll find few places that will suit you better than Cheyenne Ridge Lodge. And its large swaths of level ground are easy on the tender joints of aging shooters. For hunters who bring their own dogs, Cheyenne Ridge operates a state-of-the-art kennel building with heated runs. The lodge itself owns 10 trained gundogs, and all guides are required to have at least two well-trained dogs of their own. In addition to great fields for large-party drives, Cheyenne Ridge is not without good opportunities for solo hunters and small groups. "We have a lot of draws, small fencerows, shelterbelts and other cover where one or two guys and a dog can have a lot of fun," Harry Stiles said. He said he's able to accommodate a wide variety of hunting tastes with the cover available to him. Harry showed me some of that cover as we bounced down a gravel road in the bus, and my appetite was whetted. I enjoy a party drive from time to time, but I prefer wild-bird hunting-alone or with a partner-and I like rugged country better than flat ground, mainly because I want to tackle it while my body is still young enough. I'm a 30-something triathlete who feels almost a little cheated if not put through a physical test during a hunt. It doesn't bother me in the least to hunt considerably more than I shoot; in fact, that's what I prefer. So after two days of leisurely shooting and abundant laughter with some of the most pleasant men I'd ever met, I asked Harry if he could show me something a little different, something a little wilder, something that wasn't so damned easy. I'd been looking at those ruggedly inviting Missouri Breaks for two days and was chomping at the bit to give my ankles a bend there. A broad grin came across Harry's face, the sort of grin an older man wears when he's about to teach a younger man a lesson. "If you want some exercise, I can certainly oblige," he said. Before he took the rest of the party to another comfortable plateau, Harry dropped my English cocker, Rascal, and me at the upper end of a series of steep and winding canyons. He pointed across their expanse to a distant fence that was barely visible. He told me to turn west when I reached the fence, which would take me to the top of the plateau where the rest of the party would be gunning. "I hope you've got plenty of water," Harry said. Then he loaned me a pair of sunglasses and wished me luck. It was 2 pm, the warmest hour of the day. The weather was unseasonably hot for November, with the temperature pushing 80° F. A year-long drought had made the brown grass crunchy underfoot and rendered scenting conditions almost impossible for the dog. I had stripped down to a pair of jeans, lightweight hiking boots and a Pella Bird 'n Lite strap vest over a thin cotton T-shirt. In my vest I carried five 20-ounce bottles of chilled water, a tube of Rehydrate electrolyte tablets for Rascal, and a dozen shells for my Beretta over/under. When the bus disappeared over the hill and its engine was no longer audible, I started toward the head of the first draw. The draws and hills before me looked like classic habitat for pheasants, Huns and sharptails. However, wild Huns and sharptails are rare on Cheyenne Ridge leases, and state preserve regulations forbid the harvest of sharpies on preserve lands, anyway. Because Cheyenne Ridge now releases Huns and chukar, though, the little gray bombers are fair game. As soon as Rascal and I crested the rim, pheasants began flying out the other side of the draw. Compared to the birds I'd gunned in the plateau milo strips, these pheasants seemed to fly like hard-hit golf balls. I could see others running like greyhounds through twisted thickets of chokecherry 40 yards away. I called Rascal to heel in order to avoid a fiasco born of over-stimulation, and we walked quickly to the chokecherry thicket in the bottom of the draw. There I released the dog and waited for him to flush the proverbial skulking bird that always waits behind whenever you go chasing after the visible runners. Sure enough, Rascal put the bird to flight and I folded it crossing at 30 yards. This was all well and good, I thought, although still a bit too easy. But that thought melted away in the afternoon heat as Rascal and I busted our humps in pursuit of pheasants that ran pell-mell and consistently flushed at least 50 yards distant. In less than an hour I had sweated completely through my shirt and used three bottles of water to cool the dog. Fortunately, I found a wet seep in the bottom of a deeper draw-its location indicated by a tight circle of trees. There Rascal and I found an oasis of cool shade and ankle-deep water. When we came up out of the seep, slaked and refreshed, Rascal immediately acted birdy. Pheasants erupted all around us. I missed one with the bottom barrel, and then folded one with the top. Several canyons and several misses later, I was down to my last two shells and six ounces of water. A merciful breeze had begun, so I called in Rascal to sit down and cool off. In the distance I could hear the guns of New Orleans firing with rapidity and, most likely, great effect. I sat there on a rock outcropping until the dog's panting came under control and my shirt quit sticking to me. The fence, which marked our destination, was just 100 yards uphill. From here we'd make one last push up a small draw and then call it quits. My joints were getting tender. We ascended the draw without action and finally reached the edge of the plateau. I could see the bus parked in the distance and could hear human voices mingled with occasional gunfire. Then Rascal got birdy again. I followed him along the edge of the plateau where it plunged into a wide draw, and then onto a skinny point of prairie that jutted over the deepest part of the draw. He was getting quicker, more insistent, crazier. I finally had to jog to keep up. When we reached the end of the point, a rooster burst from a clump of yucca and climbed higher than I've ever seen a pheasant climb in 25 years of hunting them. Just as he began to level off, I met him with a load of No. 6s and he fell forever, beyond sight and sound. I rushed to the edge of the point and saw Rascal half-running, half-tumbling into the bottom of the draw. Down in the short desiccated grass I could see a pair of silver wings flapping and a long dark tail waving in the breeze. Soon they were in Rascal's mouth, and he came bounding up the side of the draw with the day's last bird. We had taken it to the limit in the Missouri Breaks. I heard the bus come squeaking up behind me, and Harry opened its doors with his hand lever. He looked at me with that same grin on his face, observing my sweat-soaked shirt, my dusty pant legs and the long pink scratches on my arms and face. "Did you have a nice walk?" he asked. "Yeah," I said. "Got any water?" Author's Note: For more information on South Dakota pheasant hunting, contact Cheyenne Ridge Outfitters & Lodge, Inc., 605-264-5444; www.cheyenneridge.com. Chad Mason is an outdoor writer and Mennonite minister who lives in Iowa with his wife, three daughters and two bird dogs. His acclaimed collection of hunting and environmental essays, Voices on the Wind, is available through www.shooting sportsman.com or by calling 800-685-7962.