108 May/June 2013
Going Places
Author:Gary Hubbell
South Dakota pheasant hunting
was always on my bucket
list,” said the contented
fellow next to me at the bar at The
Grand Lodge, in Highmore. “And
it’s still on my bucket list.”
That’s the way it goes at The
Grand Lodge. It’s so much fun that
you can’t get enough. Last fall I
made the trip twice, though it’s a
28-hour round trip from my home
in western Colorado. There’s no
doubt that I drove past a lot of
pheasants in eastern Colorado,
Kansas and Nebraska on my way
to Highmore (about 45 miles eastnortheast
of Pierre), but the trek
was surely worth it.
Mike Solberg is a farmer and
rancher who runs 800 brood cows
and raises grain and hay on more
than 15,000 acres of South Dakota
prairie. He also likes to hunt, so
he developed a plan to maximize
the habitat for pheasants, sharptailed
grouse, prairie chickens and
whitetail deer on his land. A combination
of grain plots, shelterbelts
and rotational grazing resulted in
pheasant hunting like you dream about.
Mike bought a large parcel in Highmore
next to the paved airstrip and built a nice
lodge with a restaurant and bar—and The
Grand Lodge experience was born.
This past fall John Luttrell, a top Labrador
breeder and trainer based in Watertown,
South Dakota, joined my friend
Dave Alvarez and me for a couple of days
of hunting at The Grand Lodge. Because
we had all of the dog power we needed,
Mike drew us a map and turned us loose.
(The lodge has its own kennel full of talented
Labs, setters and pointers, but we
had opted to bring our own charges.)
It wasn’t long before things started
happening. We entered a prairie slough
with waist-high reeds where the dogs
seemed to be constantly on point. The
occasional rooster got nervous and burst
into flight—some out of range, some in—
The Grand Lodge
but it soon became apparent that the birds
were creeping en masse toward the end
of the slough. John bailed out and jogged
around to block, and as he left, a covey
of eight sharptails flushed wild into the
wind. It turns out that there were literally
hundreds of birds in that slough. But
it wasn’t like shooting fish in a barrel.
Roosters flushed wild and long, waves of
them cascaded into the wind, but enough
got up in range that our guns barked and
our game bags began to fill. Soon we
were far from the truck and it was time to
loop back, so John again jogged ahead to
block. As luck would have it, we busted
the covey of sharptails again. John saw
the flush and crouched in a ditch, and the
birds sailed unsuspectingly right over his
head. He stood up and took a double on a
South Dakota-style driven shoot.
We had parked next to the biggest
stack of hay I’d ever seen, and
it was flanked by a patch of milo
about 200 yards long. Dave’s setter,
Flash, and my Brittany, Jack,
are normally staunch pointers, but
they engaged in a walking creep
all the way through the field. There
was a strange rustling noise, as
if the field were alive. As we approached
the end, it became apparent
why the dogs hadn’t been holding.
Suddenly the sky filled with a
host of russet-bodied ringnecks
that went cackling into the air in
a giant wave. There were so many
birds that it was hard to decide
where to shoot. Conservatively, we
flushed 200 pheasants out of that
one milo field. The habitat was so good and
the pheasants so plentiful that we
could afford to be picky. Dave
pulled an old 28-gauge Remington
Model 11-48 autoloader from
its case and headed off to walk
a shelterbelt by himself. “I will
shoot only pointed birds with a
28-gauge,” he pronounced, and
that’s just what he did.
We hunted wild birds on my first trip,
but on my second trip I brought my sons
and we hunted the preserve. During one
drive I chose to carry a camera instead of
a gun, and in a single frame I caught 38
roosters in flight. Such numbers were not
uncommon. The meals at The Grand Lodge are superb,
and the rooms are comfortable. (I
can’t recall the last time I had prime rib
and lobster tail on my plate at the same
time.) The lodge has 12 double rooms
and two private meeting rooms.
I give The Grand Lodge a hearty two
thumbs up for anyone looking for plenty
of birds, great guides and hosts who treat
their guests like family.
For more information, contact The
Grand Lodge, 605-852-3200; www.grand
lodgehunting.com. The Grand Lodge has pheasants in numbers that
can drive dogs to distraction—and allow hunters
to be picky about the shots they take.
