Where To Be When Pheasant Season Opens This Fall

All across America, there are harbingers of the fall season showing up as the month of October continues to unfold.

Back east, the fall color is nearing its peak in the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. On the Eastern Seaboard, the striped bass fishing is heating up, while down south, the largemouth bass are on the feed as they put the groceries away for the coming of winter.

Some early season big buck giants have fallen now that early archery season is underway for whitetail hunters in most spots, and in New England and the Great Lakes States, grouse and woodcock hunters are in the woods with their bell-clad bird dogs locking down on point.

And starting this weekend, it’s now time for other scattergun enthusiasts to begin their own chase for an autumn upland game bird that is eve;ry bit as colorful as the October season is itself.

That’s because the year’s first pheasant season openers arrive in earnest this weekend on Saturday, October 12, 2024 when the law comes off in Minnesota; Montana; and in North Dakota.

In the legendary pheasant hunting state of South Dakota—arguably the pheasant hunting capitol of the world—it will be next weekend on Saturday, October 19, when the 2024 pheasant campaign opens up, followed a week later by neighboring states like Nebraska and Iowa that see their pheasant seasons commence on October 26. Further south, it’ll be a bit later still as Kansas gets its pheasant season opener next month on Saturday, November 11.

Regardless of where you are planning to unload a bird dog and try to bust an early season limit of roosters, one of the primary questions being asked in coffee shops all across pheasant country right now is what kind of season it will end up being for 2024-25.

To find out the answer to that question, I recently turned to pheasant hunting guru Tom “Carp” Carpenter, the longtime magazine man and communications expert for Pheasants Forever. Fresh off another run of overseeing PF’s voluminous annual pheasant hunting forecast, Carp was in an upbeat mood as he readied his gear and prepared to head outside behind the bird dogs.

That optimism came in part because of a mild winter in much of pheasant country, a winter that wasn’t in a lot of ways, something that didn’t tax the birds too terribly much.

“What I’d say Lynn, is that in the core pheasant range, we’ve transitioned out of a drought year (previously), and especially in the northern core of pheasant range—Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota—we had was an almost super mild winter, almost non-existent,” Carpenter said. 

But while that was an important first step in the annual pheasant population equation, copious rainfall began to descend upon much of the same region as spring arrived and moved towards summer. While abundant water on the prairies is a good thing for breeding ducks, it can be deadly for the year’s pheasant crop.

“Last fall, we had a lot of birds,” explained Carpenter. “Even with the drought, dry conditions do favor upland birds to a point. And we were coming through (from last winter) with all of these birds, and then we started getting (the rains) this summer.”

In fact, so much rainfall hit in places that Carpenter admitted that reports from pheasant country indicated that the first nesting attempt and subsequent hatch was “challenging” for pheasants this year.

“We had so much rain in late May, through June, and into July,” said Carpenter. “And that’s right in the middle of the June 12-15 median for peak hatch time. That’s tough on the birds, and we had flooding, we had cold, we had rains, and messy roads. It was like a choo-choo train (of storms and moisture) that just kept coming at us time and time again.”

But as Carpenter will often say, pheasants are tougher than we think. And that means that in some regions, pheasants actually pulled off a solid first hatch, even as rainclouds began to give way to rainbows across pheasant country.

And as CRP fields, corn fields, and sorghum patches began to dry out, well, let’s just say that those tough-as-nails pheasants pulled another nice surprise out of the hat.

“What also happened (this year) was a second nesting attempt where anecdotal evidence suggests that (the second nesting effort) was good,” said Carpenter. “Now, (do note that) they don’t lay as many eggs or have as many chicks on the second attempt.”

The good news is that where first nesting attempts were lost due to heavy rainfall, second nesting attempts may have helped to fill in some of the gaps for this year’s pheasant production. And where that occurred, hunters may see a good number of young birds early on.

With all of that noted, where will pheasant hunters find good hunting this fall?

“Early on, we kind of thought that Minnesota and Iowa would be a washout,” admitted Carpenter. 

That likely meant some glum looks around the conservation group’s home office earlier in the summer, because Pheasants Forever is headquartered in Minneapolis and has many PF members across the state.

But by the time the roadside surveying work was finished in the two states, and when the PF forecasting work was done as well, both Minnesota and Iowa were beyond what might have initially been expected earlier in the year.

“Minnesota came in above the 10-year average,” said Carpenter. “Now, we’re below last year, but we aren’t significantly lower, and the numbers were high enough (this year) that there is some excitement for hunting. Same thing in Iowa. We thought it was going to be a washout. They have (a good scientific roadside survey), and their numbers were pretty strong.”

If Minnesota and Iowa are surprisingly strong in forecast terms for the 2024-25 season, then the same thing applies to the west in South Dakota. In fact, PF got a massive amount of information on the Mount Rushmore State and its pheasant hunting prospects this year from biologists, land managers and more.

So much so that after reading and editing author Andrew Johnson’s lengthy report on the state, Carpenter feels very enthusiastic about what hunters will find in South Dakota this fall.

“Essentially, we think that if you’re hunting north of (I-90) in South Dakota, you’re going to have some good hunting this year,” he said. “They didn’t really get the heavy rain that we did in Minnesota and Iowa, but instead, they got the right amount of rain. I think that North Dakota is going to be (really) strong too.”

In North Dakota, Carpenter’s own recent sharp-tailed grouse hunting experiences this fall should bode well for pheasant hunters preparing to head afield.

“What I saw was a lot of grass,” he said. “Sharptail hunters are like Goldilocks, we don’t want too much grass that is too thick or too tall, and we don’t want too little grass (either). You want it to be just right, but there was too much grass (for sharptail hunters in North Dakota) because they had too much rain.”

But while that might be a problem for sharptail hunters, it should be just the opposite for pheasant hunters. In fact, that dense cover will likely deliver good pheasant hunting prospects according to Carpenter, who opines that the Peace Garden State’s traditional pheasant hotspots west of the Missouri River corridor might be really good this year. 

Carpenter also said that the further west one goes in pheasant country—into the shortgrass prairie habitat—the less that rainfall seems to impact the pheasant hatch from year to year. 

That likely means that Montana, which saw more rainfall this year like its neighbors to the east in Iowa and Minnesota did—in the tallgrass prairie country—should also see pretty decent pheasant hunting possibilities in 2024 too. If you’re heading for Big Sky Country this fall, that’s good news if you can stay away from crowds.

“Montana is a funny state,” said Carpenter. “It’s out there, but man, they get the hunting pressure. Everybody wants to go to Montana and shoot pheasants. It’s sort of game bird central. But I think there’s going to be more pheasants this year in Montana than last year, I believe.”

How about further south in the southern reaches of pheasant range, states like Nebraska and Kansas?

“Kansas is still working out of their drought,” said Carpenter. “Kansas always has some good pheasant hunting, but their drought has been multi-years now and that’s really affected the habitat. I think Kansas is going to have some fair hunting in pockets, but you’re going to have to do your research and you’ve got to call ahead.”

With Kansas getting at least some beneficial rains to ease their drought conditions, Carpenter said that the same thing can be said of Nebraska. Things aren’t perfect there this season, but they’re a little better than they have been.

The bottom line is that even in Nebraska and Kansas, two Great Plains states that are lying outside of the most favorable pheasant hunting forecast zones this season, things have improved a bit. For a hardworking and enterprising pheasant hunter willing to do some homework, lesser out-of-state crowds and some decent hunting prospects in certain spots could be the potential result.

Carpenter feels that keying in on that last idea may be an important one for hunters heading into pheasant country from other states devoid of roosters rocketing up into a cobalt blue autumn sky.

“If I wanted to hunt pheasants and I’m coming up from Georgia or up from Texas or out from Pennsylvania or crossing over from Ohio, where do I go,” he queried. “Well, South Dakota is Mecca and is going to have the most birds. (But) it’s also going to attract a lot of hunters.”

He feels just as strongly about heading for North Dakota, or even Montana this year. 

And, of course, there’s the PF home state of Minnesota and nearby Iowa too, spots that also appear to have plenty to offer out-of-state pheasant hunters this year.

The bottom line for the upcoming pheasant season—and reading through the work of Carpenter and others in the 2024-25 Pheasants Forever Forecast is almost required reading if you’re going to chase some roosters this year—is that while there will certainly be some variability, in general, there should be plenty of cries of “Rooster! Rooster!” too as this loud-mouthed, gaudy game bird vaults into the autumn sky.

And if you’re lucky enough to be there, and if your shooting skills are solid enough, there will be a late-day heft in the game vest as a limit of roosters heads home for the dinner table.

Because, for the upland bird hunter, it’s the best time of the year, and it starts once again on an October weekend coming up soon. To find out what will happen, you’ve got to lace up the boots, load up the bird dog, shoulder the scattergun and lay down some boot leather.

But it will be worth it, and then some.

“Every year is different,” wrote Carpenter in his introduction to the 2024 PF Pheasant Forecast a few days ago. “And every state is different. What’s going on with the birds in Michigan is not what’s happening in Montana or Minnesota. North Dakota is not South Dakota, or vice-versa. Iowa and Kansas and Nebraska sprawl far-and-wide and can’t be glommed together. States out of that core range have roosters too.

“In my opinion, the 2024 forecast is pretty positive across the board. Opportunity awaits. There is not a state on here I wouldn’t hunt in. And in a handful-plus, I will.”

And with any luck, perhaps you and I will too. Because it’s almost opening day in Roosterville, and that’s the best place a wingshooter can spend a glorious fall day, right?

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