I glance down at my Garmin to check the temperature, as the cackle of a rooster can be heard in the distance. Negative sixteen. With the wind chill, negative thirty-four. What a dumbass move coming out here in January. It’d be a lot easier to complain had we not hit our limit two days in a row. So for now, I’ll shut the hell up.
Most sources will credit Redfield as the first place to successfully introduce the ringneck pheasant in the United States, although some would argue that Oregon achieved this decades prior, when the state hosted the nation's first pheasant season, in 1892.
The story goes that in 1881, United States consul general Owen Nickerson Denny was living in Shanghai, and was quite fond of the game bird. Previously an Oregon resident, Denny wrote a letter back home to a friend that read, “These birds are delicious eating and very game and will furnish fine sport.” Little did he know the pioneer he would become.
Not wasting any time, Denny shipped sixty ringnecks back home to Portland, however, only a few made it there alive. To tilt the odds in his favor, he made a second shipment of even more pheasants, this time, a success. Denny used his political influence to halt any hunting seasons until a healthy pheasant population had been established. Within a few years, the bird numbers flourished. Oregon hosts the nation's first pheasant hunting season, circa 1892, and some fifty-thousand birds are killed on day one.
While Oregon may have led the charge, South Dakota quickly took over command. In June, 1908, H.P. Packard, H.J. Schalke and H.A. Hagman of Redfield, South Dakota, secured three pairs of birds from the pioneer state of Oregon. The three men released them on Hagman’s property, and the birds thrived in their new environment. So much so that three years later, South Dakota purchased nearly fifty pairs and released them in, you guessed it, Redfield.
Hagmans property, “Hagman’s Grove” is still honored to this day. Just a few years back, the town of Redfield celebrated their one hundredth pheasant hunting season. Brunch was provided at the Chicago & Northwestern Depot just before hunters headed out into the fields for the annual pheasant release, right down the street from Hagman's Grove.
The culture of Redfield was built around pheasant hunting. As an “out-of-stater” it was a unique experience to see a town devoted to my favorite upland bird. In fact, I quickly grew envious of the residents. Like the town of Who-Ville in the Dr. Suess book, “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”, only instead of an entire town counting down to Christmas morning, Redfield counts down to the pheasant opener. That’s a town I could represent. And then I got out of my truck and felt the temperature, and suddenly a three day trip seemed more than sufficient.
Although after limits being met on our first two days, I found myself wanting to call home and tell my family I’d be longer than expected. “Surely they’ll understand”, I thought to myself as I walked across a frozen pond between two groves of CRP. Like a Dirk Walker painting, a pair of roosters fly across the pond from one grove to another. I swing my Browning, putting maximum effort into leading the bird while desperately trying not to slip on the ice during the process.
One bird falls out of the sky as the other escapes hastily, landing in some thick brush across an old gravel road. My kill collides with the pond's frozen surface with impressive energy. If my bismuth didn’t shut the lights off, that fall surely did. My Brittany spaniel slides across the ice, eager to return my bird, while also showing me what a softy I’ve been about the temperature.
Within the next two hours we would experience at least another half dozen flushes. By ten o’clock, we would all hit our limits for the third day in a row, a feeling that three brothers from suburban Iowa, who grew up having to fight off mobs of hunters on public land for the opportunity to even shoot a single rooster, weren’t too familiar with. Redfield had officially spoiled us and shed light on our humble beginnings that we thought were status quo. So this is how the other half lives.
Now back at the game larder, we pluck our pheasants. Preparing some to be taken home, and a few to be smoked that night, as we enjoy our last evening in the pheasant capital of the world. There are limits to the warmth a bonfire can provide when the temperatures drop to a certain level, so instead we opted for enjoying our lager and birds around the fireplace inside our cabin.
Bullshitting is a prerequisite when it comes to cabin talk after a successful hunt, although most of our talks were about what a place Redfield is. A town so rich in hunting history, that even the boasts from residents aren’t met with annoyance, just envy. Taking a novice hunter here to experience pheasant hunting, which I have done, would be a real bait-and-switch once they experience it elsewhere.
Still, I have a fondness for the slow hunting days of my youth. It allows me to appreciate places like Redfield. Would I want to go back and relive those days searching every square foot of a field with my family’s old English setter, and calling it a great hunt if I brought back a lone rooster? Hell no. Redfield ruined it for me forever. That place is a mecca for ringnecks.