Well, the team is back from the first leg of our SD Hunting Tour 2010. If you did not keep up with our travels, check out the threads on Facebook and Twitter. 
The staff had a GREAT weekend (although there are parts that are very sore due to the 1300 miles in the vehicles!), meeting outfitters and professionals from across the state. We were able to get to know a few outfitters in particular, and would encourage you to contact them for your hunting needs:
Antler Ridge Lodge
Century Farm Hunts (A shout out to Dick Shaffer! – Ask him about when Peyton Manning hunted there!)
Buffalo Butte and Back Country Outfitters
Diamond A Ranch
Birds Bucks & Berries
In addition, we stopped in a LOT of pro shops and in particular want to mention a couple.
Leader Sporting Goods in Mitchell SD. Ken runs a shop in the midst of Pheasant Country, that to say the least, we were massively impressed with. When he showed us his AR room, we nearly fell over! Offering AR-15′s in hundreds of configurations, our guess is that this is the state’s largest showroom!
Once we got into the northern area of the state, the one thing we noticed is that there is water EVERYWHERE! Every ditch, crevice and dam is full – and most of them loaded with ducks, geese and other waterfowl. Going to be a GREAT year for waterfowl hunters!
Once we got to Watertown, we made it a point to duck south a bit and visit Kones Korner – yet another Pro Shop that is awesome.
With a wide variety of monster whitetail on the walls, and a huge selection of rifles, shotguns and information, we could tell that we needed to make it a personal objective to get to this area and hunt some corn fed whitetail monsters!
Sunday morning found the team moving back west through the middle part of the state, and while beautiful and open, we were concerned with the amount of antelope that we did (or more accurately – didn’t) see. While the numbers from the state show that they have done o.k., in our experience it looks as though it might be a tougher year. (although we have not yet made it up into the prime areas out west – that is Tour 2010 Part 2).
All in all, the team had a GREAT first annual tour. We got to meet some great people, see some great hunting properties, check out some awesome shops, and got to spread the word about SouthDakotaHunting.com
Be sure to stop by a gun shop near you to find one of our flyers – and if they don’t have one, ask them why not!
We plan on making our West River portion of the tour in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for Part 2!
If you know of someone we should go and meet, please contact us and let us know – we will make sure to stop by their operations!
