Hunters averaged about nine birds per hunter this past season

South Dakota Game Fish and Parks has released numbers regarding the most recent pheasant hunting season. The traditional ring-neck hunting season ran from October 15^th 2022 to January 31^st 2023. 1,158,000 birds were harvested this past season. That is the highest total number since 2016 and was 10 percent higher than the past 10-year average. Calculated further by Game Fish and Parks, that is about a nine bird per person average. The agency claims surrounding states generally see average birds per hunter around three to six birds. Despite numbers being up, it falls well shy of some of the numbers hunters used to bag in the 1940s to about the 1960s.