The Opener
Pheasant hunters walk prairie grass near Winner, South Dakota. Credit: (UPH Staff)
Published: Oct. 16, 2008
The opener. These two words mean something to all hunters everywhere. If you are in South Dakota, it has only one definition that needs no adjectives or explanation: opening day for pheasants. Sure there are other things that happen during the year that have a set date; maybe a wedding, a family reunion, various other Holidays perhaps. But then there is opener. Always the third Saturday in October, always at noon, always there to make sure nothing gets scheduled over the top of it!
The first opening day was one day long in 1919 with a two bird limit in Spink County. Who would have known then what was to become part of the culture and fabric of South Dakota that now brings $220 million plus to the state in 2007 alone? For sure, in South Dakota, there is no other single event that carries more weight, more tradition, more flavors, or more memories than the opener.
It means different things to each individual. It is the dogs with their eager tails wagging and their knowing looks. It is old friends that come from afar every year and tell the same stories from the past over and over, stories that you have heard before but you want to hear it again. It is the old black and white photos of hunters long gone smiling at the camera in happier times with handfuls of birds. It is the guns, of course, from bespoke side by sides to the ageless pumps, some rarely cleaned but always reliable. It is the farm kid with a single shot .410 allowed to participate for the first time, who will become the next generation of South Dakota pheasant hunter. It is the smell of Hoppes #9 wafting through your barrel as you slide in the high base #5's; just the medicine for those opening day birds. It is everything that makes you happy and want to be out hunting; the blue skies, the crisp air, the blazing maples and cottonwoods, the native big bluestem waving in the breeze as the dogs quarter in front of you to the tune of your friends, "c'mon bird, up pheasant!"
The rest of the world may struggle with elections, so called financial meltdowns, war, and all the rest of the daily trash piped through the airwaves. Turn it off! Try to sleep well the night before my hunting friends, and know that at high noon, like the last 89 years, you will be participating in an event to behold. I hope you will be waist deep in grass in the middle of nowhere with your favorite scattergun and dog. And then it will happen, a rooster cackles and clears the native grass in front of you, gun swiftly to the shoulder, a swing through, a thud, no sound really, and he folds. The opener has arrived. Welcome friend hunter. Good hunting to you!
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