Hunters ply bird-rich fields of Diamond A
GREGORY, S.D. - Rows of milo and corn seem somehow out of place in the foothills below the Butte Mountains.
But try to tell that to the thousands of ring-necked pheasants that call this mixture of native grasslands and farm crops home.
Several were taking to the air right now and, with camera in one hand and gun in the other, I was at a loss for what to do.
As usual, I didn't get the best effort from either.
"Who cares," I thought. I'm just going to soak up the beauty of this land on an October afternoon on the Diamond A Ranch 14 miles north of Gregory.
A 2,000-acre hunting preserve owned by Jim and Andrea Olson, the Diamond A is not a diamond in the rough. It is a splendid, well-appointed preserve awash in wild pheasants, turkeys and deer.
Gary Howey, Hartington, Neb., and I met Gary Kubicek and Bill McPherson, both with Country Vet pet foods out of Sioux City, Gary's brother-in-law Tom Jansen and his friend Kenneth Bird, both of Omaha, for a couple days of bird shooting.
We never did get more than a half mile from the lodge. We walked milo strips mostly and the birds were there.
It was the second visit to the Diamond A by Howey and me. We had hunted here last year, the first year of operation for Jim and Andrea, who farm near Homer, Neb.
The lodge sits at the edge of a small lake stocked with bass and bluegills right at the foot of one of the big buttes which line the north side of the property.
A small creek spills from the dam and runs along the base of the bluffs.
Tall piles of rocks at the top of the butte, placed there by Indians or early white explorers, was a signal to prairie travelers that there is good water below, Jim told me last year.
The rocks serve no purpose now, only an historical anecdote. However, an occasional coyote howl or sounds of turkeys gobbling in the timber, is a reminder that not all of the wild is gone from this historic area.