When it comes to hunting, it’s all about the experience. Hunters seek a challenge, a story, and hopefully a good haul for all their efforts. This is exactly what Scott Linden experienced during his time at the Double P Ranch this October.
“I had a great time,” Linden says.
He’s been hunting for 28 years and is both host and producer of Wingshooting USA, a program on seven different television networks that focuses on bird dogs and bird hunting. “It’s all we do,” he adds.
He visited a few days after the pheasant season opened in mid-October. His first impression? Double P Ranch was welcoming and dazzling, and the habitats were both varied and well-managed. This South Dakota hunting ranch, he says, offered a number of different feed crops, shelterbelts, and cover for their birds.
“The pheasants don’t have any reason to leave!” he says.
Linden originally learned about the Double P Ranch when his show was giving away a hunting trip to a fan. This fan, he says, just happened to be in South Dakota at the same time Linden was, so the two arranged a trip to the pheasant hunting lodge.
“One of their guides showed us a few good spots, took us around, showed us the good stuff, then we went out and had a good time,” he says, adding it was just the two hunters, a Labrador, and Linden’s own wire hairs.
“It was good, and by good, I mean we worked all day for our birds, but that’s when the fun begins,” he says. “We covered a lot of habitat, had to use our heads, our dogs had to use their heads, so at the end of the day, we felt pretty darn good about the hunting experience.”
Overall, Linden believes the highlight of the pheasant hunt was that it was an actual hunt, not just a shoot.
“A lot of South Dakota is flushing dog country, but there is plenty of country that a pointing dog can work comfortable and efficiently,” he adds.
Linden admits that he had thought he knew a lot about hunting in South Dakota prior to his time at the Double P Ranch, but that this particular pheasant hunting lodge is a real “hidden gem” that hunters should seek out.
“Part of the reason we hunt is to see new places, and in many ways, that whole Clark area is new to South Dakota hunters,” he says. “It just doesn’t get the attention it should.”