​​Back in 1992, Carroll Hansen and his wife Pat owned Pat and Carroll’s Supper Club in Lake Preston. One night, around this time of the year, Carroll had five men in his restaurant sitting together at a table including Rick Holland, Todd Brown, Mark Sjolie, Brian Nelson and Greg Cass. Carroll approached these men and said that their town needed to have a pheasant banquet. He believed that it should support pheasant preservation, population increase and habitat reclamation. The five guys seemed to like the idea, but asked Carroll how they would do that and get it started. So, Carroll walked into the back of the restaurant, came back out with his own brand-new Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun and said they would start with that. When the men asked Carroll who would fund the banquet, he asked them, “How much do you need?” Then Carroll and Pat fronted the start-up money and worked very hard to make that first banquet a reality. That original banquet has grown over the years into the Prairie Lakes Pheasant Club (PLPC) that exists today.  


Over time, PLPC has grown to support youth shooting sports, and today, they are the largest supporter for the local public school clay target teams in De Smet, Iroquois and Lake Preston. They pay for all the teams’ ammunition and trap targets and have purchased target launchers for them as well. All those purchases are funded by money raised during the annual banquet, as well as a few other random gun board raffles throughout the year.


The club also does an annual pheasant release every summer for their members with birds they get from MTM Pheasants out of Pender, Neb. The members can pick up their birds either in Lake Preston or in De Smet. PLPC also participates as a sponsor or exhibitor at other area events, including the De Smet Outdoor Show in the spring as well as the Kingsbury County “Rooster Rush” in late October. Both annual events take place at the De Smet Event & Wellness Center.