SD Antelope Rifle Tag

[Sandstrom]

Congrats on a nice buck!!

 

[Novashooter]

I was talking to my brother Monday and he has a couple of rancher buddies in fall river county. They didn't think there were 400 goats in the whole unit..... I didn't look to see if they sold all the tags, but that number seems high to me even in a good year. OP, glad you got one!!! Still building points but will probably do a 15 tag eventually as we have some private ground we can hunt there (although the herd is pretty thin this year in that area from what we were told.

That unit is always high tags. Usually good animal numbers to go with it though. I must have seen 50 antelope between Friday and Saturday, unsure how many I saw twice. That was only a small slice of the area, and mostly from the road.

400 tags definitely isn't the best way to boost numbers after our record winter, but it's not going to be the end of the world. Might just delay recovery a year. They are buck only tags, so that helps too, at least for numbers. This was, and probably never will be a unit to turn out giant bucks.

Good news is in my short drives through the black hills I saw a tremendous number of elk. Even saw an absolute monster. Too bad I'm not eligible for a bullet elk tag for 8 more years.

 

[sodaksooner]

That unit is always high tags. Usually good animal numbers to go with it though. I must have seen 50 antelope between Friday and Saturday, unsure how many I saw twice. That was only a small slice of the area, and mostly from the road.

400 tags definitely isn't the best way to boost numbers after our record winter, but it's not going to be the end of the world. Might just delay recovery a year. They are buck only tags, so that helps too, at least for numbers. This was, and probably never will be a unit to turn out giant bucks.

Good news is in my short drives through the black hills I saw a tremendous number of elk. Even saw an absolute monster. Too bad I'm not eligible for a bullet elk tag for 8 more years.

My brother has 14 but he moved to wisc so out of luck there. My uncle is actually in the north end hunting this week. He finally drew with over 14 I believe. He is in his late 70's, so my cousins are out helping. My 81 year old dad is up running around with them too I think. My brothers best friend has landowner pref and lives in Fall River and just shot a 311 bull on his place and had passed on several bigger ones, but had other commitments and that was his last day he could hunt. Biggest bull in SD last year or year before was shot on his place by his son. Sure wish I could get a SD elk tag....lol.

 

[Lytro]

SD is great for resident hunting opportunities, but poor for trophy potential for any species. Increasing the NR allocation would be even worse for trophy potential, IMO.

 

[barrettm95]

Congrats on a nice buck!!

Thanks!

 

[Novashooter]

SD is great for resident hunting opportunities, but poor for trophy potential for any species. Increasing the NR allocation would be even worse for trophy potential, IMO.

You may be correct about allowing more NR would kill more trophy potential animals, but I'm not that concerned about it, especially in units where bucks are over harvested if trophy size was a concern. There's plenty of potential trophy sized animals in this state, but giant antelope are not likely to be common anytime soon. Deer are kind of an odd situation where every year absolute beasts come out of SD. They also come out of pretty much any state. The trick is that the giant bucks are almost exclusively on private land, usually managed for hunting. Public land bucks, yeah, SD is not top 5, maybe even not top 10 for best states for public land deer... if your criteria is a record book sized deer, whitetail or mule deer.

Elk on the other hand, I'm not sure I agree. We have something special there. And Bighorn sheep, last I heard the world record came from the badlands, and I've seen world class rams in the black hills. I would bet there are some monster mountain lions running around. I think we have lots of trophy sized small game too, if anyone cared about such things.

 

[jmez]

SD is great for resident hunting opportunities, but poor for trophy potential for any species. Increasing the NR allocation would be even worse for trophy potential, IMO.

Hope it stays that way.

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