Missed Deer Today

South Dakota has both fairly simple and complex way of managing deer. We're different than many states in that we have very few "buck only" types of licenses and can't buy a deer license over the counter unless all the lotteries are done and there are leftover tags. There are also very few state wide gun licenses but we apply by application for a lottery by unit, usually county based. Individual counties will have different numbers of tags available and with different mixes. Just in the "East River" section of the state which is mostly white-tail, a county may have "any deer", "any white-tail", "any anterless deer", "any anterless whitetail" and others (see link to the application pdf).



But after that, what gets knock down and cut up is pretty much open. The East River section of the state usually has about a 65-70% success ratio for at least one deer (often licenses have been double tags), with slightly more than half being anterled bucks, and the rest does and fawns. We don't check in deer with the state agency but they get a handle on the harvest by a sampled survey and request the 2 front lower teeth as a way to get data on the harvest sex ratio and age of animal. A deer must be tagged with the sticky peel-away license that has to go on one of the lower legs. Once affixed, the tag really can't be removed with destroying it although there are guys who try to cheat by just sticking 2 small corners together and then the tag can be taken off after butchering and "used" again. Although the state agency guys are lenient that we don't have check in animals, they are very aggressive against cheaters who try to double dip with a single tag, use the wrong tag on an animal ("I didn't get a 'buck'--["any deer"] tag this year so I'll throw this doe tag on it so people from the road think I'm legal"), or use another person's license. Usually violations and outright willful law breaking boils down to greed for getting one's own way, "gotta get a deer" or "gotta get a buck" or "its the biggest buck I've seen and I have to get it even though I can't hunt there or its after hours or whatever". The basic dark side of human nature that can (will) surface in about anything endeavor.

http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/licenses/l...ms/DeerApp.pdf