SoDak Duck Hunting

**JABIII** · 02-18-2015, 12:30 PM

Waterfowl hunting in South Dakota

By Terry Woster on Feb 17, 2015 at 8:55 p.m.

During the 1970 session of the South Dakota Legislature, one of the important figures was a congressman from Pennsylvania who became, you might say, a champion of duck hunters.

That was my first session as a newspaper reporter. It included many news-making figures and issues. But Republican Rep. John Saylor received much attention as South Dakota supporters of the massive, ill-fated Oahe Irrigation Project worked to remove obstacles to its funding and construction. Saylor was a key member of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation. He had a particular distaste for a 1947 South Dakota law that banned non-residents from hunting waterfowl.

In the late 1960s, the subcommittee on which Saylor served was considering funding for the Oahe Irrigation Project. It’s been a while since people talked about the Oahe Project, but at one time, it was considered vital to South Dakota’s economic future. The project envisioned pumping Missouri River water up the eastern bluffs north of Pierre and into canals to flow across the central part of the state to irrigate cropland in Brown and Spink counties.

The project was to start with about 190,000 acres of land under irrigation and eventually grow to about 495,000 acres. In part, it was considered repayment for land lost when the main-stem dams were built and huge tracts of river-bottom and riverside lands were flooded.

The project also proposed fish and wildlife mitigation and enhancement programs. Saylor figured if federal money were going to those purposes, any federal taxpayer ought to be able to hunt waterfowl in South Dakota. He refused to let an important Oahe bill out of the subcommittee unless it included a provision restricting money until South Dakota repealed its ban on non-resident waterfowl hunting.

The 1969 Legislature, I learned from reading bills and journals and newspaper accounts, tried but failed to repeal the ban. The 1970 Legislature, under pressure to help Oahe move forward, succeeded in repeal.

It was a temporary victory. Before the decade had ended, the Oahe Project was de-authorized. It fell victim to changing times, local opposition to portions of the irrigation plan and shifting federal funding priorities.

I knew little of the Oahe Project before I moved to Pierre and joined The Associated Press in 1969. Remember, I’d been writing sports before that. I knew tournaments and track meets, but little about the reservoir system or the incredible, emotional politics of water.

Early in my AP work, I traveled to Huron to cover a meeting on Oahe. I saw little controversy there. It was more like a pep rally. That was at a time when several newspapers editorially supported the project for economic development reasons. One logo used with some Oahe-related stories read something like, “Water. Our golden future.’’

As the decade passed, an environmental impact statement raised questions. So did the route of the canals and the cost. A group called United Family Farmers organized the opposition, winning a majority of seats on the project’s governing board and leading a media campaign focused on problems with the project.

When the project fell out of federal favor, some blamed the White House. I thought it was a case of a costly irrigation project that from a Washington, D.C., perspective looked politically divisive among the people expected to benefit most. That made it an easy target for federal budget cutters.

As I said, I hadn’t heard of Saylor before I joined the AP. Neither had I been aware that South Dakota banned non-residents from hunting waterfowl. Back on the farm, we used to let just about anyone hunt, as long as they asked permission and treated the place with respect. I never knew there was such a thing as a federal waterfowl stamp, either, but that’s maybe another story.

We hunted ducks and geese back home. It was hit or miss, hard work. As the flocks migrated south, we’d dig pits where we thought geese might show up the next morning, or we’d low-crawl up the backside of a dam bank for ducks.

With that background, I struggled to understand why a guy from Pennsylvania thought waterfowl hunting was so great.

http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/opin...g-south-dakota

**JABIII** · 02-18-2015, 12:32 PM

Non-resident Waterfowl Work group weighing options

Posted: Tuesday, February 17, 2015 11:06 pm
By Nick Lowrey Nick.lowrey@capjournal.com

The fact that Non-resident waterfowl licensing is shaping up to be a contentious issue for the South Dakota Game Fish and Parks Commission, is no surprise to Terrestrial
Wildlife Chief Tom Kirschenmann.

A work group set up to study the issue had already received 117 pages of comments by the time its second meeting got underway Feb. 2.

“To see the amount of interest from the public is not at all a surprise,” Kirschenmann said citing several battles in the state legislature over non-resident waterfowl hunting in the last 10 years.

Those fights eventually led to a law being passed last year that gave the Game Fish and Parks Commission most of the authority over non-resident waterfowl licensing for the first time in almost 60 years.

That control will first be used for the first time this year.

In an effort to improve the non-resident waterfowl licensing system, the Commission created the work group to study the issue and make recommendations for any changes to the system.

The group has met twice so far once in December and once on Feb. 2. It includes members of the legislature, hunter groups, land owners and members of the GFP Commission.

So far the group has focused on gaining a better understanding of the issue. Data presented at the group’s Feb. 2 meeting show that the vast majority of non-resident waterfowl hunters spend their time in the northeast corner of the state.

About 58 percent of non-residents spent their time in eight counties. Brown and Roberts Counties alone hosted 32 Percent of the non-resident waterfowl hunters. The overwhelming consensus is those hunters were after ducks, mallard drakes to be specific.

The controversy, though, is not about a lack of ducks. South Dakota in 2014 was home to more than 4 million ducks. Just shy of 1 million of them were mallards.
Instead, the issue appears to be almost entirely social. South Dakota’s public hunting advocates are mainly concerned that allowing more non-resident hunters into the state will push out resident hunters. Who they say are already struggling to find enough room to duck hunt on public land.

By law, the GFP Commission is restricted from increasing the number of non-resident waterfowl licenses by more than 5 percent a year.

For Game, Fish and Parks staff one the biggest hopes for the work group is that they will find a good way to simplify non-resident waterfowl licensing. Right now there are five different geographic for which non-resident waterfowl hunters can apply for a license.

The idea, Kirschenmann said, is to make sure that non-resident hunters have a better understanding of where and when their licenses are valid.

“There are some of those units that overlap and that can get confusing,” he said. “The more complex (the non-resident license system) becomes the easier it can be to get into a precarious situation.”

Several ideas for simplifying the system were floated during the group’s February meeting. One idea centered on dividing the state into three units each with its own allotment of licenses.

The first unit would consist of Charles Mix, Bon Homme, Yankton, Clay and Union Counties. It would be given 250 season long licenses and 100 three-day licenses.

The second unit would be the northeast corner of the state. The borders would consist of highway 281 on the west Highway 212 on the south with North Dakota and Minnesota to the north and east respectively. Portions of nine counties would be included in the unit and it would have 2,000 10-day licenses and 500 three-day licenses.

The rest of the state would be the third unit and would have 1,750 10-day licenses as well as 700 three-day licenses. The three-day licenses would only be valid on private land in the five counties that make up the current lower Missouri waterfowl unit, which includes Hughes and Stanley Counties. Those five counties would also have another 700 three-day licenses for private land only.

The work group’s next meeting will be held March 2 in Fort Pierre. No final recommendations will be made to the commission until late spring, Kirschenmann said.

GF&P Department staff also will be looking at the issue and making recommendation in the next few months, he said.

The Commission likely won’t make any final changes until about June, Kirschenmann said.

http://www.capjournal.com/news/non-r...ef8a0b883.html

**marsh chicken** · 02-18-2015, 01:23 PM

It's never been tough to figure out the lottery system. It can be tough to get a tag, and it certainly can be tough to kill birds if the migration isn't happening.

**Palmetto Duck** · 02-18-2015, 07:53 PM

So they only propose roughly a little over 5000 out of staters to duck hunt per year? Did I read that right? Are there a ton of people in SD duck hunting I don't know about? When I travelled to ND in years past I can hardly remember talking to a local that gave a shit about duck hunting.