South Dakota West River Advice

[barrettm95]

Looking to connect with a local or someone who’s hunted a few west river tags.

I bird hunt quite a bit and have hunted several seasons archery in South Dakota. Sitting on 8 west river points and have a few units in mind to draw this coming season since I struck out in Colorado.

Not looking for spots, looking for advice on how the herd is looking and previous experience in few areas.

 

[KurtR]

I live here and have preference points to draw any unit and im buying points again this year. I guess it depends on what your looking for if its worth it. There are always a few good deer shot

 

[Plainsman79]

I probably have a fraction of the knowledge KurtR does, but I have quite a bit of family there and have hunted WR for the last 15 years.

As far as the herd goes. My small little sample size has watched the deer numbers steadily decline the last decade. I was up there 2 years ago and deer numbers are beyond disappointing from what they once were. An ongoing drought has had a major impact on deer. Are there deer? Yes. But nowhere close to what it was.

 

[sodaksooner]

SD native, now non resident, with enough points to draw anything. We are lucky to have a few private ranches to hunt, but haven't really done any research on herd this year, so not much help. Grew up west river and dad worked for GFP so have some contacts. Lots of walk in and public out there so plenty of options to hunt. We primarily hunt west side of west river, but don't have a lot of recent intel.

 

[spur60]

SD resident here...mule deer numbers suck. Sure there's pockets of numbers, and sure there's some nice bucks that get killed, even on public, but nobody I know has any motivation to hunt mule deer right now unless they have access to a big ranch. Even then they will probably end up shooting a whitetail. Seems like the only people that get excited about muleys in SD are the non resident archery hunters. Which is a whole nother can of worms...

 

[Coyote Commander]

My advice.....keep your expectations low.

 

[mountaineer]

I’m a NR but have family with some land that my son and I are lucky to have access to. There is a decent population in the area we hunt, which is mostly ag country, but access is the limiting factor. Trophies are rare but spot and stalk hunting on the open prairie is really fun so I don’t care. I’ve only been hunting there the last 7 yrs so I can’t compare to previous deer numbers. It’s another drought this year in the southwest part of the state.


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