March 2024 Newsletter
The Newsletter of the Black Hills Sportsmen and Sportswomen
Mission Statement: To promote the conservation, sound management, and sustainable use of wildlife and wildlife habitat and to protect the privilege of sportsmen to hunt and fish through advocacy and education.
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March 2024
Renew online at www.blackhillssportsmenclub.
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Happy March everybody! I don’t know about you but it sure seems like spring is in the air! I realize that now that I said that we are due for a big doozy of a snowstorm. Make sure and get out and do some driving, hiking, sight seeing in the Hills before the madness shows up.
Sorry I was MIA last meeting / newsletter, some much needed R&R was needed. It will never happen again…
Coming up this march the GFP is going to be bringing their Deer Action Plan forward to the commission. The current draft plan is basically a plan to move forward with maintaining and protecting a healthy deer population in the state. All the good things the GFP should be doing to protect our wildlife are in the current plan. The Plan does not dive into what I believe will be the big changes to the deer hunting seasons that the GFP would like to implement. I think these will be brought forward as a suggestion to the commission at the March meeting. The big change would be a recommendation to limit all resident deer hunters to no more than 2 total deer tags. This would be 2 rifle tags, or 1 rifle and 1 archery etc. Basically you would have 2 tags maximum. My concern is that the real reason for this push is to create more “leftover” deer tags that would then be available for non-resident hunters. I just don’t think we should be sacrificing opportunity for resident hunters. Virtually every other state is moving in the opposite direction and creating more opportunity for their residents, we should be doing the same. The South Dakota non-resident push has some big money behind it, we are seeing it with waterfowl, pheasants, deer and even creeping into the elk conversation. Please reach out to your commissioners, legislators and friends and make them away of what’s going on.
Help up help you, we need membership numbers so get your buddies, spouses, kids whoever signed up for our club. We can only continue to have an impact if we keep our membership numbers up.
It’s a great time to sign up or renew as we are beginning the new year. Click on the link and fill out a few names!
https://
See you at the luncheon
Send us your hunting Pictures. We need to spice up the photos section.
~Cody Hodson~
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We have a great program this month. I am not sure if we have ever heard a presentation from the fish hatchery. The are growing big fish fast and not just trout. This will be a very interesting program, please attend
SB 173 (landowner cow elk tag) has passed the senate and got out of house ag this am. It looks like it will pass easily. The SDWF has been lobbying against it. Our club has not taken a stance but some members have sent notes to our legislators not supporting it. It lacks many important details and leaves those issues up to the commission. Nothing about elk use days, how many cow elk per landowner, how much land must be in ag production and most importantly, it lacks any mention of access for sportsmen. Can we trust the commission to deal with this issue in a fair way that supports South Dakota sportsmen? Personally, I would have liked to see all those details in the legislation. The GFP brought this bill to Pierre and have promised legislators that it will take the form much like the landowner elk tag in the hills. I personally support landowners being able to shoot cow elk on their own land if the elk are causing damage. This is a prairie elk issue and almost all these elk are on private land. The fee ranged from 7k up to 22k to hunt a bull elk in these units on private land (there were a couple landowners who allowed free access). Currently in the Black Hills, if a landowner receives funds for elk depredation, they can not charge a fee for access. The GFP also pays landowners if they allow public access for cow elk hunting. While they do not put it out in print, they did have a cow elk access program in the prairie this year with very limited success. This is a complicated issue as always and I wish the GFP would have brought the elk working group together to discuss this issue before they ran the bill thru Pierre.
Gun Range update: They are moving lots of dirt. If you have not seen any pics or video of the process, google it. It is pretty cool. The one thing I notice is no structures as far as you can see. A very good location for this state of the art range.
We have new GFP commissioner, Travis Theel. He is a member of our club and his dad is a long time member. He is a VERY avid outdoorsman from Rapid City and that can only mean good things for SD Sportsmen. I am applying lots of pressure for him to come and speak to our club.
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We have put a lot of time into the web page also. If anyone has input or would like us to add to our webpage please email us at blackhillssportsmenclub@gmail.
~ Jeff Olson, Treasurer ~
Upcoming Events
PLEASE NOTE THESE DATES WILL ALL BE LISTED ON THE BHSC WEBSITE UNDER "EVENTS"
March 5th - BHSC Monthly Member Meeting
Speaker: Jeremy Keinz
Cleghorn Fish Hatchery Report
Location: Rushmore Inn & Suites
Time: 11:45 am
LATER MONTHS:
April 2nd - BHSC Monthly Member Meeting
Speaker: Travis Theel New GFP Commissioner
Location: Rushmore Inn & Suites
Time: 11:45 am
May 7th - BHSC Monthly Member Meeting
Speaker: Lou Conroy
Black Hills National Forest OHV Management Presentation
Location: Rushmore Inn & Suites
Time: 11:45 am
Interested in volunteering for Outdoor Campus West?
For anyone interested in being a volunteer mentor please contact Clint Whitley.
Clint (contact for volunteer hunting/shooting mentors - Hunting 101)
clint.whitley@state.sd.us
For other kinds of volunteering - please visit their website linked below:
https://www.volgistics.com/ex/
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"You can't buy happiness... But you can buy hunting gear and that kind of the same thing."
— Anonymous