• The Apprentice, Mentored and Youth deer seasons are closed in nine south-eastern counties — Bon Homme, Clay, Davison, Hanson, Hutchinson, Lincoln, Turner, Union and Yankton — because of low deer numbers. Handbook p. 3.
• Archery and muzzleloader "any deer" licences have become "any buck deer" licences. In some units with more deer, an "antlerless whitetail deer" archery or muzzleloader licence is sold as well. Handbook p. 3.
• New for 2026, returning a licence costs $10 for a resident and $30 for a non-resident, and the returner is then ineligible for any later draw that year for that season. The return deadline is 1 August 2026. East River booklet p. 1; Handbook p. 3.

Any legal firearm

Big Game Regulations p. 2

• A shoulder-held firearm using ammunition rated to produce at least 1,000 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle
• A handgun using ammunition rated to produce at least 500 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle
• Soft-point or expanding bullets only
• A shotgun firing a single ball or rifled slug weighing at least one-half ounce
• A crossbow in place of a firearm, drawn, held and released by a mechanical device, of at least 120 pounds pull and with a mechanical safety. Telescopic sights are permitted on it
• A muzzleloader or archery equipment, for any tag not restricted to one of them

• Buckshot
• A self-loading or auto-loading firearm holding more than six cartridges or shells
• Any firearm capable of full automatic operation

Muzzleloading rifle or handgun

Big Game Regulations p. 2; muzzleloader booklet p. 1

• A muzzleloading rifle discharging a projectile of .44 calibre or larger
• A muzzleloading handgun discharging a projectile of .50 calibre or larger
• Open sights, and any sight that does not magnify

• Telescopic sights — any sight that uses magnification — in a season restricted to muzzleloading firearms
• A muzzleloading rifle discharging a projectile smaller than .44 calibre

Bow and arrow

Big Game Regulations p. 2

• A bow of at least 30 pounds pull for big game other than elk
• An arrow with a broadhead, fixed or mechanical, carrying at least two metal cutting edges
• Cameras, video cameras and mobile telephones used only for photography, lighted sight pins and illuminated arrow nocks
• A crossbow or draw-lock device, for a hunter who qualifies for and holds a crossbow or draw-lock permit

• Explosive, poisonous, hydraulic or pneumatic points
• A crossbow or draw-lock device without the permit, in an archery-only season
• An arrow rest with more than three inches of continuous contact with the arrow
• Electronic devices mounted on the bow that aid in taking game
• Electronic arrow or electronic string releases
• Telescopic sights
• An arrow without a broadhead carrying at least two metal cutting edges

Legal Shooting Hours

Big Game Regulations p. 6

Archery and firearm shooting hours for big game are one-half hour before sunrise to one-half hour after sunset.

Fluorescent Orange

Big Game Regulations p. 6

At least one exterior garment of fluorescent orange or fluorescent pink — a hat, shirt, vest, jacket, coat or sweater The rule binds a big game licensee hunting with a firearm. Sand Lake and Waubay National Wildlife Refuges go further and require a firearm deer hunter to wear a minimum of 400 square inches of visible solid fluorescent orange — not camouflage orange — on the head, chest and back.

Sundays

Big Game Regulations and the Handbook, neither of which prints a Sunday exception for big game

South Dakota sets no Sunday restriction on deer hunting: every season runs each day it is open.

Tagging and transport

Big Game Regulations p. 1

The big game licence is one form: the lower portion is the tag, the top portion the licence, and a licensee must carry both while hunting.

The tag must be signed, dated by cutting out the month and day of the kill, and securely attached to the animal when it is brought to a road or into a camp, farmyard, residence, or before it goes in or on a vehicle including an ATV or UTV.

• On a hoofed animal the tag goes around one hind leg between hoof and ankle, around the hock tendon above the ankle joint, or around the base of the antler.
• Nobody may possess or transport a deer in the field — boned-out meat included — unless the lawfully attached tag goes with it, along with the head or a hind quarter with the external sex organs left naturally attached.
• A hunter licensed for "any deer" is exempt from carrying the head or a sex-organ-bearing quarter, provided the lawfully tagged leg goes with the animal.

Baiting

Big Game Regulations pp. 2-3

• A bait station is grain, fruit, vegetables, nuts, hay, minerals including salt, or any other natural food material or commercial product containing one, placed or maintained to attract big game for hunting.
• Scent alone is not a bait station.
• Food that nobody placed or gathered — the result of normal weather, or of accepted farming, forest management, wildlife food plantings or orchard management — is not a bait station.

• No bait station may be established, used or maintained from 1 August to 1 February, or from 15 March to 31 May, to attract any big game animal.
• No bait station at any time of year on land owned by GFP, or on a Game Production Area, State Park, State Recreation Area, State Lakeside Use Area, State Nature Area or State Water Access Area.

Trespass and access

Big Game Regulations p. 4

No person may hunt on private land, or retrieve a big game animal from it, without the owner's or lessee's permission — except inside the Black Hills Forest Fire Protection District, where private land may be entered unless it is posted or the owner has denied entry.

A conviction for knowing trespass costs a year of hunting privileges, and two years for a second conviction within ten.

• State licences are valid on public land and on private deeded land inside the exterior boundaries of an Indian reservation. Contact the tribe's own office before hunting tribal land.
• No hunting big game on interstate highways or controlled access facilities.
• No discharging a firearm, muzzleloader, crossbow or bow at a big game animal from within the right-of-way of an improved public highway.

Tree stands, blinds and trail cameras

Big Game Regulations p. 4

• Permanent tree stands, permanent blinds and climbing devices are prohibited on land owned, leased or controlled by GFP and on all private land leased for public hunting by GFP.
• Portable stands, portable blinds and climbing devices that use no nails, wire or bolts are allowed from 1 August to 31 March. One screw-in "T" bolt may stabilise a stand and removable screw-in steps may be used to reach it.
• The owner's name and address, or their Customer Identification Number, must be on the outside of an unoccupied portable blind and legible from the ground on a tree stand.
• Nails, wire, screws, bolts and screw-in steps are prohibited on National Wildlife Refuges and Waterfowl Production Areas.
• A trail camera on GFP land may be attached with no more than one nail, bolt or screw, and must carry the owner's name and address or Customer Identification Number on the outside. On private land leased by GFP for public hunting a trail camera needs the landowner's permission.

Vehicles, aircraft and artificial light

Big Game Regulations pp. 3-4

• No using a motor vehicle — snowmobile, motorcycle, ATV or UTV included — to chase, harass, intercept, pursue or disturb big game.
• No discharging a firearm or bow at a wild animal from in or on a motor vehicle, except for hunters holding a Disabled Hunter permit.
• No sending or receiving a message by mobile telephone or other electronic communication while in or on a motor vehicle for the purpose of hunting big game.
• No using an aircraft or drone to hunt, take, concentrate, drive, rally, stir up, locate or spot a wild bird or animal. A drone may be used to spot a predator or varmint on private land by the landowner or with their permission, but not during September, October or November.
• Between sunset and sunrise, no using or possessing night-vision equipment and no casting a spotlight, headlight or other artificial light into a field, pasture, woodland, forest or prairie to spot or take an animal while in possession of a firearm, bow or other implement that could kill one.

Weapons in state parks and recreation areas

Big Game Regulations pp. 4-5

Uncased firearms, crossbows and bows are prohibited in all state parks, state recreation areas, state nature areas and state lakeside use areas, with two exceptions: designated rifle and archery ranges, and hunters licensed for a Custer State Park season while that season runs.

A firearm, air gun, crossbow or bow legally transported in a vehicle, trailer camper or boat counts as cased.

• The handbook's own table on Big Game Regulations p. 5 says which of the state's parks and recreation areas are open, when, and to what — several are archery only and a few are shut year round.
• There is no hunting on the Mickelson Trail.

Other restrictions

Big Game Regulations p. 3

• No hunting big game on a section line or other highway where the right-of-way has been commonly used by the public for vehicles.
• No using a dog or an electronic call when hunting big game.
• No possessing a loaded firearm while intoxicated.
• No wantonly wasting game, and no destroying a big game animal in season without tagging and claiming it.
• No selling or bartering big game, except the head, hide and antlers.
• No hunting within a federal refuge, national park or monument or state game refuge unless a season has been established for it.

Big Game Regulations p. 1

Every deer must be reported immediately — sign the tag, cut out the month and day of the kill, and attach it before the animal is moved to a road, into a camp or onto a vehicle.

• Sign the locking-seal tag and cut out the month and day of the date of kill
• Attach it around a hind leg between hoof and ankle, around the hock tendon, or around the base of the antler
• Keep the head or a hind quarter with the external sex organs attached while transporting the animal, unless the licence was for "any deer" and the tagged leg goes with it
• South Dakota runs no separate harvest report for deer — the tag is the record

Big Game Regulations p. 6

Chronic wasting disease is established in South Dakota. The state draws no management zone around it and sets no mandatory testing; what it regulates is what happens to the carcass once it leaves the county it was shot in.

• A hunter may transport a deer carcass from where it was killed to anywhere in the state — the rules do not prohibit it.
• If any part of the carcass leaves the county of harvest, the remains must be disposed of with a waste management provider, if it is an allowable trash item, or at a permitted landfill.
• If the carcass stays in the county of harvest the rules do not apply, unless it is delivered to a game processor or taxidermist.
• Returning carcass remains to public land is illegal, and so is using road ditches to dispose of them. Disposing on private land needs the owner's permission.
• A deer or elk carcass brought back into South Dakota from another state must be disposed of with a waste management provider or a landfill that accepts carcass parts.
• Game processors and taxidermists must dispose of all carcass remains with a waste management provider or permitted landfill, wherever the animal was shot.

• This file keys South Dakota's deer rules to counties, and GFP keys them to its own units. East River's units are county-for-county, so nothing is lost there. West River's are not: Bennett, Butte, Custer, Dewey, Fall River, Harding, Jackson, Lyman, Meade, Pennington, Perkins and Stanley are each split into two or more units on lines like US 18, SD 20, SD 47, SD 79, the White River and the Belle Fourche. Those splits set the licence quota, not the dates — every West River unit runs 14-29 November except Gregory — so the season shown is right and the unit named is coarser than the department's. The department's own unit polygons are not published openly: the ArcGIS service behind them answers 403 without a token. Use GFP's unit descriptions and interactive unit map to find your unit before you apply.
• Licence quotas are not carried. GFP prints a resident and non-resident allocation for every unit and licence type — 600 type 01 licences in Brown County, 20 in unit 13L — and none of it is here. Read the season's own application booklet before you apply.
• The Black Hills season is shown in all five of the counties unit BH1 touches — Custer, Fall River, Lawrence, Meade and Pennington — and BH1 is only part of each of them. A pin cannot be told which side of the boundary it falls on, and the rest of those counties runs the West River season on different dates and with a different bag. The same applies to Custer State Park inside Custer County, and to the three National Wildlife Refuge hunts inside Bennett, Brown and Day counties.
• Gregory County carries both of its firearm intervals, because units 30A and 30B are the same ground under two licences — 7-10 and 23-29 November for 30A, 14-29 November for 30B. The calendar shows the union with the licence named on each stretch; which of them a hunter may use depends on the licence they drew.
• South Dakota straddles two time zones and this file carries one. Clock times here are Central. Most of the West River counties keep Mountain time, where the clock reading shown for legal light runs an hour fast — the sunrise and sunset behind it are computed at the pin and are right either way.
• The state prints no single annual antlered limit, so the buck limit here is one, which is what a single licence allows. A hunter who draws more than one licence may take one deer against each, and the archery season's own ceiling — at most three archery licences, at most one any-buck among them — is in the licence notes.
• The peak breeding date is an estimate. South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks publishes no breeding chronology for deer; its own management plan carries pregnancy and fetal rates and no conception dates. Mid-November is carried for the state and moved by latitude on the national default, which is a guess rather than the department's figure.
• No price is carried for the Youth, Mentored and Apprentice deer licences. GFP publishes those fees only in its mentor-hunt application, and the copy on its own applications page is still the 2025 edition — so the season's dates and closures are here and its fees are not. Its licence page has them.
• Unit 58D — Stanley County, for hunters who use a wheelchair for mobility — is described twice and not identically. The West River application booklet dates its special hunt below Oahe Dam 21-22 November; the unit descriptions date the same hunt 22-23 November. The licence itself is valid for all of Stanley County on the ordinary West River dates either way. Check with the licensing office before relying on those two days.
• GFP's own applications page warns that "while unlikely, future season dates are subject to change as some seasons have not been finalized by the Commission", and the unit descriptions carry the same notice. The dates here are the ones published as of 16 September 2026.

GFP Licensing Office

20641 SD Hwy 1806, Fort Pierre SD 57532. 605-223-7660, TTY 605-223-7684, Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm.

Turn In Poachers (TIPs)

1-888-OVERBAG (1-888-683-7224). Callers may stay anonymous and may be paid a reward.