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Responding to concerns from West River landowners, the S.D. Game, Fish and Parks Commission significantly increased the number of antelope licenses available for the 2007 season.
With depredation by growing herds a concern for some landowners, the commission increased the number of resident tags by 2,855 over 2006 and increased the number of nonresident tags by 227.
GFP Game Program Manager Tony Leif told the commission that the increase in tag numbers was warranted due to the number of animals that were observed during the department’s annual survey.
Season dates will be Sept. 29 through Oct. 7 and Oct. 6 through Oct. 14 in units with a split season. Those areas include Harding, Perkins, Butte, Ziebach and Fall River counties, most of Meade County and a portion of Custer County. The season will run from Sept. 29 through Oct. 14 in other units that include the rest of West River as well as Walworth, Potter, Sully, Hyde and Hughes counties in East River.
The commission also approved more tags for the East River deer hunting season. The 2007 season will offer 725 more tags than were available in the 2006 season with most of the increase allocated to Minnehaha, Deuel and Moody counties, according to Leif.
A significant change for the 2007 season is the creation of a "super unit" consisting of the McPherson, Edmunds, Faulk, Spink and Brown county units. Unfilled tags in any of those units will be valid anywhere in the super unit during the January antlerless deer only season dates.
The 2007 East River deer season will run from Nov. 17 through Dec. 2 with licensed hunters able to take antlerless deer only on Dec. 3-9 and Jan. 1-9, 2008.
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