The South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks (GFP) Commission simplified Youth and Apprentice deer licenses at their May meeting.
The commission laid out the following parameters:
- Any resident or nonresident hunter under the age of 18 is eligible to purchase a Youth license.
- Any resident hunter over the age of 18 who has not had a deer license in the past 10 years would qualify for an Apprentice license.
- Apprentice license holders will no longer be required to have adult accompaniment.
“Anytime we can make the rules cleaner and simpler for outdoor families and youth hunters, that’s a good thing,” GFP Secretary Kevin Robling said.
“Every year, parents had questions on who qualified for what license and our team worked together to remove those frustrations. Getting outside to recreate in our awesome state should be easy. My team and I, while working in partnership with our Commission, are committed to continuously making it easy to do business with us.””
In addition, the commission reduced the harvest of antlerless mule deer in select units for these seasons.
The change creates two units, Unit MHD-03/YOD-03/APD-03 (shaded) and Unit MHD-13/YOD-13/APD-13 (white) for mentored, youth, and apprentice licenses.
Mentored, Youth, and Apprentice hunters can obtain either a single tag “any antlerless deer” license for Unit MHD-03/YOD-03/APD-03 or a single tag “antlerless whitetail deer” license for Unit MHD-13/YOD-13/APD-13.
The establishment of these units and license types will reduce harvest of antlerless mule deer in select hunting units to increase mule deer population numbers, while maintaining current apprentice, youth, and mentored deer harvest and desired growth rates in other hunting units.
The Mentored, Youth, and Apprentice Hunter Deer Seasons will be:
- Sept. 11, 2021 – Jan. 1, 2022
- Sept 10, 2022 – Jan. 1, 2023
Image credit South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks.
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