Hunting the public ROW - Thoughts?

Kre said:
Actually, the rules are crystal clear...no grey area.
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Haven't looked at the rules recently but what if the pheasant flushes over the right of way but you don't shoot until its over private? Legal? I'd say yes but two years ago people were being ticketed for it I heard. Not debating you just curious. I got in a "debate" with a person over this in NE SD a couple years ago and haven't road hunted since. I may have let him win but It left a bad taste in my mouth and .......
 
I just consulted the regs re: road hunting…looks to me the two times you cannot shoot over the adjacent land is if it’s a federal refuge or tribal lands…I could be wrong, may have missed something. Page 65 of the hunting regs.
 
chad.vis said:
Haven't looked at the rules recently but what if the pheasant flushes over the right of way but you don't shoot until its over private? Legal? I'd say yes but two years ago people were being ticketed for it I heard. Not debating you just curious. I got in a "debate" with a person over this in NE SD a couple years ago and haven't road hunted since. I may have let him win but It left a bad taste in my mouth and .......
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100% legal to shoot at a bird that is over private, if it originated in the ROW. Been a while since I've looked at the regs, so I just read over them again. The regs state that game must originate in the ROW, or be flying over the ROW.....so a bird that flushes from private is fair game if it flies over the ROW. Doesn't happen a lot, but I do remember shooting a rooster that did that a few years ago.
 
FlushingSetters1724 said:
I leave for SD today and have hunted the ROW most trips.. So I feel like I should know the following answer.. usually i just err on the side of caution but I tried to brush up on the regs last night and couldn’t find a particular distance from the centerline or what amount of the ditch constitutes a ROW.. anyone have any info?
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I would say it's probably 100 yd.
 
Benelli Rooster said:
Not a new issue, but I thought I would see what some of the prevailing thoughts are on here, for both SD locals/natives and the incoming out of state hunters.

I'm hunting a ways NW of Aberdeen (McPherson Cty) last week with my 76-yr old hunting buddy and my two faithful labs. We see a good looking Minimum Maintenance Road with thick ditch cover, picked corn on one side and some picked beans on the other. We drive down a quarter mile or so, I get out with the dogs, he goes back close to the main road to park, I walk towards him, you know the drill.

An older woman comes by about the time we're done, puffing on a cigarette, starts asking questions. She owns the adjacent property, has paying hunters, even some State legislator or something, etc. It was a reasonably pleasant exchange, and she even perked up a little bit when I told her I owned a house in the nearest town, but she was clearly on a mission. Told me about every place within a 5-mile radius to stay the f*ck away from, this is theirs, that's this other guy who's not nice to hunters, etc.

We even tried another Min Maint Road a mile or two away about an hour later and here she came by on the main road again. This woman is clearly like policing the local area just driving around.

So would you go back? We saw birds, it was worth the walk. My cantankerous 76-yr old hunting buddy of course is "Screw her, this is public ROW", where I agree, but part of me is like, is it worth it to go back and deal with this sh*t?

I'm incredibly understanding of the bullshit that SD locals have to deal with when it comes to dumb, ignorant, inconsiderate out of state hunters, but at the same time, this woman was clearly in the wrong; whether she didn't know the road/path was public ROW or was hoping we didn't know, that remains to be seen
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Did you ever report this to the state warden for McPherson County?
 
Long ago we hunted with a SD family west of Aberdeen a ways. There were two relatively large hunting operations in the area at the time. Both employed a guy to drive around in a pickup truck to "puppy guard" their property. One of them had property adjacent to a WMA ... the pickup truck would go up and down that road every 10 minutes or so if people were on the WMA. One operation did it right (if you want to avoid road hunters) ... they had the ditches adjacent to their land mowed shorter than a putting green.
 
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