school and public lands

goldenboy

goldenboy

Well-known member
I am going crazy waiting for the pheasant season to start. I am going to put together a public hunting trip to South Dakota. I can get the maps for public lands, WMA's etc. What I don't know a lot about is the school lands? Lots of potential with them but can anyone give me advise on rules and regs for those lands? It looks like if they have standing crops you are not allowed to enter that land. Also they recommend getting permission from the leasee. How do you find out who that is? Anybody have any luck hunting these parcels or problems with potential misuse of the land? Just looking at all my options and want to keep it legal and make sure I don't give us hunters a bad wrap!
 
We hunt only public land. I would say that 95% of school lands are useless for upland hunting - moonscape that is usually grazed. We have occasionally ran across decent school ground, but it is far and few between. Certainly not worth planning around. We ignore the blue boxes on the map when planning locations and scouting spots - focus on the high likelihood green, red, and yellow areas.
 
Looking at the lease costs these parcels and they appear to go for $10/Acre on the low end & $18/Acre on the high end. The lease duration can be optioned out for up to 10-years. Would be interesting if some of the the conservation organizations, the SDGF&P and the tourism people could partner up and lease some of the bigger parcels in key counties and then set them up as "incubators". Focus on good nesting & brood rearing habitat that is strategically near other types of good cover & food sources. The public access is already baked in......

Guessing the Ag industry would come unglued at the idea but could be really impactful and not that expensive relative to purchasing land for public use......
 
Downtown Bang! said:
Looking at the lease costs these parcels and they appear to go for $10/Acre on the low end & $18/Acre on the high end. The lease duration can be optioned out for up to 10-years. Would be interesting if some of the the conservation organizations, the SDGF&P and the tourism people could partner up and lease some of the bigger parcels in key counties and then set them up as "incubators". Focus on good nesting & brood rearing habitat that is strategically near other types of good cover & food sources. The public access is already baked in......

Guessing the Ag industry would come unglued at the idea but could be really impactful and not that expensive relative to purchasing land for public use......
Click to expand...

You'll NEVER see west river ranchers let themselves get outbid by a conservation organization for school land leases. Many have had that land in their operations for decades and feel entitled to it.
 
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