Am thinking about moving to Rapid City. Is there alot of ducks and geese around there?? I have always heard that SD waterfowling is good but is it good in this part of the state?? Also are there many public hunting areas to hunt at?? Thanks for the help.
Rapid City??
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when i was out there in december there were some canadians around, not real sure on the ducks but there is decent goose and your not far from pierre which im told every year that it has awsome goose hunting.
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I know that when my grandparents lived out there that my grandpa had good luck hunting ducks, but there tough to find. And you are really not that far for one of the best places to hunt geese in the world. Which is Pierre.
I live at Ellsworth AFB (12 miles east of Rapid) and we limit out about 75% of the time. The rest of the time we just suck :toofunny:
You usually need to drive about 45 minutes out of Rapid to waterfoul though. We go up to Belle Fourche, or Exit 2. Hell we even went as close to Rapid as New Uderwood (27 miles from Rapid) and whacked ducks, geese, dove, rabbits, grouse...
There are ducks here, geese, and coots, lets not forget the coot!! WOOT!! HAHAHA!!
Oh, and lets not forget the SD big game. Man we got Elk, Deer, Lopes, Turkey, you name it you can probably kill it here. Deer season is awesome. You can get a Black Hills Buck tag (1), a West River Tag (1 buck, 1 doe), then you can get an East River tag (same as WR). Drools. The hunting here kicks ass. Oh, and I am originally from Michigan.
Yeah man, come to Rapid, shoot me an email, and this season we can kill some ducks, big game... get here soon and you might even be able to draw a Black Hills or Prarie Turkey tag for April.
You usually need to drive about 45 minutes out of Rapid to waterfoul though. We go up to Belle Fourche, or Exit 2. Hell we even went as close to Rapid as New Uderwood (27 miles from Rapid) and whacked ducks, geese, dove, rabbits, grouse...
There are ducks here, geese, and coots, lets not forget the coot!! WOOT!! HAHAHA!!
Oh, and lets not forget the SD big game. Man we got Elk, Deer, Lopes, Turkey, you name it you can probably kill it here. Deer season is awesome. You can get a Black Hills Buck tag (1), a West River Tag (1 buck, 1 doe), then you can get an East River tag (same as WR). Drools. The hunting here kicks ass. Oh, and I am originally from Michigan.
Yeah man, come to Rapid, shoot me an email, and this season we can kill some ducks, big game... get here soon and you might even be able to draw a Black Hills or Prarie Turkey tag for April.
It's not over yet. I might still be coming out there. I'm actually in the AF stationed at Hill. I'm wanting to leave and try someplace new. I heard good things about SD so I figured I'd look into it.. Just making sure there's going to be things to shoot wherever I go. The wife likes what she see about it out there so we may definitly try to get stationed there. Thanks for the info and the invite.
Oh hell, then your talking about trying to get stationed up here at Ellsworth AFB. Woot! Another AF duck hunter.
If you have any questions about the area let me know. Been stationed up here for 3 years.
If I can get the damn digital camera to spew pics to the computer today I will post up some pics that I took this weekend. Granted that hordes of ducks and geese are sitting on a non-shooting lake in the middle of Rapid City, but we definetly have a load of em.
Oh, and we killed ducks and geese 10 minutes from base. :getdown: So much nicer to get up at 5 to be out on the pond by 6 instead of getting up at 3.
PEACE!
If you have any questions about the area let me know. Been stationed up here for 3 years.
If I can get the damn digital camera to spew pics to the computer today I will post up some pics that I took this weekend. Granted that hordes of ducks and geese are sitting on a non-shooting lake in the middle of Rapid City, but we definetly have a load of em.
Oh, and we killed ducks and geese 10 minutes from base. :getdown: So much nicer to get up at 5 to be out on the pond by 6 instead of getting up at 3.
PEACE!
This place sounds like the shiz!! Is there alot of hunting pressure?? Are the land owners pretty nice or is it hard to get permission?? THe only thing holding me back is the airframe you have there. I'll be working a ****pot of hours on that thing but I guess I've never been afraid of a little work. Well if you can get some pics going that would be awesome thanks.
All I can say man is that if you like the outdoors you will like Ellsworth and South Dakota. Big game hunting here is great, waterfowling is great, fishing is great. Guess I just got biased when I was able to take three deer this past season, I have two turkey tags that start next weekend, and we killed an ass-load of ducks off a small marsh about 45 minutes away. We also routinely go fishing and fill our trout limit (5) in a matter of an hour or two which is great.
Let me know if you have some specifics. I will write more in a day or so, right now it is time to go home for the day.
Let me know if you have some specifics. I will write more in a day or so, right now it is time to go home for the day.
Sorry I didnt see this earlier.
Catfish... Hrmm.. we went up to the Belle Fourche River a couple times last year and were catching 2-4lb channel cats. Not huge, but still fun to catch and good eating.
There are also closer resevoirs (Curlew, Newell, New Underwood) that are supposed to have cats in them but we have not done any catfishing in them. Killed some ducks, geese, dove, and rabbit off of New UNderwood though!
Don't get me wrong, there is more then trout here, trout is just what is mostly stocked. We have a range of fishes in the water here.
Check out http://www.sdgfp.info.
Catfish... Hrmm.. we went up to the Belle Fourche River a couple times last year and were catching 2-4lb channel cats. Not huge, but still fun to catch and good eating.
There are also closer resevoirs (Curlew, Newell, New Underwood) that are supposed to have cats in them but we have not done any catfishing in them. Killed some ducks, geese, dove, and rabbit off of New UNderwood though!
Don't get me wrong, there is more then trout here, trout is just what is mostly stocked. We have a range of fishes in the water here.
Check out http://www.sdgfp.info.
I just went in and changed my dream sheet to try and come to SD.. I'm not sure if it's going to happen right now though. I called the shop there and the shop chief said they were overmanned for my rank right now but we'll see. I'm up for BOP in a couple months so that's my next option. Thanks for all the help and I'll let you know if I get orders and we'll go catch/shoot something.
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Found this thread recently, just moved to Ellsworth AFB and was wondering if any of you guys were still here to show the new guy around to some hunting spots.
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I was there from 2016-2020. I hunted public for ducks and the hills for deer and turkey. There oughta be a platt book you can get from cabelas or the sd game and fish website that will show all the public areas and waterbodies. You need to pay close attention to cold fronts, the birds are there one day and gone the next, so you are gonna have to burn some gas scouting. Some of the best and easiest duck hunts I've ever had were in SD, and I grew up hunting AR and MS, so take that for what it's worth. Getting big game hunting permission on private is pretty hard in my experience, since outfitters lease alot of area up, but it never hurts to ask. Dove hunting is excellent on private, landowners don't really care about them, just be sure to ask permission. The flyfishing downtown is pretty sweet. Look up flyfishsd and they give weekly reports on what they are biting. I spent many a spring day turkey hunting in the morning and fly fishing the afternoons in the hills.
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Awesome thank you much! I noticed this year that they were here then gone, it went real quick. We had a very good goose season this year, ducks were fair. I have turkey tags, but I haven't got out yet due to work. I have had the chance to fly fish rapid creek a couple times, although I am very new to fly fishing so I spend a lot of time getting untangled.
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Those hills turkeys can be tough to kill. When they hit the ground they strap on running shoes and cover some ground. Hunted them hard for 2 seasons and never killed one. Public land eastern's back home were easier than hills birds.
As far as fly fishing, strike indicators are your friend. Never could figure out dry fly fishing, so I just used 2 nymphs/midges under a strike indicator.
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