Do you think 5,500 SD households signed up for live traps today...? I doubt it. The people spouting this program may have actually checked with prison industries on how many of the traps (I don't know if they were talking about their big cages, which are really nice units but they are as big almost as a hunting dog travel kennel) they could turn out in short order. I suspect that the people at the site actually told some in the administration how many traps they could really make in a couple of months and that dampened the fire. Not every con up there could actually make these things...

I so hope it does not come to Illinois, as an ADC operator I make a minimum of $75.00 per animal I like my overpopulation of animals here.

I will have possum and coon tails for sale this spring. lol. I see they are being all inclusive also. What a waste of money and resources. LLL

Bounties have never worked in the past. Fraud and fraud and fraud.
Why would anyone think this time would be any different

This seems incredibly stupid.

Habitat improvement is not easy, no over night results and its initially expensive.

Bounties are fast, cheap and they make many feel good tho they make no difference if you don't have enough of the right habitat.

Coyotes are left out as they are predators of skunks, coons, possum, foxes and other smaller egg predators.

Nobody is singing the praises of this program it just came up out of the blue the 1st time many of us knew about it, it was a done deal then. I see some bad things coming with people that don't have the ethics or drive to do it right or the ones that lose interest after a few checks. Will not speculate on what the problems might be but run the idea through your head with uneducated trappers setting thousands of traps.

I was under the impression that SD didn’t have many predators....

Another great idea. You GO SD! <total sarcasm>

Yep let's bring out the fly bait and cream corn, man can we sure help the pheasants that dont have habitat now what a waste of furbearers. They might save the nests but where's the pheasants gonna live in the winter, it's all about commercial hunting just wait it'll only get worse.

A lot of the bounty program goes agaist basic predator biology. What it will do is elminate some of the predators but the ones that are left behind will then have more available resources and have bigger litters. Its a selective pressure that they will account for and I seriously doubt we will see big scale change.

Not to mention, all it takes is one drought year and you could trap all you want and it would not make a difference.

I have a friend who guides pheasents out in west central SD, and he has told me that they trap but it usually doesnt help much. What helps? Usually raising some birds for stocking and getting the population up that way.

What we really need is some of that money going to habitat, considering corn and soybean fields just don't cut it for these birds.

One of my buddies called the game warden in our district, he seemed to feel the system was going to be more of a hassle for him. I don't blame him.... this guy is going to need 2 possum tails checked, and then this guy with his one coon tail...... you get the picture.

Also, the warden said roadkill doesn't count

Seems everyone thinks that but it's becoming more true in recent years again habitat is a problem, with the storms we had this winter and all of the drifting, subzero weather along with lack of habitat it won't matter much what they do until they restore the cover and CRP acers that we had in the boom days.

Frequently in both politics and biology, actions are governed by the art of the possible. While it is almost surely true that loss of habitat to support pheasants year around has been the major cause of the declines in their populations, BUT the entire cost of the nest predator reduction program as revealed to date would barely purchase one half of one section of land in the northeast portion of the state where I live. Even if that tiny plot of land was intensively managed for pheasants it would not have any measurable effect on their statewide population.

As far as the snarky comments about our new governor, I think that it is impressive that she is deeply invested in attempting to improve things in the state for the benefit of its residents and has implemented several programs of which the bounty program is one, in an attempt to help. In this world it often is true that not every new idea is a good idea and the bounty program as established to date may well not achieve the objective for which it is intended, but it is an attempt to do a good thing for the citizens of her state. Contrast that with the actions to date by the new leaders in MN and WI from which so many critics hail.

I for one agree with you Cohunt, it will not work on a large scale and more thought should invested in it before it was implemented. I was thinking last night about it and wonder how many antis got on the list, as those traps will never be set.

Very good point.

The only government that can actually truly impact wildlife habitat in SD is the federal farm bill through USDA. If you look back as far as the dirty '30s, the Soil Bank of the late 50s and early 60s, and CRP post-1986, the U.S. taxpayers have paid for a lot of potential wildlife habitat in this state. The feds also control export policy and certain domestic uses so that's where an emphasis should be directed if we want more wildlife cover. Over 50% of SD soybeans is exported, slightly above the national average. But farm policy in Wash DC is a secondary or even tertiary thought. The glory days of pheasant hunting in SD is probably in the past, even if CRP was brought back up to its max enrollment, sort of like the glory days of fur trapping. We live in a much more nuanced world. I have no problem selling my fall/winter (if this program actually survives that long) grinner and medium-to-small skunks, and dink conni whacked coon tails to Gov Noem. Will it make a difference in the end, probably not, but this is just politics.

I would take Kristi over the last "tax the poor and give to the rich" Governor we had before he did little for the working folks in SD and did do a lot for the elite, not a tax he did not raise and many several times nowhere near along the lines of the cost of living numbers.

my luck ill catch a bobtail coon

its not fair i didn't get no traps..... what about me too ?? i sit here trying to identify with myself.... should i be a sissy and curl up on the couch? or should i be a man and go out in this cold and shovel the driveway?? i cant wait to drag a stinky skunk tail over to the gfp think ill roll it around in the mustard a little

2 out of the last 3 I caught were bobs I was thinking .50 maybe! LOL

Now I really wonder how they are going to tell if the tails came from road kills or not it’s not like they have a stamp on them telling their pedigree