Not quite three months into Kristi Noem’s great statewide trap-o-rama, Minnehaha and Beadle remain the champeen critter-catchin’ counties in the whole durned state of South Dakota:
After the environs of Sioux Falls and Huron, the most varminty neighborhoods in South Dakota appear to be Brookings, DeSmet, Madison, Milbank, Clark, Watertown, Yankton, and Clear Lake. Trappers in those ten counties have submitted 41% of the varmint tails submitted for $10 each to Game Fish & Parks:
| County | Tails submitted (as of 2019.06.23 07:35 CDT) | Percentage of State Total |
| Minnehaha | 1,694 | 5.94% |
| Beadle | 1,538 | 5.39% |
| Brookings | 1,184 | 4.15% |
| Kingsbury | 1,119 | 3.92% |
| Lake | 1,065 | 3.74% |
| Grant | 1,044 | 3.66% |
| Clark | 1,028 | 3.61% |
| Codington | 1,020 | 3.58% |
| Yankton | 1,016 | 3.56% |
| Deuel | 979 | 3.43% |
| Total from Top 10 counties: | 11,687 | 40.99% |
Pierre is remarkably low in undesirable creatures… or at least in folks willing to go out and catch those undesirables. Only 84 tails out the total 28,511 submitted statewide have come from Hughes County.
All of West River has submitted 2,008 tails, 7% of the statewide take.
Pierre has many undesirable critters in January and February.
I guess I’m just not that fussed about this. The animals are nest predators, yes? So they are eating the eggs of our birds. The fewer nest predators, the more birds. One of the benefactors is the pheasant, and while a non-native species, it does bring in a huge amount of income into the state, right? So, do we want more raccoons, fewer pheasants, and less hunting $? Am I missing something here?
Tails submitted is one statistic, but a sounder, more scientific statistic would be tails per species submitted per person or per square mile.
My guess is higher population levels or people trapping and/or lower numbers of “varmints” in environments where they can be suitably trapped explains the lower numbers west of the James River and not bordering on the Missouri River.
Also, it may show a higher level of intelligence of people living west of the James River. Just sayin’
That first post from “Certain” is priceless.
Whoa….just what “varmints” are we paying $10 for? Farmers might need that cash this year just as they did in the 30’s. I guess every farmer was a trapper then.
Clyde, you can get $10 from Governor Noem for each tail of raccoon, opossum, red fox, striped skunk, and badger that you submit.
Frankly, I think badger tails are underpriced. You’ll need to pay me more than $10 to go nose-to-nose with the wily badger.
Those would be interesting stats to measure who’s trapping what and where, Donald. The trapping dashboard does not give such figures or localize trapping beyond county line. I wouldn’t think much trapping is going on the Sioux Falls metro area, so there must be some more intense trapping in the non-urban areas of Minnehaha County.
Then again, I would think the urban population around Sioux Falls would depress the varmint population… unless raccoons flourish with access to more human garbage… in which case those raccoons wouldn’t be eating as many pheasant eggs… in which case trapping those Minnehaha raccoons wouldn’t provide as much benefit to pheasants as trapping in Beadle County?
From the number of nuisance trappers and animal control officers around Sioux Falls, there must be plenty coons, skunks, squirrels, opossums, etc to trap. Raccoons thrive in urban and city areas. They can live in storm sewers and attics, sheds and trees.
We are still in the process of trapping raccoons that got into my basement this winter. Got 2 adult females and three young of the year, so far. No quarter asked. None given.
Why would you take the time to trap. I can see red necks sitting in their p/ups drinking beer and smoking herb with a .22 long rifle and a binoculars. Maybe even let that soft mouthed lab out to retrieve.
Cory, the length of a critter’s tail is inversely proportional to that critter’s tenacity for life and biting the bejeebers out of humans.
Cory, your assessment of the badger is correct. They are about as mean and nasty as they come. I had an up close and personal encounter with one once and seeing as how they destroy field terraces I was feeling as mean and nasty as he was. I had a ten pound cultivator shank and I decided to run him down and dispatch him. After I chased him for a while he turned and chased me for a while. We went back and forth that way till I finally judged when he was going to turn and beaned him.
Think someone collecting skunk tails maybe ought to get a bit more as well!
Good story, Clyde.
As for skunk, I’d pay less. Why would I want to encourage people who’ve tangled with the fragrant skunk to come stinking up my office?
The most fraudulent assumption made in this farce is that the more alleged nest predator tails submitted, the more pheasant nests saved. There is no statistic or scientific logic that validates that translation. Red Fox and badgers are not nest predators. Those species predate juvenile ground-nesting birds post-hatch. As a cost to benefit, this whole program is flushing money down a rat hole with no appreciable positive result and the graphs above or the figures presented don’t come close to defining any benefit and can’t. The only way to substantiate a benefit to pheasant/duck nesting and recruitment is to actually qualify the trapping by location and compare it to known pheasant/duck densities and nesting attempts. As it is, we’re making the assumption that all these tails submitted come from industrious 10-year-olds with live traps but the more honest probability is that most of the tails are hacked off of road-killed animals. The species ratios closely follow the road kill rates and probabilities. In addition, the submission rates closely follow human population densities and car registrations. Does anyone actually believe that tails submitted from places like Minnehaha County actually benefit a nearly non-existent pheasant population on the I-29 corridor? Good lord, compare the number of tails submitted with the upcoming brood count results by county if you must, just to convince yourself that this crap is the biggest publicity stunt since Trumps love letter to Kim Jong Un. This hogwash completely ignores the effect of customary second nesting attempts after nest destruction or predation. Did anybody even think about that angle? The added variable in this mess is nesting conditions this spring. Given that we’ve managed to eliminate nearly all nesting habitat for all ground nesting birds; (not just pheasants and ducks) what pheasant production we are getting likely comes from either ungrazed, undamaged public lands or road ditches. And there are a ton of those that are either flooded or inundated water.
We’ve taken nearly 1.3 Million dollars of the sportsman’s money and threw it at a problem that didn’t and doesn’t exist. And it seems we still have a bunch of gullible, servile people in this state that grovel at the feet of political rhetoric instead of paying careful attention to the science; of which there is an abundance in South Dakota; that says that the war on predators, in all it’s forms, is one of the biggest wastes of public money ever rammed down our throat.