Black hills draw

[tbowers]

Improvise, adapt and overcome. Maybe some day hunting will get less popular, but probably wont anytime soon. As Mr Owens eludes to in that video description, you can sit around and complain and make excuses or go out and do the work and see what happens. Or make the decision to stay home or go somewhere else.

BH in particular is such a pretty area that I look at it as a nice trip with my daughter and pay an extra $150 or so to hike around with a shotgun

[arkrem870]

We can improvise. Adapt. And overcome as long as states chill with the quotas and non resident regulations. The noose is getting tighter every year on the traveling hunter. When you've only traveled in the loose lip YouTube era it's hard to have a good perspective on what we had. I used to have 10 otc tags in my pocket mid March just a handful of years ago....Cheers

[tbowers]

It's hard not to reminisce of the  'good old days', but in the end, it doesn't do any good -need to figure out new ways to do it everyyear. I've been hunting for 38 years seen a lot over that time!

[tbowers]

With all the emails sent out by SD Game and Fish, I would bet the bank a lot of people applied "just because." And that a lot of permits will go unused.

I didn't look at the particulars about the drawing but based on the above comment, might I assume that folks are not charged the nonresident license fee automatically if they drew? 

Yes, you are charged via the card on file...

Based on that, I would guess there aren't a whole lot of folks that would sacrifice the nonresident license fee if they weren't planning on going for sure, assuming they drew.  Then again, maybe some would...but this old boy wouldn't do that.     

You can return your license as long as you do so prior to the 26th when season starts. Full refund. SD does this for all limited draw entries.  Probably a fair amount of guys that now will apply, and if schedules dont work out just send it back and you get your money back...no risk. Wonder if they publish how many get returned....