Outdoor Campus West offers Hunting 101

One program at the Outdoor Campus West is Hunting 101 which takes place in the Hunter Education Building.

Clint Whitley, one of the naturalists, explains more about the class and what to expect.

“So [Hunting 101] has gained a lot of popularity over the last year. It’s the next step after you’ve come to an introductory class. You can come sign up for this. And actually, now, you need to apply. There’s a lot of people that have moved to the area since COVID. There’s people that are really interested in procuring their own meat, learning more about hunting, getting in the outdoors. We saw that in all kinds of numbers and data with park entrance fees and whatever else, buying campers…people, just wanting to get outside and enjoy the outdoors. And hunting is one of those that saw that same boom.”

Whitley says that there can be many barriers, so the class begins with a meet and greet. “We kind of have what I consider like almost a campfire conversation. We talk about what it means to be a hunter: the ethical practices, the moral practices, some of those key components to understanding what hunting is and then also what opportunities are there in South Dakota.”

Next, comes the hunting safety portion. Participants are required to complete a hunter safety course.

Whitley continues, “We come back and we do hands-on things with crossing a fence and shooting, carrying a gun and knowing shot placement on the animal. Then we do even a zoom call where I show you where you can access public ground, how you access that, how you navigate the Game, Fish and Parks site. Then we go out in the field and we look at ground that we could potentially hunt and say, this is what I would do here. This is where I would sit and how I’d move through the terrain. You carry the rifles. You have a scenario…just to get some real life scenarios of what you’re doing in the field.”

Whitley points out that although they talk about these different scenarios in class, getting the participants out in the field makes a difference.

“We can talk about it all day long in this building, but that gets them in the field. Yeah, we’ll set a trail camera, we’ll do those sorts of things. After that, we’ll meet and go to the range and we’ll shoot rifles just to get that comfort with the firearms. So then we will after that schedule a hunt and myself or one of our volunteer mentors, which is something people could sign up to do as well, take people on these these guided whitetail hunts. And we have a lot of landowners that might have deer problems or really want to just help people get in the outdoors. So they’ve opened up their property for us to come to hunt on their property.”

However, the training does not end there. Whitley explains, “And after that…they have to deal with an animal. So we bring it back here and we process it. We spend quite a few hours skinning and quartering and and deboning the meat and packaging it and sending it home with them so they can share that with their friends and family. The participants are usually very thankful and happy to have somebody go out there and bridge those learning gaps because it’s steep one.”

The application for the Hunting 101 course is due at the end of June. The program starts in July and August. The hunts begin in September. The program is free but the participant is required to purchase their own tag. If you have never had a tag in South Dakota, it is $5 for the Apprentice Deer Tag.

For more information, click here.