The Brookings Wildlife Federation will host Terry Wieczorek, who will present a talk and slide show of his recent trip to Custer State Park.
The presentation will be at the organization’s noon info lunch on June 5. His program will be about his improbable draw of a 2025 Custer State Park Bighorn Sheep license. The infolunch is open to the public and will be at the Brookings County Outdoor Adventure Center at 2810 22nd Ave S.
Wieczorek is a long-time member of the federation and a board member. He has taken the group on adventures from Alaska to Argentina. He will talk about his scouting and preparation for the Black Hills hunt.
“I spent many days in a quiet and peaceful Custer State Park in November as I searched for mature bighorn sheep rams, watched sheep and spent my days close to other park wildlife,” he wrote.
His is not revealing the results of the hunt. “I will show photographs from my hunt and show the audience the results of the hunt.”
GFP closely monitors the size of the bighorn herd and allows very limited hunting. Bighorn tags are distributed exclusively by a lottery drawing and are restricted to South Dakota residents. In 2018 the archery world record Rocky Mountain bighorn was harvested in the Black Hills.
Bighorn sheep were once common in the Badlands and Black Hills, but unregulated hunting, human settlement and disease from introduced livestock decimated bighorn sheep populations. In South Dakota, bighorns were gone by the early 1900s. Reintroductions began in the 1960s, and by the early 2000s South Dakota had four distinct populations: Badlands National Park, Custer State Park, Rapid Creek and Elk Mountain.
The BWF had kept up on bighorn issues at past infolunch talks by South Dakota State University professor Jon Jenks and students. Jenks, now retired, had a long-time research program on bighorn diseases. In 2015, the federation heard from an SDSU student who had helped move bighorns from Montana to the Black Hills. Another student talked about putting radio collars on bighorn lambs in Badlands National Park to study survival rate.
Bighorns are also a tourist attraction in both the Black Hills and Badlands. In the Black Hills, animals are sometimes spotted at the Grizzly Gulch and Deadwood Hill areas on the rocky, steep slopes right above town. In Custer State Park they are sometimes seen along the Wildlife Loop State Scenic Byway or near the State Game Lodge.
A light buffet lunch will be available for a free will donation. The BWF is affiliated with the South Dakota Wildlife Federation and the National Wildlife Federation. The BWF is in its 46th year of supplying conservation information and activities to the Brookings community. For more information, contact BWF President Bob Kurtz at 605-695-1361.
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