South Dakota Reduced Fee Hunting and Fishing License

Section 41-6-10.2 is the state's disability licence, and its threshold is forty percent rather than the hundred percent that gates the park licence. A resident who applies to the Game, Fish and Parks licensing office in Pierre receives a resident small game licence and a resident fishing licence for a reduced fee set by commission rule, currently ten dollars, if the resident meets any one of four tests. The first is a veterans allotment for a forty percent or more disability deemed a service-connected injury, or receipt of a United States Veterans' Administration K Award. The second is service on active duty, in the armed forces reserve or in the National Guard together with a forty percent or more disability for the purposes of receiving Social Security benefits, which is a different agency's finding entirely and reaches a veteran whose disabling condition is not service-connected. The third is having been held as a prisoner of war. The fourth is a total disability as defined by commission rule, which is not veteran-specific and which the department describes as being limited to a wheelchair and permanently unable to walk. The four-year validity is the unusual part. The licence is good for four calendar years so long as the holder remains a resident, where an ordinary resident small game or fishing licence is annual. Ten dollars covering two licences for four years is the cheapest sustained recreation benefit in the state. Proof is light by design. A veteran may provide proof at the time of application of receipt of the allotment, of Social Security disability benefits, or of the award. Any other applicant provides proof of the disability on a form supplied by the department. Applications go by post with the fee to Game, Fish and Parks at Fort Pierre. The Department of Veterans Affairs' page describing this benefit renders the first test as "a veteran's allotment for a total (40 percent) disability", which reads as though forty percent and total were the same thing. They are not, and the statute says "forty percent or more". Two other licence provisions sit nearby. Section 41-6-35 gives a free resident fishing licence, on application to the secretary, to a resident who served in the armed forces and is a patient in a war veterans hospital in the state or a member of a war veterans domiciliary unit in the state. And a set of accessibility permits, which are permits rather than licences and which a disabled veteran often needs alongside the licence, cover a crossbow or draw-lock for a person unable to use a conventional bow, a designated shooter for a blind or quadriplegic hunter, shooting from a stationary vehicle, and angler assistance. Each needs a physician's certification on the application form.