South Dakota Duck Season 2026-27: Zones, Dates, and Timing

South Dakota hunts four duck zones, and because Low Plains North and Middle share dates it comes to three schedules. Low Plains North and Middle run September 26 through December 8, 2026. Low Plains South runs October 24, 2026 through January 5, 2027. High Plains, west of the Missouri River, runs October 10, 2026 through January 14, 2027. There is no separate September teal season; instead each zone allows two bonus blue-winged teal during the first nine days of its own season. Youth waterfowl is September 12-13, 2026. Goose season dates are set separately and are not listed here, so read those off South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks directly.

Four: High Plains, Low Plains North, Low Plains Middle and Low Plains South. The High Plains line follows the Missouri River, so as a rough orientation everything west of the river is High Plains and everything east is one of the three Low Plains zones, running north to south. The boundaries are legal descriptions that follow specific rivers and highways, so a county near a line can be split, and that is exactly where a summary like this one will fail you. Confirm yours against the SDGFP zone map before you hunt.

Because five weeks separate the close in the northeast from the close in the west. Low Plains North shuts on December 8 while High Plains hunts to January 14, and the reason is water rather than latitude: the Prairie Coteau is shallow glacial basins that lock early, and the Missouri mainstem reservoirs stay open on winter releases when everything around them is frozen. A single statewide season would either close the west while birds were still sitting on open river, or hold the northeast open over ice.

Early to mid November in most of the state, and the DuckCast per-region curves put it at about November 6 across the Prairie Coteau, Sand Lake, the Glacial Lakes and the mid James, around November 18 in the Big Sioux corridor and along the Missouri at Lewis and Clark, and around November 15 through Oahe and the west river country. South Dakota is a staging state rather than a wintering one, so the peak is sharper and earlier than Arkansas or Missouri and the season is largely over by the time theirs is getting good.

No separate one. South Dakota is a duck production state, and like North Dakota it takes the bonus instead: two extra blue-winged teal on top of the daily limit during the first nine days of each zone's regular season. Because Low Plains North opens September 26, that bonus window is still in September for hunters in the northeast, which is the closest thing the state has to a teal season. Youth waterfowl runs September 12-13, 2026.

One state, almost entirely: North Dakota. Everything arrives down the James and the Missouri, which makes South Dakota unusual among the states DuckCast covers, since Missouri fills from two corridors and Arkansas from several. The practical consequence is that the front closing the season in North Dakota is the same front opening the best week in South Dakota. DuckCast watches eight North Dakota stations at two latitudes for exactly that reason: a freeze at 48 degrees north is two or three days out, and the same freeze at 47 is about half a day.