South Dakota · UplandGreater prairie-chicken

SD GFP's own 2022-2031 Prairie Grouse Management Plan gives a precise range description, distinct in shape from sharp-tailed grouse despite the two species sharing a combined bag limit. Prairie-chickens were once nearly statewide, peaking around 1900 on the strength of early-agriculture 'waste grain' availability, but as farming intensified and grazing reduced grass height, the range contracted to where large, intact tracts of native prairie remain today: the plan states verbatim that 'their current distribution occurs where large tracts of native prairie remain, mostly in central SD,' limited in the east by grassland habitat and in the west by grazed-down grass height. A habitat density model (Runia et al. 2021) confined its analysis to a 32,971 sq mi central-SD region and found the population weighted west of the Missouri River even within that already-central area: an estimated 86% of the west-river population sits within Tier 1-3 priority habitat versus 67% of the east-river population. Fort Pierre National Grassland in Stanley, Jones, and Lyman counties sits at the heart of this range and is, per the plan, where hunter density and prairie grouse harvest are highest statewide; it's also where the state's mixed-bag wing-collection program is centered. Sharp-tail and prairie-chicken ranges overlap in the central part of the state, where mixed-bag hunting is common. The plan's own county-level distribution map (Figure 2, citing Flake et al. 2010) shows this range is not uniform: a dense core of >10 known/suspected leks per county centered on Fort Pierre National Grassland, and a much larger surrounding belt of confirmed but lower-density presence.