This state's classification carries no date range for the species.
Confirmed absent, not just unfound: beyond zero full-text matches for rail/sora/Virginia rail across both the 2026 and 2025 SD GFP Hunting and Trapping Handbooks, a follow-up check of South Dakota's actual administrative rule code (ARSD Article 41:06, 'Hunting Seasons and Methods' — the real annual season-setting mechanism the Commission uses under SDCL 41-2-18(2)/41-6-22, distinct from the consumer handbook) itemizes 66 chapters covering every individual game species SD regulates, including species far more marginal than rail (crow, tree squirrel, cottontail rabbit) and directly comparable small migratory birds that do get their own chapter (common snipe = 41:06:17, sandhill crane = 41:06:18). No rail/sora chapter exists, and no generic 'webless migratory game bird' catch-all chapter exists either. gfp.sd.gov/rail/, /sora/, and /virginia-rail/ are not real species pages (resolve to a generic hub view) and rail/sora are absent from SD GFP's own Small Game site navigation. This is treated as confirmed: South Dakota does not establish a rail season, as a genuine policy difference from neighboring IA/KS/NE/ND (each of which publishes a real Sept-Nov rail season), not an artifact of looking in the wrong document.