Youth Mentored Deer Hunts 2025

2025 mentored deer hunts

North Western South Dakota prairie offers some great opportunities for big game hunting. From bountiful Antelope to plenty of opportunities for Mule Deer.

This year we got mentored deer tags for our boys. For our 13 year old we chose a .308 caliber and standard deer hunting cartridge given the older boy's experience and the longer range sometimes necessary on the open prairie. However the younger 10 year old was more comfortable with the recoil of the AR-15 and the added benefit of semi-auto (which came in handy for this hunt). There is much debate on whether a .223 round is enough for deer hunting, after much research I decided to go with a .223 deer season XP ammunition. For a smaller doe within 200 yds it was more than enough for the job.