On state park land
Permission needed
Written authorization from a department representative, on any land the Game, Fish and Parks Department owns, leases, manages or controls – which is all of it, not only parks and recreation areas.
1. The rule, in full
South Dakota – S.D. Admin. R. 41:03:01:29
Read from the Administrative Rules of South Dakota published by the Legislative Research Council (sdlegislature.gov), rule 41 in full. Checked 3 Oct 2026.
Re-read and corrected 3 Oct 2026. The previous version of this entry quoted the rule as requiring authorization "from the site manager or other department representative". The words "site manager or other" are not in the regulation. The entry had been written from the department's metal detector web page, which cites the rule rather than reproducing it. Recorded in METHODOLOGY under rule 11.
Operative text, 41:03:01:29, "Restrictions on use of metal detectors — Written authorization required":
"No person may use a metal detector on lands owned, leased, managed, or controlled by the department without written authorization from a department representative. Written authorization may include conditions for permitted use specific to the applicable area." Source: 25 SDR 108, effective February 28, 1999; 29 SDR 147, effective May 6, 2003; 46 SDR 74, effective December 2, 2019. General Authority: SDCL 41-2-18(4), 41-17-1.1(1)(3)(6).
Scope: all lands owned, leased, managed or controlled by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department. Note the breadth within its own domain – "owned, leased, managed, or controlled" reaches further than "state park" would, but every one of those verbs still attaches to the department.
Determination: GFP land only, and that means ALL of it. Does NOT reach municipal parks. Because the rule is scoped to a department rather than to a place type, it already covers state parks, recreation areas, game production areas and lakeside use areas alike. The forestry and wildlife sweep of 3 Oct 2026 found no separate instrument for any other class of South Dakota state land, and none is needed: this one reaches them.
The permit conditions are policy, not rule. The regulation says only that written authorization "may include conditions for permitted use specific to the applicable area". Game, Fish and Parks publishes a metal detector permit document setting out what those conditions are in practice. That document has not been read at source for this entry, so this page does not reproduce its terms, and anything taken from it in future is quoted as policy with its own date.
Sources: sdlegislature.gov Administrative Rules, rule 41:03:01:29, served as UTF-16 and read with the corrected decoder (see METHODOLOGY rule 5). Checked 3 Oct 2026.
2. Cities in South Dakota that publish a rule
No city in South Dakota publishes a metal detecting rule we can quote. Of the 13 cities we checked, 6 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read, and none of those sets out a rule. For the remaining 7 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.
3. County rules
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.
4. Cities checked — no published rule
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.