Waterfowl Hunter Survey Closes tonight

[noodle creek]

Originally Posted by Smalls

Ah, gotcha. That is basically what I was getting at, but my comment regarding end users still applies. They set pretty much every hunting season with some input from the public. After all, it is a public resource and LDWF is a public service agency.




I disagree, and only because most hunters are not moving around within a particular zone. The only difference between a hunter that is afield 4-10 and a hunter that is afield 40-60 days is the number of observations in a given area....in most cases. Now there are some people that move around within a zone, but they aren't all over the zone, and they probably don't spend an equal number of days at different areas within that zone.

There may not be many birds in one part of the zone, but there may be several in another part of that zone, and vice versa. So to say that someone that is afield for 40-60 days knows more about what the season dates should be in a zone because he is spending more time afield is somewhat false, in my opinion. If both are hunting the same area, then yes, he can likely more accurately paint a picture than the 4-10 day hunter. But if both are in different parts of the Coastal Zone, for instance, does the 40-60 day hunter on his private land in Johnson Bayou have more credibility than the 4-10 day hunter on private land in Vermillion Parish east of Freshwater Bayou when commenting on the framework for the entire coastal zone?

What if you have two hunters that both hunt 40-60 days in the Coastal Zone, but one is Cameron Parish, and the other in Terrebonne Parish? What if the Cameron Parish hunter is fine with the current framework and the Terrebonne hunter would like the split to occur later or earlier? What do you do in this situation? Who has more credibility? Neither ventures outside of his parish, so neither knows what the rest of the zone looks like.

Does the 40-60 day hunter have more credibility than the 4-10 day hunter? Sure. But how much more is the real question, and can you quantify that? And does it apply to the entire zone if he is only hunting one small area of it? I don't think there should be any more weight given to that hunter than the 4-10 day hunter, because any one person's experience depends on a number of variables. If you are in the wrong place, you may see things very differently than if you were in a place where there were lots of ducks.

How is someone who hunt's 4-10 days going to know as much about what is going on in their area as someone who hunts 40-60 days? What if the 4-10 day hunter is never out on a cold front, north wind day to see the huge flights of new birds coming in? Not to mention the fact that to get to where most hunters are hunting, they probably drive through other waterfowl habitat and different areas on their way too and from their blind. I understand that different areas are not related, but there are people who hunt 40-60 days in every part of this state. To think that someone who may only be out there a few days a year has just as good of a grasp on what happens in their area as someone who is out there every day is crazy. For instance, I drive down highway 14 from Lake Charles to Gueydan every day of duck season, so I see what is going on in areas much bigger than just the blind that I hunt.