Quote:
Originally Posted by grizzon30s
My question is, what benefit is there to setting the season dates earlier? I understand you have work within the federal framework and there is a 6 week lag time at best. Setting it early based on previous season data seems a little pointless. We all know that so much changes one season to the next. Maybe I'm missing something.
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I don't believe there is much benefit, except as you mentioned in another post, it gives some hunters more lead time to plan vacations from work. I get a number of calls every year from guys that have to schedule their vacations early in the year. Also, it would streamline the process if we could use the same Notice-of-Intent, public meeting, and public comment period process and time-line for ducks/geese that we use for resident game.
However, there probably isn't much of a cost either because 1) populations don't change so much in 1 year that it affects regulations, and 2) the effects of hunting regulations on populations is so minimal that one year of too liberal or too conservative won't make any difference. Note the long periods of regulatory stability, both liberal and restrictive. We already use 3-year averages for our goose harvest strategies, and current-year population information for say speckle-belly geese (late-September survey in SK) comes after we have set the season.
The pressure to set the seasons earlier is coming from the USFWS legal staff who are constantly worried about lawsuits from anti-hunting factions. I'm not a legal expert, but evidently the comment period for federal waterfowl hunting regulations is so short as to be indefensible as a functional mechanism for comments to be collected, summarized, and responded to.
The issue isn't biological; it's administrative.