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Originally Posted by Nickt87
I agree with your participation theory, but I'm sure LDWF has a target participation level that they feel is achievable and are aiming for it.
As for the everyday idiot theory, I was referring to every single hunter that is not a biologist, including myself. Just because someone is a successful or passionate hunter does not dually qualify them to be a biologist. I'm sure many successful La hunters have never ventured north of Shreveport and have no idea how hatch rates, predator rates, and the million other factors up north have an impact on the waterfowl the other 10 months out the year. They gauge what they want limits on by how many birds they want to kill, not by what is healthy for the overall big picture.
We pay taxes, licenses, and join conservation organizations to help fund the biologist and research, let them do their job.
Like I said make the limit 2 or 10 and I'll be there either way.
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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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by noodle creek
I understand that everyone's opinion should be taken into account, and some of the questions really had little to do with someone's experience level. However, the questions about zones due to populations at certain times of year in certain locations, season dates, and other questions in this same category can't be answered with much credibility from someone who hunts 4-10 days a year vs someone who hunts 40-60 days a year.
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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.