Waterfowl Hunter Survey Closes tonight

[Lreynolds]

Originally Posted by noodle creek

I agree. I would say that the dedicated hunter's surveys aren't biased, they are simply the ones who care most, the ones with the most experience, and the ones with the most knowlege on what actually goes on with the waterfowl in their particular area.

To me, that is more valueable than Joe Blow who hunts 4 times a year and still has an opinion.

Individual surveys can't be biased. What is biased is taking information from only part of the population, and then applying it to the entire population. You don't want to estimate the average weight of people in Louisiana by weighing only fat people, right? That is the foundation for taking "random samples". With a random sample you get the full range of hunters from dedicated to once-a-year guys in the proportion they exist in the population.

Unless they buy more than 1 duck-hunting license, the opinion of a dedicated hunter doesn't mean any more than a casual hunter. In fact, from a hunter recruitment and retention standpoint, it probably means less.

On our surveys, the more dedicated, experienced, invested hunters are always the least satisfied ........ but they never quit. They buy a license year after year no matter what. They are the in-flexible portion of my constituency. So if my goal is to grow the number of hunters or reduce the number of hunters that quit, then the dedicated hunters are NOT the segment of the hunter population that I need to focus on.

So NO group of hunters is any more or less valuable to me (except those who participate , and I when evaluating regulations/management options I would like to have the opinions of a random, representative sample of hunters.