My ideal duck season dates, what's your?

[cgoods17]

Originally Posted by Lreynolds

To answer the focal question of this thread:

I hunt the Coastal Zone and prefer:
Open the second Saturday in November and run for 3 weeks.
12-day split.
Re-open and run until 1 week before the end of the framework.

so in other words... the same way it has been since waaaaaaaaaay before we ever thought about a coastal zone....

[Lreynolds]

Originally Posted by cgoods17

so in other words... the same way it has been since waaaaaaaaaay before we ever thought about a coastal zone....

Those were the dates for the old West Zone since the onset of 60-day seasons (19 years), so they don't go that far back. But the second Saturday in November opening date has been the most common opening date since 1930 with the first Saturday a close second. We've generally only opened later when the season dates were 45 days or less. Until 2002, we never went later than Jan. 20.

When we split the old West Zone into a Coastal Zone and a West Zone it was the WEST ZONE that saw some changes, NOT the Coastal Zone. NOTHING changed for hunters in the Coastal Zone except the name of their zone. So the Coastal Zone ain't nothing new regulations-wise.

[Dogface]

Originally Posted by Lreynolds

To answer the focal question of this thread:

I hunt the Coastal Zone and prefer:
Open the second Saturday in November and run for 3 weeks.
12-day split.
Re-open and run until 1 week before the end of the framework.

Personally I would prefer to have no zones but that's not going to happen. Other than that I would like more days in the first split rather than the second split. On our lease (we have hunted the same area over 20 yrs) our hunting really falls off the latter part of January.

[hunterr77]

After opening weekend, the see geese the bulls eye and start rising as soon as they get in the cut. That is a absolute certainty C-Goods!!! By the 3rd week of season the ducks will do the same.

[hunterr77]

I cant complain about this year hunting, it was one of the best years I have had in while

[Lreynolds]

Originally Posted by Dogface

Personally I would prefer to have no zones but that's not going to happen. Other than that I would like more days in the first split rather than the second split. On our lease (we have hunted the same area over 20 yrs) our hunting really falls off the latter part of January.

How did that work out this year, when we had 4 weeks in the first split instead of 3?

I never get to hunt the first week in December because I represent the MS Flyway at the Harvest Management Working Group meeting. So, I don't have a good feel for it, and of course, it's only 1 year anyway.

[Dogface]

Originally Posted by Lreynolds

How did that work out this year, when we had 4 weeks in the first split instead of 3?

I never get to hunt the first week in December because I represent the MS Flyway at the Harvest Management Working Group meeting. So, I don't have a good feel for it, and of course, it's only 1 year anyway.

The first 2 weeks of the season were our best hunting. The entire first split was better than the second split. Also, I wasn't suggesting opening earlier than the second Saturday, just have more days in the first split.

[Matt G]

Originally Posted by Dogface

The first 2 weeks of the season were our best hunting. The entire first split was better than the second split. Also, I wasn't suggesting opening earlier than the second Saturday, just have more days in the first split.

This was pretty much how our season went. I was pretty skeptical about opening as early as it did, but it worked for outer lease. Second split was pretty much a crap shoot. Some days the birds were thick, other days we were watching coot and blackbirds. I think the warm weather and high water played a major part. I would definitely like to see a longer 1st split.

[Lreynolds]

Originally Posted by Dogface

The first 2 weeks of the season were our best hunting. The entire first split was better than the second split. Also, I wasn't suggesting opening earlier than the second Saturday, just have more days in the first split.

I understand. I struggled with that in making the 2016-17 proposals. In August, the Commission moved the opener to the first Saturday in November AND put 4 weeks in the first split. Since nothing has changed since August with regard to duck regulations, I considered proposing the same structure but with a second Saturday opener. However, with a 12-day split, that would put us opening the second season on Christmas Eve and having the season closed when all the kids get out of school for Christmas break. That left me the choice of accepting that or using a 3-week first season, or a 5-day split and closing the second season on January 15 instead of the 22nd. So we decided to go with the traditional 3-week first season, a 12-day split, and running to Jan. 22.

[Top Dawg]

I think hunter numbers have something to do with our bird numbers also. The southwest part of the state is so crowded with hunters I think a lot of birds don't come anymore. And the ones that do either find refuge real quick or leave soon after arrival. With years like this when we have a mild winter the few birds here it takes a weather change to move them off their refuge sit to your blind. I'm not sure many people realize the vast acreage of ag land and food source not a very far drive north of here, with a lot less pressure, that even a cold winter won't effect. I just hope it isn't a trend.

[southLA]

Larry, I know about the 3 zones proposed for next year and the changes. Will the goose limits and dates be statewide again?

[Lreynolds]

Originally Posted by southLA

Larry, I know about the 3 zones proposed for next year and the changes. Will the goose limits and dates be statewide again?

Because of the longer season (81 instead of 74 days), and the apparent desire of the Commission to synchronize the split as they did this past year, we have proposed for a very similar statewide season for 2016-17. We created goose zones in case we have to drop back to 74 days because of population decline or the Commission decides to go with 74/3 instead of 81/2 or 88/2. In those cases we would probably open the North Zone earlier and the South Zone later. But for now, it's statewide.

We took a little heat from Todd Masson at NOLA.com for not sticking to our 74-day/3-bird recommendation that we made in August in his article at: http://www.nola.com/outdoors/index.s...ly_propos.html

That was my call based on 1) the discussion/outcome at last August's meeting gave little indication that 74/3 would pass this year, and 2) the only new information since that August meeting was the fall staging survey in SK, which showed a 4% decline in WFG populations.

[B-Stealth]

Why does the E Side hunt until January 31st when the LDWF knows hunting into late January hurts the breeding stock?

[Lreynolds]

Originally Posted by B-Stealth

Why does the E Side hunt until January 31st when the LDWF knows hunting into late January hurts the breeding stock?

Because the USFWS allows it, the duck population is at high levels, hunters want it, and the East Zone has traditionally closed on the last day of the framework. As you have seen from the harvest data, a fairly small % of our season kill comes from the last 2 weeks in January (about 15%), so the risk to the population is small. When the population declines to the point that we have to restrict hunting regulations, the closing framework date also goes back to the Sunday closest to Jan. 20 instead of the current last Sunday in January.

Also remember that the last time the framework was extended to allow earlier hunting in the northern states and later in the southern states, it was done via legislative action (an add-on to an appropriations bill) not through the cooperative flyway-based regulatory process.

[southLA]

Thanks for the info!

[Quackhead62]

What if we'd go back to east and west zones and keep the sixty day season starting on the second weekend in November.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Lreynolds]

Originally Posted by Quackhead62

What if we'd go back to east and west zones and keep the sixty day season starting on the second weekend in November.

That's what we had from 1975 to 2012, which include the "good ole days" for most here. So why did we change in 2012?

1) Because hunters in NW LA wanted to set seasons separate from those along the coast, 2) it would allow more flexibility in targeting hunting regulations to particular habitat types, and 3) it would provide additional hunting opportunity, especially if the season length was reduced.

Unfortunately, we found out that although hunters in NW LA did indeed want DIFFERENT season dates from coastal hunters, some of them wanted LATER dates and some of them wanted EARLIER dates. The devil is always in the details, and maybe we should just go back to the pre-2012 structure.

So why are we changing again in 2016?

Because the rice industry wants additional time to get their second-crop out and the fields prepared for hunting before the season opens; and many rice-field hunters want later seasons. So we moved the zone boundaries so that much of the rice-growing portions of Jefferson Davis, Acadia, Evangeline, and Vermilion Parishes are now in the East Zone. I'm not convinced this was a good move. That rice acreage is clearly of coastal origin, it is part of the Coastal Prairies and Marshes ecotype, and the birds of SW LA use both marsh and rice-fields as components of the same wetland complex. Yes, the further north you go, the less that interaction with the marsh occurs, but those rice fields are definitely more closely tied to coastal habitat than the Mississippi Alluvial Valley.

But we will see .........