re: Statewide duck meeting held in Monroe

Tell him I said Hey Jack!

And y'all drink some for me.

He got downright pissed off when Shorty and I drew that shite on the top plate of that cinder block storage building we were building at the baseball field.

quote:

---

I predict no change

---

But there WAS change in 2011, and then it was changed back in 2012 ..... both times because of public comment.

But you might be right, and there was clear evidence of why last night. There was excellent discussion between gentlemen wanting to hunt early, expressing a desire for even more early-season hunting days, and gentlemen wanting to hunt late. When someone asked for a show of hands, you couldn't tell the difference. It looked like there about equal numbers for each.

That's why the traditional dates seem like such a reasonable compromise.

I really appreciated so many people coming out to talk ducks with me on a Thursday night in early April. I took some justified heat for less-than stellar habitat management on some NE LA WMAs, got some excellent feedback on desired research/monitoring as well as colorful advice on dealing with my colleagues from more northern states. I also got a list of over 70 e-mails to start building a database for future communication with NE Louisiana hunters.

When you say guys wanting to hunt late, are you saying hunting into February?

quote:

---

When you say guys wanting to hunt late, are you saying hunting into February?

---

No. Most everybody understood that the USFWS won't allow duck hunter beyond the last Sunday in January. With 60-day seasons, the decision isn't really picking early or late hunting, but the proportion of how much of each we provide within our regulations.

So specific to the East Zone, the guys that advocated earlier hunting days wanted more days in November. There was a small cheer among the crowd when I presented one of the options in the hunter-opinion survey of having the old West Zone dates (3 weeks in the first split instead of 2, opening 2 weeks before Thanksgiving, and closing a week earlier in January). That means we take the last week in January and tack it on to the beginning of the first split giving more hunt days in November.

The guys that advocate later seasons, don't want to open until the weekend before Thanksgiving, close for 12 days, then run the last 51 days of the framework to maximize the number of late-season days.

I'm sure there are lots of guys that want to hunt into February, but that will not happen without a BIG change in USFWS policy. It would be a mistake in my opinion anyway. Our harvest data already shows that although we do indeed have more ducks in Louisiana in January, we kill fewer of them for all the traditional reasons ...... they have been pressured for over 4 months up the flyway and here, the dabblers are paired which makes them far less sociable, there is usually more habitat available for them to disperse, they've had time to find sanctuary, etc. All of those things make them less vulnerable.

Thanks for all the info. I will certainly fill out the survey, hell I'm pretty sure it is the same survey I was a guinea pig on a few years ago.