Montana season structure proposal 2.0

[shoots-straight]

post season survey's are where it's at. Cuts through all the phone survey data BS and will give you (usually) a good trend direction of where you're going with populations and ratio's.

Most the bio's I know are using harvest data.

Had to rethink that last statement. Our bio in the Root uses survey data, and lets us give our club imput. She's pretty open for hashing it out.

 

[rogerthat]

post season survey's are where it's at. Cuts through all the phone survey data BS and will give you (usually) a good trend direction of where you're going with populations and ratio's.

Most the bio's I know are using harvest data.

Had to rethink that last statement. Our bio in the Root uses survey data, and lets us give our club imput. She's pretty open for hashing it out.

You guys are the exception in this state…and region 4

 

[SAJ-99]

I hear what you are saying but it’s not congruent with solid game management to not try and get solid data. The other states that we look at as being better managed all prioritze data collection. I personally don’t see how you can do it without good information.

More important to get good data in the live counts -does, fawns, B/D ratio etc. Harvest data is going to be skewed regardless. Again, different for units like 270 that is a LE unit and more focused on providing higher quality. I would love for MT to manage their MD like WY, but I don't think that is going to happen. I hope MT elects to get better harvest data, but I don't think hunters should act like it's a big victory. It won't change much.

 

[TheJason]

If your are more focused on what you killed versus what’s currently on the landscape, you’re driving in the rear view.

Harvest data is useful, but shouldn’t be the primary driver in season settings. Post season counts and classification is far more important.

@DFS if you think folks from different states can’t contribute to a discussion like this then you are simply displaying your ignorance. I get it you want NR participation decreased. As a NR I would agree with you it should be.

I bet you wouldn’t act like this if you wanted NR support to move a proposal forward.

 

[SAJ-99]

If your are more focused on what you killed versus what’s currently on the landscape, you’re driving in the rear view.

Harvest data is useful, but shouldn’t be the primary driver in season settings. Post season counts and classification is far more important.

@DFS if you think folks from different states can’t contribute to a discussion like this then you are simply displaying your ignorance. I get it you want NR participation decreased. As a NR I would agree with you it should be.

I bet you wouldn’t act like this if you wanted NR support to move a proposal forward.

Don't sell him short. He still would.

I don't fault them. The way FWP collects data is antiquated in this day and age. Intuitively, it is an easy and obvious change that makes hunters happy. Hell, even I look at success rates and days hunted across various states and tags, even when I know they aren't very useful unless they are at extremes. But when I point out it won't really matter to the primary end goal of helping the resource, people just argue (with a heavy dose of selection and confirmation bias (i.e. data that supports my view is good, data that doesn't is crap, even if it is the same data). It's the internet, so it comes with the territory.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Don't sell him short. He still would.

I don't fault them. The way FWP collects data is antiquated in this day and age. Intuitively, it is an easy and obvious change that makes hunters happy. Hell, even I look at success rates and days hunted across various states and tags, even when I know they aren't very useful unless they are at extremes. But when I point out it won't really matter to the primary end goal of helping the resource, people just argue (with a heavy dose of selection and confirmation bias (i.e. data that supports my view is good, data that doesn't is crap, even if it is the same data). It's the internet, so it comes with the territory.

People have a tendency to get hung up on individual issues inside a more complex scenario and put their entire focus on that, rather than how it works globally.

Harvest stats are important when we look at success rates for elk, days in the field and elk populations in some districts. Those low success rates can indicate season structures that aren't working in terms of management.

Similarly, mandatory reporting is important for harvest so you get a better idea on Hunter distribution which is about seasons as well.

The need to broaden the data set has to be combined with the recognition that we have to broaden the view of how that data is interpreted as well.

 

[Fxd]

You aren’t a stakeholder, you’re a beneficiary of the stakeholders. If the stakeholders had their way the beneficiaries would come here much less often.

Assuming you are implying that stakeholders are limited to residents and resident hunters, landowners, and outfitters. I've lived in and killed my first buck as a resident of MT, been hunting there for 25 years, have immediate family and friends still there and yes, I benefit greatly from a week or two spent every few years in hunting there.

This is apparently not the forum for objective and rational discussion about mule deer management and mule deer hunting in MT so will save any future input for if any of these recommendations make it far enough that they are put forth as part of a formal public comment period. Do have a couple of items for the group to consider not specific to the proposed changes (many of which I personally support):

• Some of you may not consider non-residents as stakeholders but I assure you that as a primary revenue/funding stream for FWP, the agency certainly does. So do the rural economies that benefit from the influx of non-resident hunter dollars and associated economic activity. Any recommendations for substantive changes to policy and management prescriptions would be far more compelling with support from all those with a vested interest: resident and non-resident hunters, landowners, outfitters, and the non-hunting public who simply enjoy having mule deer on the landscape. For instance, stop the rhetoric that non-resident hunters were/are overharvesting antlerless deer. The concern is the number of allotted antlerless tags. Who shoots the deer is irrelevant to the impact on populations.
• I can tell you with direct experience that wildlife professionals spend a great deal of time and effort to collect biological data. Coming at them from the standpoint their data is junk is not productive nor is it accurate. It would be more beneficial to evaluate their own data and look at how it can be used to support the rationale behind any management recommendations.
• Biologists are constantly pushed to improve buck “quality”. This is subjective and unique to the individual hunter. That forky in the truck may have been a kid’s first buck or the last one their old man ever shot. Some folks have limited time to hunt or are physically limited by how far they can go. Others just don’t care about antler size. Think long and hard if you want to prioritize limiting opportunity for the sake of growing bigger bucks. It’s hard to get that opportunity back once it is gone. What I think is ubiquitous across hunters is the desire for a “quality” hunting experience of seeing the target species, limited disruptions by other hunters, and perhaps a reasonable chance at a mature animal. The two qualities are not mutually exclusive but messaging to improve buck quality implies the benefit of a subset of deer hunters. Improving the hunting experience by limiting some pressure where needed and managing for adequate numbers of deer on the landscape will also improve buck age structure. We should be messaging to improve hunt quality to the benefit of all deer hunters.

Hope you all have a great Christmas and am looking forward to see how this all plays out in MT. It is a beautiful State and look forward to hopefully being there in fall 2025. Cheers.

 

[SAJ-99]

Harvest stats are important when we look at success rates for elk, days in the field and elk populations in some districts. Those low success rates can indicate season structures that aren't working in terms of management.

Agree, but changing the what and how data is collected means you have to build a historical database in order to make accurate comparisons over time. It's a long process. I think someone mentioned that the measure of success is the proxy for effort, hunter days per harvest, I think? If the past data is thought to be bad what do you compare any new measurement to?

Mandatory and automated harvest report definitely needs to begin. But I am sure that hunters don't have the patience for meaningful analysis and the general (and growing) view that government data is bad is going to be hard to break. Getting into the weeds on the reduction in standard deviation of days-to-harvest being a win, even if days-to-harvest is about the same, will do nothing to calm hunters.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Agree, but changing the what and how data is collected means you have to build a historical database in order to make accurate comparisons over time. It's a long process. I think someone mentioned that the measure of success is the proxy for effort, hunter days per harvest, I think? If the past data is thought to be bad what do you compare any new measurement to?

Mandatory and automated harvest report definitely needs to begin. But I am sure that hunters don't have the patience for meaningful analysis and the general (and growing) view that government data is bad is going to be hard to break. Getting into the weeds on the reduction in standard deviation of days-to-harvest being a win, even if days-to-harvest is about the same, will do nothing to calm hunters.

No disagreement on any of that. I do think that with the change in technology and the move to digital tags, instituting mandatory reporting is going to be a lot easier. However, to your point of changing horses mid-stream (eliminating current model and moving to MR) I would imagine that there could easily be a transitory period where the two styles overlap and any bugs in either system would become evident.

And I don't know that the current data is bad. The biggest disagreements come in how that data gets interpreted. The working group used FWP data specifically because they felt that their conclusions would be different than FWP, but they wanted to use the data the agency relied on for decision making: continuity of data, difference of interpretation.

 

[SAJ-99]

@Ben Lamb @Gerald Martin @Eric Albus
Below is a transcript from the Hunt talk podcast. I can write it off as Eric misunderstanding FWP data collection methods, or I can ask for more clarity on the problem. Hinting at an email admitting a problem works people into a lather. The statement isn't clear exactly what the issue is, but it is another case where some data was used to support the proposal and other data was called useless. If there is something to push for, maybe this is an area that needs more focus, because those winter counts have a greater impact on management decisions.

“Yeah, you know, and some of it is the data that FWP is using is flawed. We've got an email admitting as much that, you know, they're flying their survey area and they're flying trend areas in the wintertime. They're small islands within a hunting district.

And they're not flying those until wintertime. And here, and this is at least in Region 6. This is the case here.

These trend areas have wintering herds of mule deer that are coming as far away as 50 to 100 miles up in southern Saskatchewan. They fly in, they count the deer that are in these X numbers square miles, and they extrapolate it, multiply it out, or the total numbers of miles, and are coming up with totally false numbers of deer. I mean, their data is useless.”

 

[Ben Lamb]

@Ben Lamb @Gerald Martin @Eric Albus
Below is a transcript from the Hunt talk podcast. I can write it off as Eric misunderstanding FWP data collection methods, or I can ask for more clarity on the problem. Hinting at an email admitting a problem works people into a lather. The statement isn't clear exactly what the issue is, but it is another case where some data was used to support the proposal and other data was called useless. If there is something to push for, maybe this is an area that needs more focus, because those winter counts have a greater impact on management decisions.

“Yeah, you know, and some of it is the data that FWP is using is flawed. We've got an email admitting as much that, you know, they're flying their survey area and they're flying trend areas in the wintertime. They're small islands within a hunting district.

And they're not flying those until wintertime. And here, and this is at least in Region 6. This is the case here.

These trend areas have wintering herds of mule deer that are coming as far away as 50 to 100 miles up in southern Saskatchewan. They fly in, they count the deer that are in these X numbers square miles, and they extrapolate it, multiply it out, or the total numbers of miles, and are coming up with totally false numbers of deer. I mean, their data is useless.”

Eric and Gerald are cabable of answering for themselves, but this is my take:

There has been a lot of discussion relative to how FWP survey's deer and how those counts might be flawed based on where the fly and time of year. Here is their evaluation of survey protocols: https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content...ahm/4f---survey_protocols_mule_deer_final.pdf

People have their own opinions so they say things that others may or may not. I think extending some grace to folks who are volunteering their time, energy and cash to a project like this is important. I get accused of not saying anything while talking too much, for example.

The data that these guys used was around resident/NR splits, who is killing what, increase in hunter pressure, the likelihood of the phone surveys having a declining confidence rate is the driving force behind the mandatory reporting piece.

The surveys have their own issues, and whether those are real or simply perceived issues is always a question open for debate.

 

[SAJ-99]

Eric and Gerald are cabable of answering for themselves, but this is my take:

There has been a lot of discussion relative to how FWP survey's deer and how those counts might be flawed based on where the fly and time of year. Here is their evaluation of survey protocols: https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content...ahm/4f---survey_protocols_mule_deer_final.pdf

People have their own opinions so they say things that others may or may not. I think extending some grace to folks who are volunteering their time, energy and cash to a project like this is important. I get accused of not saying anything while talking too much, for example.

The data that these guys used was around resident/NR splits, who is killing what, increase in hunter pressure, the likelihood of the phone surveys having a declining confidence rate is the driving force behind the mandatory reporting piece.

The surveys have their own issues, and whether those are real or simply perceived issues is always a question open for debate.

Sorry, not trying to attack anyone. I appreciate the members work. I know there was a lot of information they wanted to share and some of the comments may have been meant for some data and not others. It wasn't clear and left me asking for more. The problem with any recording is there is no way for a listener to ask them to stop and go back and expand. Im mostly just curious. And I agree, all data has its problems.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Sorry, not trying to attack anyone. I appreciate the members work. I know there was a lot of information they wanted to share and some of the comments may have been meant for some data and not others. It wasn't clear and left me asking for more. The problem with any recording is there is no way for a listener to ask them to stop and go back and expand. Im mostly just curious. And I agree, all data has its problems.

It does get tough when you have a couple hours to talk, and months worth of work to go over!

 

[Gerald Martin]

As @Ben Lamb says, I will let Eric explain his opinion about the trustworthiness of how FWP gathers its data. That was his quote about flight surveys in Region 6, an area that is his area of expertise and not mine. Also, we’re a pretty diverse
group and each of us has the freedom to have our own personal opinions.

Speaking for myself with my own personal opinion, I trust the data that FWP collects on wildlife surveys, population estimates, as the best available data since they are the only ones that have the funding and expertise to collect it. When it comes to hunter behavior, hunter harvests and those portions of wildlife management that pertain to human activity, I believe their data is much less robust than it could be. Mandatory reporting could provide more information on human activity to give decision makers a better understanding of what factors they are dealing with.


I believe that FWP bases management decisions in part with data about human behavior that could be far more robust given that hunters overwhelmingly support giving FWP information about their activities. Harvest data, hunter behavior and biologists’ in the field collected data of the resource should all be considered when making management decisions.

More data available enables accountability and verification of the decisions that are made based on interpretation of the data.

My own personal opinion is that FWP does interpret at least some of the collected data to bolster their image of an agency that does a great job, rather than letting the public decide for themselves. A case in point was their explanation of the results of the mule deer hunter survey that they claim show a significant majority of hunters are pleased with their experience mule deer hunting.

I have the opinion that in many instances where hunter/stakeholder perception is that the resource is showing signs of being overexploited and not doing well, FWP management/spokespersons have consistently downplayed concerns as nothing to be alarmed about and didn’t require any management changes. When change did occur after those initial concerns were raised it usually took public pressure to change agency stance and change policy.