Bear Quota

[rlt7272]

From what I understand the starting quota this bear season was 20. However, as of this mornings news report there were 31 checked in. Forget about the crossbow/compound debate, did the wildlife department drop the ball on the harvest management? If there were only supposed to be 20 taken I would say that there method of calling in to see if the quota had been met failed.

What corrections should be made to make sure this doesnt happen again?

Should there have been a compound/recurve season then a crossbow followed by a muzzleloader season?

Make the bear hunt a draw hunt?

I did not participate in the bear hunt but to me this looks real bad for the wildlife department as to how they handled the harvest.

 

[liliysdad]

I think it looks real good for them, to be honest.

A draw wont work, because you wont get 100% kill. I am sure they factored this in, and set the quota artificially low to compensate.

 

[rlt7272]

I see your point. However a 55% fudge factor seems high.

 

[r00s7a]

Based on the amount of time it took to fill last year's quota (which wasn't actually done), along with allowing xbows this year, I would imagine it came as a bit of a surprise when the quota was filled so quickly this year. But like Hemphill said in the article, the limit was very conservative and going over would have no impact on the bear population. I wouldn't say that their method of calling in failed exactly. It worked for every day but the first... the quota just got filled on opening day. I will be interested to hear their solution for next year on tags, quota, etc. The only failure I see was anticipation of quota being filled on the first day and going over that quota by the amount that it did. But after last year, who woulda thunk it? Congrats to all those people that did get to harvest a bear this year... it may not be as easy next year!

 

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

What corrections should be made to make sure this doesnt happen again?

Well, there's really only 2 ways to do it:

1. Call in twice a day, instead of once / day. Everyone with a tag must call in at noon on each day, to see if they can hunt the afternoon/evening, or whether the quota is full. But, if there's 18 by noon on opening day, and everyone gets the green light, you could STILL have the same situation of 25 or 31 by day's end. And that's a lot of phone calls to handle midday for the wardens, not to mention the difficulty for the hunters of finding a place with cell phone coverage in midday (or face having to drive to town instead of hunting!). So that really leaves only one good method...... :

2. Limit the tags sold. Not to 20, mind you, necessarily, but some number proportional to the likelihood of harvest, such that you know there's no way it's gonna go way over in one day. Limit the number of tags sold to say, 100, 150, 200, 250, something like that. Or maybe even less, say 50 or 75. But to limit sales, you've either gotta do first come, first served, OR have a draw - put them into the controlled hunts system. Probably the draw with the controlled hunts system is the only good way to do this. But then the Wildlife Dept gets less revenues. Procedure would be like McAAP only with a $101 fee instead of $25 - pay after drawing.

The only other way besides #2 that's 'workable', is to just leave the status quo as is, and if and when you have years like this one where one day causes you to go way over, 'make up for it' the next year. For example, run some numbers over the winter & spring, then tell the public in mid-2011 that the 2011 quota is going to be 10 or 12 or 15 instead of 20 - whatever number is deemed best to properly manage the species.

 

[rlt7272]

Did anyone hear how many tags were sold for this season?

 

[Oklahomabassin]

I didn't hear how many tags, but I did hear they estimate the population of bears in Oklahoma close to 800. Unless the 31 bears harvested were in an isolated area, I doubt it is going to reduce the number of bears next year. I look for next years quota to be higher, likely 20 for archery and 20 for muzzle loader season, with a 1 bear harvest limit per person.