Idaho biggame proposal is online

[huntnnw]

http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/hunt/?getPage=336

Looks like they are going to push the deer opener back to Oct 5th

[BowBender87]

Still learning Idaho regulations...seems like a good state to hunt OTC.  This will be my first year going over there to hunt deer and am lookin forward to it! The hardest part is trying to figure out what area to concentrate in

[bearpaw]

http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/hunt/?getPage=336

Looks like they are going to push the deer opener back to Oct 5th

One region wants the earlier opener so the option is to push all regions to Oct 5 so that 1 region doesn't get overloaded, the scuttle I hear is that it will likely stay Oct 10 as it has been. But you never know what can happen when the commission meets. 

[bobcat]

This was posted on Monster Muleys by an official of the IDFG:

Salmonfg (216 posts)       
Feb-28-13, 02:49 PM (MST)
6. "RE: 2013 big game proposals on-line"
I don't want to start a huge argument regarding the 5 October opening date. But I can provide some information/rationale. All may not apply everywhere.

In general, it's important to think a little outside the box and look at real data. The harvest data tends to show we will actually see slightly lower harvest with the early opener. I'll get back to that.

In 2005 the deer opener was moved from Oct 5 to Oct 10. In some areas (Salmon Region, and I believe Upper Snake and other areas), that change included extending the season to the end of October. Relatively high harvest that year prompted shortening the season from the end, for example to Oct 24. So in Salmon Region we ended up with a 15-day season (10-24 Oct), instead of the previous 18-day season (5-22 Oct). Returning to the Oct 5 opener would allow hunting of some higher elevation areas where deer tend to migrate out early and provide a few more days for people to be in the field.

Back to the data. As part of a larger analysis, we asked a university professor to look at effects of several aspects of season length and timing on harvest. There is a fair amount of variability, but the general trend was that past buck harvest was lower when seasons opened earlier. Harvest also tends to increase with length of season, but the effect is quite a bit smaller than that of opening date. I could provide some specific examples where harvest increased in 2005 even though the season was shortened from 5-31 Oct to 10-31 Oct, but what's probably more important is the large-scale, long-term data set that shows these relationships. Will it mean every Oct 5 opener will have less harvest than every Oct 10 opener? Absolutely not. Will the strength of the relationship vary based on different areas, weather conditions, and all the other variations that occur? Certainly. Is it likely that the trend of somewhat lower harvest with an Oct 5 opener will fall in line with average, long-term, patterns of past harvest? Yes.

Here are a couple conclusions from the report "If a management goal is to increase harvest levels of deer, managers might
recommend starting deer seasons later,... In
general, starting hunting seasons later in the fall appeared to have a greater effect on harvest and
hunter success than did longer season lengths."

So, the reasoning is if we can provide a little more time for hunters to be afield and typically expect similar or even reduced harvest, perhaps reduce hunter congestion, is that something hunters would like to see. If hunters clearly don't think it's an appropriate thing to do, then it likely won't make it through the season setting process.

Tom Keegan
IDFG Salmon Region Wildlife Manager

[bearpaw]

Interesting letter bobcat, thanks for posting. I can see where what he is saying may be possible. I would like to see more limited-entry areas to improve hunting.

No doubt a longer season would be nice if the resource can support it. When the season ran till the end of October we killed a lot of deer that last week because they were starting to rut. It's good for the deer that they discontinued that last week. Perhaps an earlier week won't hurt that much.

The biggest problem I see is that we are not recovering from past population declines in Idaho. With the current predator numbers I don't see how deer and elk can ever recover, humans, wolves, coyotes, lions, bears, cars, all those predators are not eating grasshoppers.