NJ DFW Deer Forums for Suggested New Regulations - who went? thoughts?

[mazzgolf]

13 minutes ago, Nanuk said:

if they want to diminish the herd so badly why not make six day an EAB Season or all season for that matter

Yup. I mention that in the OP. That was brought up several times. As I say,  it was another thing I was surprised at - the support by many in the room for EAB. I was surprised at how many people were not only fine with EAB but even suggested that it be expanded like you just did (e.g. extending it to more zones and into the permit season). I didn't hear a single complaint against EAB.

I don't know how DFW felt about that other than to point out their concern was that a new hunter may get discouraged if they see a buck but can't shoot it because they need to fulfill EAB (R3 was a big driver for these changes).

[mazzgolf]

53 minutes ago, gregtpal said:

less zones

This was also discussed as part of the multi-zone permits. The number and location of zones won't be changing, but their point was the practical effect of the multi-zone permits is "less zones" (if by "less zones" it means more land to hunt without  buying yet another permit.)

It will work like this: for $28 you can hunt one zone, for $56 you can hunt the entirety of one of the three reg sets. These are the three proposed reg sets - if you buy a multi-zone permit for $56 for one of those colors, you can hunt anywhere in that color:

(of course, it sucks for me because I almost literally at the point where three colors meet )

 

[mazzgolf]

54 minutes ago, Jcol6268 said:

Increase license fees (nothing astronomical but so we don't totally wipe monies going towards F&G) and do away with permits. Way less confusing that way. 

This isn't happening, because they don't control it. This was brought up last night by a few people, and DFW was very clear that they have no control over license fees. They are set by legal statute and you need the NJ Legislature to change it. The DFW and Fish&Game Council have no ability to alter the actual cost of the licenses/permits.

So talk to your NJ state representative and senator - and good luck getting our politicians to help out.  But seriously, that is what it would take to change the license fees - we need the politicians to change the law.

[chenrossi]

I went. Didn't get an opportunity to talk like I wanted to as I had several things I wanted to comment on from the presentation and from my own pocket. So, I guess I will here.

First off, I thought it was embarrassing they tried to suggest hunters here are expecting an opportunity to grow 180" 1.5 year old high fenced-looking deer here. When they put that mainframe 8 and said this is NJ, and not this other deer, I thought it was a ridiculous suggestion they were trying to infer. I don't think anyone in this state is expecting us to have some fairy tale idea of that caliber of deer. I think a majority just want there to be regulations in some fashion that just give the damn deer a chance to grow into a 3.5-4.5 year old mature deer, whether its APR, a reduction in bucks harvested, or a combination of the two.

Secondly, their 'survey' data from hunter ed I thought was another sad attempt to argue that new hunters are less motivated to hunt for a trophy. That isn't rocket science. That is a theme across any survey in any state in any form of hunting. New hunters haven't remotely ebbed through the pathway stages a lifelong hunter takes to get to that point and find that newfound motivation in targeting older age-class deer. They want to absorb as much information as they can early on and find success, whatever shape that takes for them. Of course their motivation is not going to be leaving finally getting their license and hitting the field after a B&C animal. That was out of touch because it is just solely focusing on one small transect of the hunting population here, and misses the point that growing deer alienates the large portion of hunters that currently support/fund agencies.

In a perfect world, I would like to see a mix of APR/non APR with a reduction in buck tags and just going to a firearms license and an archery license, both respectively with 2 buck tags and whatever doe limits implemented by this new proposed regulation set structure. My thought is if you want to allow people to take a non APR buck, then make a requirement their 2nd tag must be an APR buck. To strike some balance. With the exception of buck week. Just let it be a free for all. The other problem I have is if we are going to simplify the regulation sets, why are they not absorbing the zones and letting them die out; they should be irrelevant now if this simplification is going to be truly that. If it's not, it really changes nothing with complexity IMO keeping them and just reducing the reg sets to 4. The only realistic APR restriction that should be dropped IMO across the board is for youth in any season. There's no reason to keep that when I suspect the youth harvest is negligible anyway, so let them shoot whatever buck they want whenever.

There is also not a shred of data out there suggesting that APR elimination will recruit hunters as they suggested and allow them more opportunity/success. I actually looked into this a few years ago analyzing hunter recruitment/retention in APR vs non APR regions of the state. There was no influence that APR had. It was access and proximity to huntable land. This is nothing earth shattering, it's been seen in countless other surveys that proximity to opportunity and having multiple opportunities throughout the season will be the driving factor. You could put deer in a corral for new hunters to harvest, that 'success' doesn't mean anything that you'll get them as much as people would like to think it will. We have done the same with fishing derbies for 20 years and we are still bleeding anglers, no different.

Which brings me to my next point, they should be focusing these to enhance opportunities on public land everyone shares. I think WMA or public-specific regulations need to occur within the regulation sets. If you're in a new "low" regulation set for example and WMA-A exists within it, make it a more restrictive harvest for that WMA to enhance deer hunting opportunities there that are within the objectives to grow, decrease, or stabilize deer in that region of the state. The problem however with this is if I recall like 60-70%? of harvest is on private property where you are already going to have guys self-regulating and I think it is out of touch to try and convince hunters they need to harvest more deer on their private tracts when that's not remotely their motivation. And on top of that, a lot of these deer in grandma's backyard eating her petunias in Princeton aren't accessible to begin with so they're worrying about deer that will never have an interaction with a hunter. They should be focusing on how to manage areas all hunters have access to and I think they are missing the mark big time on that, especially if it about hunter recruitment, which I will hold my breath about.....

Edited October 6, 2023 by chenrossi
typo

[smittty]

59 minutes ago, mazzgolf said:

Yup. I mention that in the OP. That was brought up several times. As I say,  it was another thing I was surprised at - the support by many in the room for EAB. I was surprised at how many people were not only fine with EAB but even suggested that it be expanded like you just did (e.g. extending it to more zones and into the permit season). I didn't hear a single complaint against EAB.

I don't know how DFW felt about that other than to point out their concern was that a new hunter may get discouraged if they see a buck but can't shoot it because they need to fulfill EAB (R3 was a big driver for these changes).

Just wondering if they showed a chart with the number of BB killed during EAB. Probably not. Thats one of those magical number that just disappears 

[mazzgolf]

Just now, smittty said:

Just wondering if they showed a chart with the number of BB killed during EAB. Probably not. Thats one of those magical number that just disappears 

There was nothing about EAB harvest that I saw other than the one bullet point on the presentation slide talking about APR ("Zones 9 and 13 show an increase [in doe harvest] during the years of Earn a Buck (EAB), but declined when removed in 2006")... I actually don't know if they have those numbers - aren't BB considered "antlerless" when you report them? I dunno.

Nothing about BB versus larger bucks... only thing I saw kinda close to that was they did have the bar chart showing the harvest in southern APR vs. non-APR zones with number of points on the x-axis - but nothing referring to EAB:

[smittty]

They should and do have that information. When you report your antlerless harvest I believe it asks for the sex of deer I know it does on the tags 

[Silver Belly62]

Thanks for posting the info

[JHbowhunter]

2 hours ago, smittty said:

They’re trying to say only 9 hunters in the state took 3 or more bucks. I call bullshit.  I will also add that they already have everything hashed out already and that that public meeting is just a show. They have there minds made up and you’re comment means absolutely nothing 

percentage of, not # of hunters.  That could still be in the 100s if not thousands. 

[mazzgolf]

1 hour ago, chenrossi said:

The only realistic APR restriction that should be dropped IMO across the board is for youth in any season. There's no reason to keep that when I suspect the youth harvest is negligible anyway, so let them shoot whatever buck they want whenever.

As you know, that was actually brought up by a few people last night -- eliminate APR for youth across all seasons.

As a side note, some also suggested increasing the youth cut off age to 18 which I thought made alot of sense. If R3 is such a huge goal, having youth cutoff at 16 hurts that cause because what 17 or 18 year old is going to be able to afford full cost of licenses/permits? You will already lose some of those kids when they have high school sports and college to attend - you don't want to help push them away from the additional cost they need to pay even IF they want to stick to hunting.

I don't think the DFW folks commented either way to those suggestions, so I didn't get a sense of which side of the argument they fell on.

[mazzgolf]

20 hours ago, JHbowhunter said:

percentage of, not # of hunters.  That could still be in the 100s if not thousands. 

No, it was directly pointed out to us that that was the absolute number of hunters --- less than 10 hunters per year harvested 6 or more bucks. I'm only reporting what they told us. UPDATE: I was wrong when I originally thought it meant 4 or more bucks - the single digits likely meant the number of hunters who killed 6  based on the numbers ... see here.

Edited October 7, 2023 by mazzgolf

[smittty]

5 minutes ago, JHbowhunter said:

percentage of, not # of hunters.  That could still be in the 100s if not thousands. 

The way I read it as posted above is they claim under ten hunters in the state shoot four or more bucks. And I just can’t believe that number. Maybe I’m missing something. And there’s no info I see that gives a number of BB killed during EAB

[mazzgolf]

20 hours ago, smittty said:

The way I read it as posted above is they claim under ten hunters in the state shoot four or more bucks. 

That's what we were told.

I don't know the number of total deer hunters in the state. But if I work backwards.

If 10 hunters kill 4 or more.. and that represents, say, 1.5% of successful hunters, and 20% of all hunters are successful...

0.015 x 0.2 x H = 10... doing high school math....<calculating>

Yeah, that doesn't make sense. That comes out to 3,333 total hunters.

Either their numbers are out of whack or what they showed did not represent what they were saying it showed.

Any one else that was there remember that slide they showed? It was very prominent - she showed that slide I attached earlier - then the red numbers popped up in the row showing how many hunters killed 4+ in each yearly column. And I distinctly remember saying to myself, "no red number she just showed is over 9".

UPDATE: @Mpdiesel straightened me out - looks like it meant 6 bucks, not 4+. See here.

Edited October 7, 2023 by mazzgolf

[JHbowhunter]

15 minutes ago, mazzgolf said:

No, it was directly pointed out to us that that was the absolute number of hunters --- less than 10 hunters per year harvested 4 or more bucks. I'm only reporting what they told us.

that is total BS and we all know it. 

[JHbowhunter]

I spoke long and hard at the first one.  They have no plans to reduce buck tags or give us two flexible tags because they figured out a long time ago, bucks are $$$.   Far too many still refuse to shoot does but will kill every 1.5 yr old buck they can or any buck for that matter.  The entire permit and buck tag system was devised to generate revenue and has zero and I mean ZERO to do with Science or Biology.  I will not give one inch on that point. I told Carol Stanko as much and she could not refute it. I even talked to her after the meeting.  They claim we do NOT shoot enough does, so what do they propose - a 7th buck tag so those that gambled on the permit buck tag and ended up shooting 2 during 6-day can get to put that tag on yet another buck!!!!  

YOU JUST CANNOT FIX STUPID!!!!!

I wrote to them and gave them perfect solution. 

• Buy a license.
• Buy a deer permit (cost TBD) - this gives you as many does as a zone allows
• Register for your doe zones online, free of charge, after all they want more does shot right? Doe kills not tied to a season or a weapon, set a quota per DMZ that will cover entire dear season, all segments all weapons. 
• Charge a premium for up to two flexible buck tags, to be used any season any weapon. 
• Now they can truly manage the deer herd with real quotas per DMZ.  Still register your kills online. 

They can build the cost of deer permit and buck tags into what they need to operate, but by eliminating all the administration and overhead of the ridiculous permit and buck tag system, their costs should go down significantly. 

They claim to want "simplification" and I gave them the solution, but they will NOT do it. I am proposing a complete overhaul of the system with a clean slate.  It's so freaking easy and obvious.   

 

Edited October 6, 2023 by JHbowhunter