Iowa Legislature Considering Misguided Action

nstric

nstric

New member
This has yet to be assigned a subcommittee, but House Study Bill 564 (HSB564) was introduced yesterday.

Summary: much shorter season and smaller daily and possession limits in Iowa.

Detail:

This bill shortens the open season for hunting pheasants by ending the season on December 15 instead of on January 10 of the succeeding year, as is currently allowed pursuant to administrative rules adopted by the natural resource commission. The bill also reduces the daily bag limit from three to two cock birds and the possession limit from 12 to eight cock birds. A violation of a provision of the bill is subject to a scheduled fine pursuant to Code section 805.8B(3)(h) with the fine varying depending on the nature of the violation.

http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/linc/84/external/HSB564_Introduced.pdf

I credit those giving our ailing pheasant population some attention, but strongly question the approach as defined above.

"A" for intent, "F" for approach. We need to better educate our representatives in this regard.
 
Iowa clearly has other problems as far as pheasants.
You need a rooster to hen ratio of about 1 to 6.
Some of those wily roosters get almost non huntable.
Not likely to kill off to many roosters. Cutting back on hunter opportunities will cut down hunter interest. Send more hunters to South Dakota.:)
 
In Indiana the phez season runs Nov. 4-Dec 18 with limit of 2 roosters a day and a possesion limit of 4 for the season.If I want to go phez hunting outside these dates I have to go out of state or to a preserve.
 
Whatever happened to the theory that hunter pressure was a non-factor in sustainable populations? Looks Like a surrender flag for Iowa. Knee jerk simple response to a complex issue, without addressing the real cause or stepping on anybody's toes. Best part for those of you who have worried in the past, sure won't have to complain about non-resident hunters anymore!
 
Can you please provide me who I need to contact on this issue. Why would anyone pay the highest out of state license rates to have those limitations?
 
oldandnew said:
Whatever happened to the theory that hunter pressure was a non-factor in sustainable populations?
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Nothing; it still remains true. Some, for whatever reason . . . I suspect ignorance . . . simply choose not to see things for what they are.
 
I would say that hunter additivity is much smaller in degree to pheasants than to the ruffed grouse, for example.
Normally, it is a neglible factor that a population abundance allows one to ignore.
But as with the ruffed grouse, when any population, on a covert basis, reches a low point on a decline curve then any of the many smaller factors influencing decline begin to gain a greater significance in affecting that curve.
Old ideas are then out the door.
Hunter additivity is one such small factor.

I don't know if Iowa is making so logical a decision as to assume that the less hunter affect, be it of whatever measure, is best statewide or they simply hope that lightning strikes in a positive manner.
I do hope some thought and some out-of-the-box thought was employed...I see no reason to always assume the same old hoary thinking regarding game management when the game itself is holding it's collective breath for better days.
Clear and clean new thinking is often advised in tough times...hunters may simply need to suck it up a tad and see.

A one month reduction in Ohio's grouse season of February, where 40% of the birds were taken, has shown a slight upward blip in bird numbers this season...but, and a big but it is, Ohio has also had an accompanying couple of good Spring hatch conditions.
Many Ohio hunters are still whining of less days despite the improving numbers...for some hunters..it is mostly all about them and their opportunities.
Sometimes, we need to look farther than our own front sight.

Iowa will be most lucky if any management decision is accompanied by Ma Nature cutting the pheasants some slack.
Good luck to Iowa and her pheasants.
 
it's called cultural management and it flies directly in the face of sound purposeful management. not hunting pheasants or hunting them fewer days out of the year will do nothing toward restoring the linked habitat that once made iowa great.

in fact, i would argue that this will likely hurt iowa even more. soon no one will care whether iowa has pheasants or not. evidenced by the fact that they made no change to their quail hunting regs. why? because nobody cares about quail in iowa anymore.

it's like dejevu for this born and raised michigan farm boy.

the last thing the pheasant needs is fewer people hunting it. the hunter is the only friend the pheasant has left. kind of ironic, isn't it....
 
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Indiana has done the same thing with our Ruffed Grouse and it hasn't helped from what I have seen. The state had for the most part quit clear cutting in the 80's and when these cuts started to get past their prime the birds were on their downward trend. So since the birds lost their habitat it has been impossible for them to rebound even with the shorter seasons and bag limits. I don't care what people say if the birds don't have the habitat for them to nest and raise their young along with good nesting conditions it's going to be tough for them to rebound. Our state has started to clear cut again but it's to early to tell if the birds will ever be able to rebound but we hope. Habitat and weather along with time is what it will take to help Iowa pheasants come back to the numbers it had in years past.
 
I just posted this in the above thread regarding quail, but it applies here too.

The flipside of purposeful management is cultural management, which is supplemental feeding, predator control, food plots, releasing pen-raised quail, using surrogaters etc. These kinds of efforts typically do little to sustain and elevate wild quail populations. Shortening the quail season and/or reducing the bag limit, even if done on a regional scale in Texas, is simply another form of cultural management that will do nothing to recover, sustain, or elevate quail numbers in Texas. It never has. It never will.

http://www.bringbackbobwhites.org/n...quail-research-addresses-tx-quail-controversy
 
oldandnew said:
Whatever happened to the theory that hunter pressure was a non-factor in sustainable populations? Looks Like a surrender flag for Iowa. Knee jerk simple response to a complex issue, without addressing the real cause or stepping on anybody's toes. Best part for those of you who have worried in the past, sure won't have to complain about non-resident hunters anymore!
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I cannot agree with you more:rolleyes::rolleyes: Kind of makes you wonder
 
I have no problem with them limiting it to 2 birds as a way of extending the season, cutting the limit and the length of the season does not seem to make sense.
 
moellermd said:
I have no problem with them limiting it to 2 birds as a way of extending the season, cutting the limit and the length of the season does not seem to make sense.
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the 2 bird limit is fine with me also. instead of shortening the season follow s.d. change the start time to 10 o'clock. as far as the out of staters ia. should follow s.d. with limiting the hunts they can have. even with low bird numbers northern ia. still draws a lot of out of state hunters. :cheers:
 
iowa labs said:
the 2 bird limit is fine with me also. instead of shortening the season follow s.d. change the start time to 10 o'clock. as far as the out of staters ia. should follow s.d. with limiting the hunts they can have. even with low bird numbers northern ia. still draws a lot of out of state hunters. :cheers:
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sd has no limit on nr days of hunting......you can buy as many 10 day permits as you like......reducing the limit to 2 per day and cutting the season back to Dec. 15 won't make any difference, except send nrs to sd....so you guys can shoot the last remaining wild birds......then you too can pay nr fees in sd too.
 
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what i was trying to say is that in iowa a non. res. buys 1 lis. and gets to hunt all season long. when i buy a s.d. lis. i get 2 five day periods to hunt. yes i am well aware that i could buy more:rolleyes:. yes a 10 oclock start, and a 2 bird limit per day would help just don't shorten the season. :cheers:
 
We all need to form a committee since PF doesn't seem to want to step in and go fight these assholes. We need to open up the public eye to something like this instead of keeping it "in-house".

There are always people who don't hunt that have kids, grandkids, etc that do.
 
Dcup said:
We all need to form a committee since PF doesn't seem to want to step in and go fight these assholes. We need to open up the public eye to something like this instead of keeping it "in-house".

There are always people who don't hunt that have kids, grandkids, etc that do.
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probably wouldn't hurt to have a game biologist give testimony to the hopeless nature of reduced limits and restricted seasons, unless these guys are already in someone's pocket.......:eek:
 
hunter94 said:
probably wouldn't hurt to have a game biologist give testimony to the hopeless nature of reduced limits and restricted seasons, unless these guys are already in someone's pocket.......:eek:
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There is already years of testimony by professionals to the uselessness of shortening seasons and lowering bag limits, it's futile but politicians want to be seen doing something and wrong and futile are their stock and trade. Even on this thread we have already had one suggestion that the solution is to throw the non-residents under the bus, surely if we run off most of the non-residents, and punish the few who come with outrageous fees, the those borderless black desert fields, surrounded by mini-hog factories, watered by a fine stew of roundup, and pesticide water will suddenly be alive with birds. The human mind seeks a simple answer, reality rarely offers one.
 
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