MN DNR Survey

Munster927

Munster927

Well-known member
Keep a look out in your mail for a survey from the DNR. I'm assuming it's going out to anyone who bought a pheasant stamp. Sounds like a couple changes are being discussed (All of which would require the legislature to approve, I believe, 2 for sure).

It asks about how much you support or oppose 3 things:

1: Current shooting hours and how much you'd support/oppose shooting hours being sunrise to sunset. I voiced support to leave them as is. Personally I'm not a big fan of letting folks get the jump on birds right at the crack of dawn. Plus the safety aspect of having mobs of people out on opening day half in the dark. If given an alternative option, I'd have voiced support for an 8 AM start. Something I may email the people listed on the survey about.

2: Support or oppose changing the daily bag limit from 2 birds until December 1st when it's 3 birds to changing it that as of November 1st the daily bag is 3 birds. I voiced opposition again. I think leaving it as is, is something I support more than having it an extra month of 3 birds. A decent happy medium could be November 15th. From a personal, selfish standpoint, yeah I'd like to shoot more birds earlier than December 1st, but I'd be concerned about downstream impacts of an extra month of the increased bag.

3: Support or oppose the current season end date. It went on to ask how much you support/oppose the season ending January 10th, 15th, or 31st. I voiced my support for all 3 of those dates, and opposed the current end date. Given the state of our winters the last while, I'm all for getting out in January when we can. There is some concern that I have again about how that would impact our bird population, but think additional access and time afield is great.
 
Munster927 said:
Keep a look out in your mail for a survey from the DNR. I'm assuming it's going out to anyone who bought a pheasant stamp. Sounds like a couple changes are being discussed (All of which would require the legislature to approve, I believe, 2 for sure).

It asks about how much you support or oppose 3 things:

1: Current shooting hours and how much you'd support/oppose shooting hours being sunrise to sunset. I voiced support to leave them as is. Personally I'm not a big fan of letting folks get the jump on birds right at the crack of dawn. Plus the safety aspect of having mobs of people out on opening day half in the dark. If given an alternative option, I'd have voiced support for an 8 AM start. Something I may email the people listed on the survey about.

2: Support or oppose changing the daily bag limit from 2 birds until December 1st when it's 3 birds to changing it that as of November 1st the daily bag is 3 birds. I voiced opposition again. I think leaving it as is, is something I support more than having it an extra month of 3 birds. A decent happy medium could be November 15th. From a personal, selfish standpoint, yeah I'd like to shoot more birds earlier than December 1st, but I'd be concerned about downstream impacts of an extra month of the increased bag.

3: Support or oppose the current season end date. It went on to ask how much you support/oppose the season ending January 10th, 15th, or 31st. I voiced my support for all 3 of those dates, and opposed the current end date. Given the state of our winters the last while, I'm all for getting out in January when we can. There is some concern that I have again about how that would impact our bird population, but think additional access and time afield is great.
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Thanks for the heads up on the survey. Interesting proposals by the DNR.
 
The survey is only going to a random sample of pheasant stamp buyers, not everyone. There will be other opportunities for feedback (open to everyone) if the survey respondents support any of the proposed changes/alternatives.
 
nater said:
The survey is only going to a random sample of pheasant stamp buyers, not everyone. There will be other opportunities for feedback (open to everyone) if the survey respondents support any of the proposed changes/alternatives.
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If you find out where to give feedback for those of us that haven't or won't receive the survey, please let us know!
 
I could really kinda care less about options 1 and 2. I don't usually start hunting until around 11 or noon anyways.

Item number 3 is in need of a major change. Opening the season the second Saturday in October when its 75 degrees out and a sea of corn is ridiculous. It should more closely align with Iowa's season. Open the last Saturday in October and close around mid January. The length of the season would stay relatively the same as it is now, but follow more "fall and winter" type conditions. September and October have become extensions of summer here nowadays.
 
Yeah I like a 9am start. Gives those of us who need to travel 2.5-3 hours time to do so in the morning, and lets the birds feed. As much as I'd hate only having 1 or 2 weekends before taking a break for firearms deer, I think it is the right call to move it back 2 weeks. Give me 2 weekends in January at least. Makes the holiday period less stressful trying to get hunting in around family if I knew it wasn't my final hurrah.
 
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nater said:
The survey is only going to a random sample of pheasant stamp buyers, not everyone. There will be other opportunities for feedback (open to everyone) if the survey respondents support any of the proposed changes/alternatives.
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Good to know. Just curious, but how did you find that out?
 
MNMEAD said:
Yeah I like a 9am start. Gives those of us who need to travel 2.5-3 hours time to do so in the morning, and lets the birds feed. As much as I'd hate only having 1 or 2 weekends before taking a break for firearms deer, I think it is the right call to move it back 2 weeks. Give me 2 weekends in January at least. Makes the holiday period less stressful trying to get hunting in around family if I knew it wasn't my final hurrah.
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Agreed on the 9 AM start. It's early enough but still late enough to accommodate all the moving around on busy weekends. My main concern with a sunrise start time is safety, second concern is bird population.

Imagine you've staked out a spot since 5 AM (you'd have to be there then if you can hunt at 630 or so on opener) and trucks pull up to your spot at 630 as you're about to go. It happens every opener but at least there's daylight. Now you got guys out there, pissed off at some random folks, you can barely see their orange because the suns just coming up and birds start getting up. A recipe for an accident. Now maybe we could look at how North Dakotas statistics are on those accidents, but North Dakota is a big state for pheasants. MN has a fairly small core range of pheasants that has a lot of people hunting on compared to North Dakota.
 
Munster927 said:
Agreed on the 9 AM start. It's early enough but still late enough to accommodate all the moving around on busy weekends. My main concern with a sunrise start time is safety, second concern is bird population.

Imagine you've staked out a spot since 5 AM (you'd have to be there then if you can hunt at 630 or so on opener) and trucks pull up to your spot at 630 as you're about to go. It happens every opener but at least there's daylight. Now you got guys out there, pissed off at some random folks, you can barely see their orange because the suns just coming up and birds start getting up. A recipe for an accident. Now maybe we could look at how North Dakotas statistics are on those accidents, but North Dakota is a big state for pheasants. MN has a fairly small core range of pheasants that has a lot of people hunting on compared to North Dakota.
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I can see that logic, but I do like the start being *based* on sunrise. That way, no matter what happens with daylight saving time, we have consistency. Making it X minutes after sunrise, whatever X is, makes more sense than a fixed time. It does mean people need to know when sunrise is, but people already need to know when sunset is. And it is easy to find the sunrise in half a minute on a modern phone.
 
Limitless said:
I can see that logic, but I do like the start being *based* on sunrise. That way, no matter what happens with daylight saving time, we have consistency. Making it X minutes after sunrise, whatever X is, makes more sense than a fixed time. It does mean people need to know when sunrise is, but people already need to know when sunset is. And it is easy to find the sunrise in half a minute on a modern phone.
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In my public land experience, I’ve come to the conclusion many people don’t even know when 9am is. And that should be easy math for everyone.
 
Glock said:
In my public land experience, I’ve come to the conclusion many people don’t even know when 9am is. And that should be easy math for everyone.
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I refuse to believe the average deer hunter is smarter than the average bird hunter. And I say that as a hunter of both, so make of that what you will! :ROFLMAO:
 
Limitless said:
I refuse to believe the average deer hunter is smarter than the average bird hunter.
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That could also be based solely on numbers. Simple math says if you have more participating, you're likely to have more problems too.

Most deer hunting accidents or problems are related to tree stands. Not shooting others like our former vice president.
 
gimruis said:
That could also be based solely on numbers. Simple math says if you have more participating, you're likely to have more problems too.

Most deer hunting accidents or problems are related to tree stands. Not shooting others like our former vice president.
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I meant deer hunters have to know when half an hour before sunrise is. Bird hunters should be able to handle knowing when sunrise is and handle adding 0 or 30 minutes or 1 or 2 hours to it too (depending on what delay after sunrise would be best for the new start time).
 
ND standardized all bird seasons to 30 min before sunrise to sunset.

Move start time to 8AM on time change day so you don’t lose an hour of hunting time all at once. Dark comes really early at the end of December.
 
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