The meeting

[coueshunter]

By pure definition, I understand Mr. Quimby's point of non-scientific survey. Unfortunately because of this or just a whim of the commission, the animals will be affected along with us, the hunters. Arizona needs the hunters to step up to the plate before laws/judgements are enacted instead of after the fact and disecting "what happened". If reform is necessary within our commission, AZGFD, the processes, or just sound biological management, then we must step up and change things for the betterment of the wildlife and the hunting community. I know of many people who derive their living off the wildlife but are not as active in the process of change, conservation etc. as they probably should be. Currently it seems that many of the most involved are passionate hunters who have an occupation worlds away from the outdoor industry. I truly believe that if we dont get more and more people involved, speaking out at commission meetings, volunteering for various projects & just generally being involved, then our hunting heritage will slowly dwindle. I will get off the soap box, but just want to re-emphasize the importance of getting involved whether someone wants to or not................Allen Taylor..........

[Muley62]

I am Chris Denham, I gave the presentation on behalf of the ADA. I thought I would throw in my .02.

 

There is no such thing as a "scientific survey" that would be an experiment and not a survey. If we had randomly selected 2,000 names, the only people who would have responded would be the ones who cared, just like this survey did. We contact almost over 60,000 of the approx. 80,000 people who applied for deer. That standard goes way beyond random. Response to any survey is voluntary therefore you will always have a margin of error. When professional survey companies sample the general public about the next president they simply ask a person on the other end of the phone if they are registered to vote, will they likely vote and who would the likely vote for. They may talk to 2,000 out of 200,000 people in the US and claim accurucy of 2% and they are generally right on the mark. They have no idea if the person on the other end of the line is telling the truth or not. We could spend $100,000 to do a study of every single person who applied for deer and we would have gotten the same results. We know that, the commission knows that and the department knows that. The commission simply did not aggree with the public. That is their choice, they are obligated to take public input but are not obligated to vote in any way based on that input.

 

I am disappointed that the majority of the commission chose not to treat the results with more respect but I am not surprised. I just wish we could have known this before we spent the time, energy and money to do it. I do think the commission would have been swayed if there had been more than 20 people at the meeting, but we will never know for sure.

[CouesWhitetail]

Bill,

 

The reason we asked for names and birthdates was so we could crosscheck the names against AGFD databases. It's something the dept wanted as well as the ADA. That way we could make sure the people who responded weren't stuffing the ballot box so to speak. Now, I will say that we didn't go through with that step of crosschecking since it didn't seem necessary. There would have to be about 5,000 respondents disqualified to make a difference in the results. I really doubt there was that much lying going on. It would be interesting to find out though.

 

Also, saying the survey is useless because it wasn't randomly designed is like bashing a pick-up truck for not being a cadillac. The survey wasn't designed to be scientific. It was designed to try and present specifics of the proposal accurately and to reach as many hunters as possible to give their opinions. The wording of the questions comes primarily from AGFD so that it would accurately reflect the proposal. And probably at least half of the respondents come directly from AGFD promoting the survey through their mass emails and website. Seems to me the proponents of the proposal did a good job reaching lots of hunters.

 

The survey was designed to reflect the opinions of respondents with regard to how they felt about the proposal. I think it did a good job of that. 6500 hunters spoke up and gave input on the dept's hunt guidelines. No, it wasn't scientific, but the commission takes non-scientfic input all the time. Just look at how they directed the dept to stop the 3 month ban on lion hunting at the commission meeting. A handful of lion hunters stood up to say "please don't stop lion hunting in the summer as is listed in the depts proposal" and the commission directed the dept not to implement that ban. Those few lion hunters that spoke up certainly weren't randomly selected to represent the views of all lion hunters in the state.

 

Amanda

[Muley62]

Mr. Quimby

 

I have just finished reading all of your post on this subject. You really should read the departments survey that launched this whole effort. You would be scratching your head. There was one question about what limits peoples ability to hunt, there was no "control qeustions". Also, 51% of the their respondants stated that overcrowding during hunting season was their biggest barrier to hunting. Yet we just stuffed a bunch more people in the field at the same time. Don't you agree that there is selective reasoning going on here?

 

Also, you sure remember alot from your classes 52 years ago! I hope I can remember what I learned last week let alone the last decade or 5 decades ago.

 

You stated that we promoted this survey to "like minded" hunters. We promoted this survey to the exact same people who took the original survey with the intent of clarifying their opinions.

 

The number of people we sent this survey to is overwelming and far exceeds any scientific standard. The commission simply chose to ignore the results. You can point all the fingers you want to but it doesn't change the fact that commission is not obligated to listen.

 

Chris

[Rembrant]

Again, I applaud the ADA and all of the work that went into the survey.

The problem here is not the survey or the game dept; the problem is the apathy of the sportsmen.

If 60,000 people were contacted to participate in the survey, and 6,500 (the ones who care), actually participated, then 53,500 of the sportsmen that were contacted - DON"T CARE!

That translates to 53,500 sportsmen not caring if the game dept went through with the proposals.

Of course the dept. wanted to implement their own proposals. These numbers aren't gonna change their minds. This is not difficult for me to understand.

The closed mountain lion season should be a wake up call to all sportsmen. The dept will make decisions to appear politically correct. I hate political correctness.

But I tell you what; if 53,500 sportsmen actually cared and joined together as a force (instead of 6500), then the dept would have a clear view of what is correct. But as for now? Looks like nobody cares.

Mike

[CouesWhitetail]

Mike, Allen and Chris,

 

I agree that one of the real problems is apathy. How to get more sportsmen motivated to go to meetings and respond to proposals is a problem that needs to be solved. I don't know the answer, but I know more sportsmen need to get actively involved in the political end of this. If you are like me, you would rather be out glassing for Coues deer or spending time with your family, but it's extremely important that everyone get involved.

 

Amanda

[DesertBull]

Say all you want about the commisioners, but the Game and Fish Department backed the proposals almost word for word even though they got he same feedback from the public. Not only from the survey, but from the public meetings they held throughout the state, emails, phones calls, etc. They could have recommended other alternatives, but they didn't.

 

You will never convince me it wasn't 100% about the money. They did not get the money they were hoping for from trying to increase the archery elk tags, they got told by lawmakers they could not sell more than 10% of the tags to NR, and they would have been forced to sell less tags because of the severe drought and likelyhood of losing alot of habitat this summer to fire. Just a few days before they approved the regs, they planted a sob story in the paper about how much money they were losing due to decreasing tag numbers and drought.

 

Do you really think that raising prices 2x, shortening seasons, moving prime tags to other less desirable times, moving the bear hunting back a month, was about hunter recruitment? Is that how you would attract new customers to your business?

[KGAINES]

I think apathy is a problem, up until a few years ago I didn't know it was such a political process, I didn't know how only a few people attended these meetings to keep what we have or fight for more or less. I think that is more ignorance than apathy, all I thought was there were game biologists that sent in what should be done and that was how hunts were set up, and tags were distributed. I was completely wrong, and I am sure there is a large percent of people that have no idea what the process is and they need to be educated. If there are 80,000 people that put in for deer last year, if we had 1% show up to a meeting and speak we would probably get what we asked for, one lousy percent in person would work better than ten percent writing in. The azgfd and the commission would probably feel really insecure staring into the faces of 800 people and telling them they don't matter, they can look at twenty people and care less that they represent 6,500. I am not saying we should get everything we ask for, if they have scientific data that says something should be a certain way than I would probably agree with them, but they are making changes based on what they feel we want, I would like to have a say in what I want, and every one of you should too. If fifty thousand people can show up for a football game, concert, or a nascar race we should be able to muster 800 to a 1000 for a meeting, and the lasting effects would benifit us way more than a sporting event.

[dave]

Keith,

 

You are RIGHT ON!

 

We all need to know and realize that there are ideas coming forth from this Commission that is contrary to what the hunters in Arizona would want. It is possible that our Department and a couple Commissioners pay a LOT of attention to polls, surveys, etc. around the nation and how others conduct wildlife management. It is possible that a Commissioner could have had previous experience dealing with wildlife issues in another state and want to do some of the similar strategy here. Some of that strategy may be beneficial and some may take us in a direction we don't want to go. So far, the ideas coming forth recently have taken precedence over public comment. There will be many more ideas coming forth. I think this coming December will resemble the same thing we just went through. We as hunters must unite and pull together in mass to make our clear voice known. Studies that have been conducted by some seem to show that the voice of the 100,000 that put in for a deer tag is totally different than the voice of the public they hear. They will create some scientific, random survey to support and push their agenda. Only if the vast majority of sportspeople stand up and show up will they have to back off. The ADLA, DOW & Humane Society will take all of hunting to the ballot box if they ever get enough money to back a ballot initiative.

 

We have a Commissioner that has voted against a Sandhill Crane hunt. He also made several motions at the last Commission meeting to change the mountain lion hunt in conjunction with the wishes of the Animal Defense League of Arizona. He is also the one that has spearheaded more opportunity for hunters. He also spoke out of place reprimanding a hunter that was just stating facts. It would be a worthy cause for the hunting community to show up in force and voice their opinions. Arizona does not get a 14 foot snow pack every winter. Arizona may be different than some areas of our country that only support hunter opportunity

[25-06]

A BIG thanks to Amanda, Chris, Kieth and the rest of the hunters and people that put this survey together and showed up for the meeting:) With not as many hunters showing up to the meeting shouldn't give the g&f the o.k. to do as they wish....I just cant not seem to understand what the they are thinking Guess they just dont give a rats butt what the average hunter wants

[KGAINES]

Hey 25-06, the only thing I did in regards to the survey was be one of 6500 that didn't matter. The ADA did all that work in a very short amount of time while working with the azgfd to keep the questions helpful to them as possible.

Dave, which commissioner was voting with the animal defense league of az, I am sorry I wasn't there for that, I am planning on being there from beginning to end next time. It would be real easy for them to shorten the lion season and not lose money, and I am sure that is a big factor, we would all still buy lion tags if it overlaps our deer, elk, or javelina seasons, if it didn't a lot of their 100,000 hunters wouldn't buy tags just to go lion hunting, so the lapse in the lion season would be in the summer when the majority of their 100,000 aren't hunting anything.

[DesertBull]

Is there a procedure for getting a person removed from the Commission?

[dave]

Keith,

 

Bob Hernbrode is the Commissioner. I hope all hunters read the minutes of all the Commission meetings if they were not able to attend. The minutes are posted on the G&F website. It takes about six months for the minutes to get posted. Pretty high-tech stuff. Takes a while to interpret certain things. December will be here before anyone knew what happened. The Sierra Club and the ADL usta video the meetings so they would know what was said and what we look like. Haven't seen their cameras in a while, I guess they have found a better way to conduct their agenda now.

[KGAINES]

He was one of the two I figured, the other I figured was going to vote against anything that Mr. Melton supported since he was reprimanded in front of everybody.

[dave]

DesertBull,

 

I don't think we need to remove anyone from the Commission. The Governor is the one that could do that and now she has appointed three of the standing, which will soon be 4 of the standing Commissioners. God bless our lone Chairman.

 

We can have all this stuff going on and only 40 hunters show up for the biggest meeting of the year. We are getting what we deserve.

 

If 1000 hunters showed up at a Commission meeting which would be only 1/100th of the hunters that apply for deer permits. I believe they would have a voice.

 

The scientific data shows that hunters will not show up and we will have mountain lion hunting banned in Arizona just as it was in Kalifornia.

 

If anything, maybe some Commissioners will wake up the hunters.

 

Talking to your friends and everyone you know about these things will hopefully find some people who care enough to show up and make a difference in our future.