Could we almost do HIP with deer hunting ?

[Musky Buck]

Just a thought and I feel for the retailers that have to HIP us when they have long lines at the check out counter. Could the DNR get any valuable information if they asked each license purchaser of deer like are you for or against baiting ? Maybe just 1 question per season to see what the hunters feel as a whole. Maybe ask us if we would support EAB or other questions, I know the rigamoral(sp) this might add on to getting your license but 1 question a year and we might get a better full state idea rather than a bunch of us taking the either or side of our states deer hunting concerns or issues, just a thought.

[BRULEDRIFTER]

I think they should develope a survey and send it out to all who purchased a licenes for that year.

I think they should do this with all types of hunting and fishing management decisions to get a true feel of what people want and give the stakeholders (us) a little say in the matter!

my $.02 anyway.....

[Musky Buck]

I agree Brule, there it is, a survey that hopefully most would answer honestly.

[jbell1981]

I think they should develope a survey and send it out to all who purchased a licenes for that year.

I think they should do this with all types of hunting and fishing management decisions to get a true feel of what people want and give the stakeholders (us) a little say in the matter!

my $.02 anyway.....

From what I gather response rates to these kinds of surveys are ussually very low. Also, I would guess that there would be a hike in licence cost if they were to do that. Making, sending and reviewing 500,000 surveys could get quite spendy.

I would be in favor of a few questions, similar to hip when I bought the licence.

[BRULEDRIFTER]

I do understand that, however, I think if it were a once every 5 years or so type thing and having questions that may impact our hunting/fishing it may get more people on board to cooperate.

[Bear55]

The DNR makes tons of money off deer licenses, they just choose to spend it on everything else. I don't think its too much to ask to use some of the money to survey the hunters to see what direction we want to go.

[sticknstring]

I get both email & mail surveys from Nebraska and S.D. after every license I've purchased. I always respond or mail them in. It also gives you hunter/harvest information that I find very useful. I've never received a single survey in that state of MN. One mass email after each season would be a good cost effective way to gather hunter responses to changes in regulation and deer harvest. That's not asking for much.

[BRULEDRIFTER]

D'oh! I forgot about emails...... Even better!

Hey, Lou....ya reading this?

[vister]

the only thing i see coming up is if they ask a question like are you for or against baiting, they may take a look at your hunting ground from above to find illegal bait if you answer for it. maybe not though.

would be a good idea though, i mean how many of us have to tell a cashier what our zip code is when buying something about anywhere. one little question doesn't hold up the checkout lines.

[delta dude]

Why do you think they don't have a contact the DNR e-mail site on there web page? They don"t want our input just our license money.

[kr8r.tom]

first off, that makes too much sense and in order for them to implement such an idea they'll have to study it for a 3 year period at a cost of thousands. just think how much it cost for the 2 or 3 questions for the purchase of the smallgame liscense. second, if they don't agree with the result of the questionaire they'll do what they wan't anyway and lie to you about the results just like any other government burocracy. they don't work for what the sportsman want because they're smarter than we are.

[B. Amish]

Uh, they do have a contact us link on their webpage.

[Tipup101]

Growing up on a farm I can tell you this the DNR is more interested in what the farmers are seeing. Because there the guys out there all day and night. For the last three years at least one of us have been stoped by a CO and asked if they could ride along and ask some questions. Mostly about what we've seen for deer and phesants. He will take notes and listen to what you think. As far as the HIP idea I think it is great. I think I can afford one minute of my time to give some helpful info.

[Scott M]

Why do you think they don't have a contact the DNR e-mail site on there web page? They don"t want our input just our license money.

You mean like the "contact us" link with multiple options of emails, telephone numbers, and the Central Office address at the upper right of their HSOforum?

Are we going to change deer hunting to a a participatory democracy and throw the biologists and statisticians out? I'm afraid we wouldn't have much of a deer herd left or hunter satisfaction would be even poorer if things worked that way.

As has been pointed out, there are numerous errors, biases, and flaws in surveys, survey responses, ELS vendors asking questions, etc. I'm all for getting your voice heard, so contact the DNR, fill out the surveys they had online the past two years when the opportunities come around again, join MDHA and let them go to the table for you. If you're unhappy, let them know! Don't just wait for them to ask you, for them to send you a letter, or for them to give you a phone call.

Waterfowl HIP and the setting of regulations for each year's state's hunting dates, seasons, and bags are modeled from HIP, band recoveries, and most heavily, from aerial surveys and more current population estimates. Deer herd population estimates aren't done in the same way.

[lcornice]

D'oh! I forgot about emails...... Even better!

Hey, Lou....ya reading this?

Yea, yea ... about contacting the DNR on the homepage. Upper right hand corner has a link that says 'contact us'. Lower right hand corner says:

Questions?

1-888-MINNDNR

651-296-6157 in metro

[email protected]

So, it's easy and listed twice on the home page.

Regarding the other stuff,

1 - ELS questions. I'm not a fan and I don't think they yield useful information. How many people have been asked about venison donation, HIP waterfowl harvest, or fishing questions? While your local small business agent may do a fantastic job, most licenses are sold at big box retailers and they don't ask the questions. In fact, the UMN did a comparison study on the fishing questions and found that in the majority of cases, the agent just punches 'no'. What they did was send random surveys to fishing license buyers and asked the same questions. They then compared the survey answers with what they allegedly said during the license transaction. Completely different results.

2 - Surveys. I am a HUGE fan of random mail surveys and use them quite often. Recently, we've been surveying early antlerless and special hunt participants as part of the alternative deer management project. We also did a big survey in 2005 looking at regulatory acceptance and we've sent 1,000 surveys a year to regular season hunters to gauge their opinions on issues. The problem is mail surveys are expensive and I always hear is 'I never get a survey'. With 500,000 hunters your individual odds of getting a survey are quite low but that doesn't mean your opinions are reflected. Think about presidential elections with +/- 4% and they only surveyed 800 people It's the law of diminishing returns in that you don't need to survey everyone to gauge opinion - 1,000 people is plenty (look up stratified random sample). As for the Dakota's and annual surveys, remember, they don't have mandatory registration like we do in Minnesota. So, my guess is they surveys hunters every year to gauge harvest and they may ask a few other questions because it's going out anyway (I don't know, I've never seen one of their surveys). Most states are moving away from estimating harvest via surveys and going to phone-in registration (e.g., Iowa). The main problem with mail (or phone) surveys for harvest is they over estimate total harvest because of something called response bias, which is a fancy term for 'hunters lie'. Nobody likes to admit they were unsuccessful so surveys always estimate high and oftentimes need to be corrected down.

3 - Email/phone numbers. They're not collected at the terminal. Certainly email could be useful (although they change) and it would be much quicker and easier to survey hunters if email was available. I'm not sure if the new system will collect that information. Several institutions are going to random surveys delivered online but DNR hasn't done that yet because we don't have emails.

4 - The internet. I've gotten more and more into using the web to get public input information. The 2 issues I can think of right now is the deer goal setting project that was done a couple years ago and the simplification recommendations from last spring. In both cases, there were presentations and a survey on the web for people to fill out. These are typically advertised through DNR news releases, Outdoor News, and other printed media.

HOWEVER, we need to make a distinction between random surveys and public input because the 2 are different. For example, if I ask 1,000 archers if the deer season should be moved to mid-November, 95% will say yes. If I pose the same question to gun-only hunters 70% will say no. The only way to obtain the true percentage (+/- 4%) would be to send a random survey to 1,000 hunters. Some will be archers, some will be gun hunters, and some will do both. Make sense?

[Mark Christianson]

Dang I love it when you come in with facts Lou.

[BRULEDRIFTER]

You're Da Man, Lou! Thanks for responding! Yes, it all makes sense to me!

[Musky Buck]

I just sometimes wonder when you hear about what our states hunters wish list is and then wonder, who are the hunters getting surveyed or who or how do they get that information when I don't know any hunters ever asked the question at hand. I understand there is no perfect system. I just wish we'd get a little more than we shot about 250,000 deer this year. There is no easy answer, but I wish we'd get a little more information somehow. I would like to see a county by county breakdown of deer registrations, maybe it's out there already, I would like to see how other regions of the state fair vs. other counties, maybe I'd like to know too much, but it would be fascinating to me to see how many lets say bowhunt ottertail county vs. wadena county etc. What county do you deer hunt most often ? Stuff like that. Thanks for the input, M.B.

[jbell1981]

Here is just about everything you want to know for the 2007 season. It broken up by permit area, not county however.

There are a bunch of other things to look at under the "maps and stats" heading here

[Black_Bay]

Musky Buck: Half way down this page is the stats you ask for. There are stats back to 2003 on the archive page. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/deer/index.html

Looks like jbell and I were doing the same thing.

[jbell1981]

Just to add to what black bay said, if you go the second archive page (click link at bottom of the first) you can get stats back to 1997