BATON ROUGE — Public comment swayed the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission on Thursday when it went against the state waterfowl study leader’s recommendation for opening day of duck hunting in the Coastal Zone.
The LWFC decided at its regular monthly meeting to set the opening date for Nov. 15, one week later than the date proposed by veteran waterfowl biologist Larry Reynolds, when it tentatively adopted proposed waterfowl hunting season dates, bag limits and shooting hours for 2014-15. The Coastal Zone’s first split is scheduled to be Nov. 15 to Dec. 7.
Nov. 15 is the latest opening day for Coastal Zone waterfowlers in more than two decades and reflects the wishes of dozens of concerned duck hunters.
“I proposed Nov. 8 as the opener and running through Nov. 30,” Reynolds said Friday, the day after the commission meeting.
“They’re the same dates as we had in 1997, 2003 and 2008. They’re the traditional dates but the calendar is as early as it could possibly be. That didn’t resonate well with the people, with the public comment we got. Most of it was for the later season for the Coastal Zone,” he said. “Because the calendar is as early as it is this year, the season getting set back, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a precedent-setting change.”
Reynolds proposed the dates to commissioners at their meeting July 3. During the public comment period that followed, 213 of approximately 265 comments received concerning the Coastal Zone favored a later starting date, he said.
As a result, duck hunting in both the West Zone and the Coastal Zone is scheduled to open Nov. 15. The opening dates for each of the three zones won’t be staggered, as they have been in the past as proposed by Reynolds. The East Zone opens Nov. 22.
However, staggering the openers in the past may have been overrated, he said. He believed duck hunters would relish taking in an opener in one zone, then participating in another and, possibly, a third opener. Or, potentially, catch the back end of the splits in the other zones.
“I used to think it was important, a couple of years ago, by staggering the dates that would give hunters in the state a larger overall season. But what I’ve found in surveys over the years, 80 percent only hunt one zone, so there aren’t a lot of hunter that hunt more than one zone,” he said. “In fact, I get a number of comments every year from people that are angry, that say ‘That sucks. All those guys in the East Zone come over and wreck our season.’ ”
At least one veteran New Iberia duck hunter has taken advantage of staggered opening dates before and believes a biologist’s recommendation should be followed.
“Honestly, I’m the kind of guy that, you know, listens to what the experts have to say. So if Larry Reynolds says this is when you should open it, that’s what I would do. It’s kind of discouraging for him, I imagine,” Armand Schwing said Friday afternoon from Schwing Insurance Agency, where he is vice president.
Schwing, past state chairman for Ducks Unlimited, said, “To me, I just feel like the season ought to be based on science, where it’s going to give us the best chance of success.”
Reynolds took the commission’s action in stride and said going into last week’s meeting, “I didn’t change my recommendation. My job is to inform the commissioners. My job is not to advocate for a result.”
Louisiana will get a 60-day waterfowl hunting season for the 18th consecutive year. The amount is based on the mallard population and the number of Canadian ponds.
“We’ve had pretty high mallard populations for the last 20 years, and pond numbers are about 40 percent above the long-term average,” Reynolds said.
The 59th annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey in the northern U.S. and Canada showed a total duck population estimate of 49.2 million birds, an 8-percent increase over last year and 43 percent above the long-term average, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Also, mallard numbers are up to 10.9 million compared to 10.3 million in 2013 (5-percent increase).
Reynolds said, “We have a good reason to be optimistic. But remember last year … Our hunting wasn’t good intil late in the season. We didn’t have the average numbers in the state until the second week of January.”
The only change in bag limit regulations from last season is the bag limit for canvasbacks, which was two in 2013-14 but has been changed to one in 2014-15.
The LWFC-approved dates won’t be finalized until Sept. 20.
“It has to go through the federal appoval process. Hunters need to take these dates seriously. They’re pretty much permanent,” Reynolds said.
The U.S. F&WS has changed the state’s proposed dates only once, in 1988, in the past 75 years, he said.
Louisiana’s waterfowl study leader and Schwing are ready for the special teal season that is a little more than a month away in the Sportsman’s Paradise. The special teal season is Sept. 13 through Sept. 28.
“Oh, yeah, I’m definitely ready. It can’t get here quick enough,” Schwing said. He hunts ducks mostly in the Forked Island area.
The outlook was so promising before last year’s special teal season that the bag limit was raised from four to six teal, Reynold said.
Most duck hunters would agree the success rate during the last teal hunting season was subpar, which was an unpleasant surprise.
