Habitat Hunting Access Summit

[guywhofishes]

2024 Habitat and Hunting Access Summit​

Join us for the North Dakota Habitat and Hunting Access Summit Tuesday, December 17 from 4:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. at the Bismarck State College National Energy Center of Excellence (map).

Wildlife and fish require healthy habitats throughout their lifecycles in order to thrive.

Habitat loss across North Dakota is impacting both game and nongame populations.

These impacts trickle down, reducing the number of hunting licenses available and the quality of hunting and fishing experiences, threatening North Dakota's long standing traditions of hunting and fishing.

With 93% of North Dakota's land held in private ownership, access for hunting and fishing has also become a challenge.

The North Dakota Habitat Summit will address both these issues with presentations from state biologists and panel discussions that invite audience participation to look for productive ways forward.

Summit presentations will cover:

• the economic impacts of hunting and fishing in North Dakota,
• habitat changes,
• land access for hunting and fishing,
• the state of wildlife populations in North Dakota, and
• game management.

Attendees are encouraged to submit questions for the panel discussions prior to the summit (questions may be submitted when registering to attend the summit).

gf.nd.gov/habitat-hunting-access-summit

 

[bravo]

Awesome idea and could be the start of something productive.

Fingers crossed it doesn’t get taken over by the usual CWD shouting match.

 

[Fritz the Cat]

https://gf.nd.gov/advisory-board

Scroll down to District 7 Fall Advisory Meeting

Push play and skip to 14:00 minutes.

Director Jeb Williams and I know how to laugh about stuff.

Most meetings the NDGF like to say they do not deficit spend. I didn't get to ask if the federal government deficit spends.

 

[zoops]

Happened to click on your link this evening to the advisory meeting intending to watch a minute or two, ended up watching close to an hour when the discussion shifted to nonresident bird hunting numbers. I know it's a topic that has been hashed to death for years but I sure have heard a lot of talk about the state being flooded by nr this fall and hope this goes somewhere; it's time.

 

[Trip McNeely]

Happened to click on your link this evening to the advisory meeting intending to watch a minute or two, ended up watching close to an hour when the discussion shifted to nonresident bird hunting numbers. I know it's a topic that has been hashed to death for years but I sure have heard a lot of talk about the state being flooded by nr this fall and hope this goes somewhere; it's time.

Double the license cost. Its simple. You wouldn’t need a “cap” that Minnesota would sue over anyhow. Even if sales dropped by half the revenue stays the same. Other states are very “pro-resident” in regards to pricing. If I travel out of state to hunt I understand I’ll have to pay out the ass to do so….

 

[wslayer]

Why limited to 250 people for the meeting ?

 

[BrockW]

Double the license cost. Its simple. You wouldn’t need a “cap” that Minnesota would sue over anyhow. Even if sales dropped by half the revenue stays the same. Other states are very “pro-resident” in regards to pricing. If I travel out of state to hunt I understand I’ll have to pay out the ass to do so….

They could triple the cost and it likely wouldn’t do much. It would just mean the folks buying licenses would be showing up in nicer trucks and have more decoys.

We’ve seen this play out in other states. WY, MT, NV, AZ…no matter how much they charge for a NR license or tag, people will buy them and there are no leftovers. Now many of those same states are wanting to raise resident prices so they can cut or cap NRs. Some Montana residents are trying to do that exact thing. By making NR tags more expensive, you’re just making NR more valuable.

In my opinion, if you want to limit NR hunting of any kind….A cap is the only way. Even that won’t likely solve the problem in totality. Also have to figure out a way to spread out that pressure.

Something to consider, ND tourism and ND commerce dept are spending money advertising for NR to come to ND for our hunting and fishing. I’ve even seen some paid social media advertisements. Gov elect Kelly Armstrong was on the ND game and fish podcast advocating for the exact same thing. Trying to bring NR here for our hunting and fishing. He specifically called out the devils lake area.

 

[BrockW]

Why limited to 250 people for the meeting ?

I believe venue capacity limit.

 

[Kurtr]

Cap sure works good down here. Thanks Grandpa

 

[zoops]

Agree that a cap is the only thing that will make a difference (12,000 was mentioned by the one resident in the advisory meeting) as I don't think increasing the license cost a couple hundred bucks is going to deter hardly anyone. But as Brock illustrates with the tourism tweets, so much money is involved that it will be a longgggggggggggggggggg shot.
Hopefully I'm remembering the numbers correctly, I believe they said we are up to around 26000 NR waterfowlers and down to around 17000 Resident.

 

[Eatsleeptrap]

Our state government has been tripping over themselves to bring more people here for both tourism and to live since Ed Schafer. The more people here, the more of other peoples money they can spend. Like a bunch of heroine addicts, but with other peoples dollars.

 

[ndlongshot]

New group, North Dakota waterfowler and agriculture association looking to reduce NR numbers.

www.ndwaa.com

 

[Duckslayer100]

Go back to the way it was where early honker season counted against their two weeks. That would get a bunch to stay home or at least cut their trips short.

 

[Trip McNeely]

Ok then double the license cost and cap it at 14000k. Now everyone wins. Number is cut in almost half. Game and fish still gets revenue as before. Furthermore we need to divide the state into districts where pressure can be spread out relative to opportunities. 6 districts. NE, NC, NW, SE, SC, SW. the 14k Lisences can be divided out to those districts based on traditional waterfowl density and public lands. Also count any early season goose hunting towards that cap.

 

[zoops]

Ok then double the license cost and cap it at 14000k. Now everyone wins. Number is cut in almost half. Game and fish still gets revenue as before. Furthermore we need to divide the state into districts where pressure can be spread out relative to opportunities. 6 districts. NE, NC, NW, SE, SC, SW. the 14k Lisences can be divided out to those districts based on traditional waterfowl density and public lands. Also count any early season goose hunting towards that cap.

We can always dream Let the DL zone have a disproportionate number of licenses since their G/O's will put up a fit.

 

[johnr]

Some of these Podunk little dying towns should be pretty thankful come hunting season.
Out west here I have a pretty good buddy that owns and his friend runs a rather large pheasant operation, they make as much doing that as the farm income darn near.
The out of state sportsman are supporting the local gas stations, bars, restaurants, etc.
They hire guides, a couple of house keepers for the lodges, cooks, etc. Its not all negative.

 

[bravo]

Right on zoops. Nelson and Ramsey county would again be up in arms to the legislature claiming that they would be broke out of business without the nonresident waterfowl hunters, so they can be alotted 75% in my opinion.

 

[bravo]

Some of these Podunk little dying towns should be pretty thankful come hunting season.
Out west here I have a pretty good buddy that owns and his friend runs a rather large pheasant operation, they make as much doing that as the farm income darn near.
The out of state sportsman are supporting the local gas stations, bars, restaurants, etc.
They hire guides, a couple of house keepers for the lodges, cooks, etc. Its not all negative.

Put the screws to residents so outfitters that cater to mostly non residents and lock up big tracts or land? Kind of perpetuates more of the same. I wouldn’t feel too bad if numbers were capped and your buddy’s side hustle was a little less lucrative. Get the locals who hung it up since they don’t want to pay $200 a gun for 3 birds out there burning gas again. Ask the bartender in Wing how he feels about there being no locals in the bar from September to December and if hunting season keeps him afloat. Ask the business owners in Ashley or Streeter how they feel about guides or absentee out of staters pricing them out of lots and land so they can hunt for 2 weeks.

It’s a gray area for sure but something needs to be done.

 

[johnr]

Put the screws to residents so outfitters that cater to mostly non residents and lock up big tracts or land? Kind of perpetuates more of the same. I wouldn’t feel too bad if numbers were capped and your buddy’s side hustle was a little less lucrative. Get the locals who hung it up since they don’t want to pay $200 a gun for 3 birds out there burning gas again. Ask the bartender in Wing how he feels about there being no locals in the bar from September to December and if hunting season keeps him afloat. Ask the business owners in Ashley or Streeter how they feel about guides or absentee out of staters pricing them out of lots and land so they can hunt for 2 weeks.

It’s a gray area for sure but something needs to be done.

The little town of Regent has places that are only open during the pheasant season, without it they would be closed forever.
Yes it stinks that the locals cannot support it on their own.
Even here in Dickinson, we have lost a lot of local business, because the locals go to Bismarck to shop, Bismarck people go to Fargo, Fagro goes to the Cities, Those queers go to Chicago, Chicago goes to New York....

Its like selling your car, but only letting the neighbors look at it and offer you half what you can get for it, because fuck them fellas from down the street.

 

[savage270]

The solution is simple. For both waterfowl and pheasants, cap the nonresident licenses at the number of resident licenses sold the previous year. That way if land access prevents more residents from buying a license, the people locking up or buying so much land to cater to nonresidents will be fighting over fewer customers every year. If they want more customers, they will have to simultaneously provide more opportunities to the people who live here.