While I understand where this is coming from and geared toward why in the hell are they only picking on waterfowl hunters with this shit. Lets put some more regulations on MIGRATORY game birds, that are in the state for 6-8 weeks, but the hell with the upland game and dont get me started on the fish.
Lets break this down a bit farther. A Non-resident can purchase more that one 14 day upland hunting liscence per year. So in theory Joe Blow the retired doctor from Mn can buy a house in any small town and hunt and kill 3 pheasants, partridge, and sharp-tail grouse everyday from the first day of season to the last. In theory hed be able to kill 1000+ upland birds if he was to eat his daily harvest each day, without having to leave the state.
Lets also apply this math the walleyes as well, the same retired guy can buy a year long liscence and fish daily. So if he was to fish 180 days a year, just enough not to lose his primary residency in Mn, catch keep and eat is daily limit of 5 walleye that'd be 900 walleyes removed from our natural resource.
Now lets take into account how long it'd take for that number of upland game and walleyes to be naturally reproduced. But yet we are adding restrictions to the hunting of a migratory bird thats only in the state for a fraction of a year.
While i'm not much of a waterfowl hunter anymore I have some lifelong friends as well as some newly made friends that have all come from waterfowl hunting. Now these guys yearly trip is fucked as I'm smack dab in the middle of a zone and they can only hunt this zone for half of their purchased liscence. Yes they can go hunt another zone but a major part of their trip is getting to spend evenings together and thats now getting cut short as these guys are here to hunt waterfowl 95% of the time.
While I'm all for protecting North Dakota hunting heritage as the NDWAA page is basing their views on, lets pull our heads out of our asses and protect the resources that are bred, born, and raised inside the borders of this great state. So lets apply this logic to the other outdoor activities in the state instead of just one.
As a follow up to the above I do understand the need/want to help control the influx of waterfowl hunters but not limiting liscences and just making the hunters break up their hunts is not the way to do it in my opinion. The fall influx of hunters is vital to some small town businesses and i completely understand not wanting to restrict it too much as it can hurt these locally owned businesses.
To finish off my rant the proposed changes are, in my opinion, complete dumbass-ery and something else would be way more effective at accomplishing the goals they so badly missed. What that sonething else is, im not sure at this point but somewhere we can surely come up with a better idea.
