bwakeling

I would like to thank you all as well. At the Department, we don't always get everything right (and we can't effectively track every thread on each web site), but our intentions are generally in line with much of the hunting public. No, we don't make everyone happy. But we try to offer opportunities that are biologically defensible and socially diverse. When we see comments regarding an action we biffed, we recognize that much emotion can result from frustration (we are the government and we are here to help). The comments above regarding rulemaking are understandable as well. I've often said it scares me that when the legislature is in session, I'm always worried because they are passing bills that I got along fine without yesterday. But not every change in either statute or rule takes away freedoms or opportunities, some actually provide greater flexibility. So while not everyone likes every change, there are often benefits to these changes. Archers have long wished to have the ability to carry a personal protection handgun when archery hunting, especially in areas deemed less than secure. To clarify our allowance to do so will ultimately require a rule change. Most would consider this a good change. It still won't be legal to take an animal with a handgun during an archery season, but it would clarify archers rights to carry a handgun during an archery hunting season. Anyway, thanks for your positive comments. Let us know when you have questions we may be able to answer to clarify some of the threads that get a little confusing. I'm not certain how often I can get on the web site to check for these discussions, but we'll gladly respond to a direct request. Conservationists ultimately are all on the same side. Brian Wakeling Game Branch Chief

Currently all of our standard rulemaking is on hold because of legislation and executive orders that have placed a moratorium on rulemaking since January 2009 through June 2010. We are not engaged in any rulemaking that is not specific to public health and safety at this time. That is a long-winded way of saying we are not currently considering any changes to the reporting requirements. Brian Wakeling Game Branch Chief Arizona Game and Fish Department

We are genuinely sorry about the mix up, but this year we used a contract vendor to mail out our surveys. The surveys were inadvertently printed with the wrong labels (elk on pronghorn, pronghorn on elk). The vendor has sent new questionnaires to these 6,000 individuals with the correct information (at their expense), and we are sending out a press release to inform everyone of the vendor's mix up. We apologize for the confusion, but we are trying to make it easier for everyone to report. For the first time this year, you can go online and complete the survey. The information is accurately printed (really) on the questionnaire. Brian Wakeling Game Branch Chief Arizona Game and Fish Department

For most big game species, the Department conducts aerial surveys primarily to estimate male to female and young to female ratios. We are still improving survey techniques that are giving us better data on population trend over time as well, but actual population estimates for each unit are difficult to accurately determine. Jim Heffelfinger's book indeed provides an excellent overview of the approach. In some areas with gentle terrain and little vegetation, we may use fixed-wing aircraft to fly grids across the entire unit or representative portions. Grid size is dependent on abundance of wildlife we are surveying. If the wildlife are abundant, we can fly wider grids and still obtain enough observations to get tight confidence intervals on the ratio data we collect. On the other hand, if wildlife are not abundant, then we fly tighter grids to increase the number of observations. We still try to fly grids that are sufficiently wide to avoid recounting the same group. If the terrain is less gentle, we may use helicopters to fly grids. In steep, mountainous terrain, we will fly blocks of habitat that we may contour. In these instances, the wildlife managers select blocks that are "representative" of the wildlife habitat in their unit. We try to fly the same blocks in subsequent years to get a better idea of how wildlife are trending in that unit. Our goal is to standardize approaches to the extent possible We use aerial surveys for bighorn sheep (helicopter blocks), deer (helicopter blocks, helicopter grids, and fixed-wing grids), javelina (helicopter blocks, helicopter grids, and fixed-wing grids), and elk (helicopter blocks, helicopter grids, and fixed-wing grids). We have been using this approach for about 5-6 years for deer and javelina, quite a number of years for bighorn sheep, and we are just beginning to do so for elk. Elk are still primarily surveyed from the ground in many units, but the aerial techniques are working well in quite a few units. The local wildlife manager is generally involved in the survey, but some get green when flying and need to be replaced by someone less susceptible to motion sickness when flying (bouncing) along an uneven landscape and staring out the side window for a couple hours. Buck:doe ratios for deer have been increasing in recent years, and we have changed the season dates and lengths in most units to reduce the number of deer hunters in the field at any one time. Last year statewide buck:doe ratios for mule deer were 27:100 and for white-tailed deer were 30:100. That is the short course on Department aerial wildlife surveys. SDHunter11 and CMC are correct in observing that survey data is not all that goes into a hunt recommendation. The observations and data that a wildlife manager collects over the course of a year plays a large role in the formulation of his final recommendation. We try to avoid going to "where all the deer are" or otherwise attempting to bias our surveys. We try to accurately survey the unit to get the best snapshot of the herd. Brian Wakeling Game Branch Chief