A problem with the DNR setting harvest limits is they depend to heavily on strictly mathematics of harvest numbers.
Last spring during a public meeting on deer harvest they took a pounding on the registration system. To many folks don't bother to register anymore, take more deer then allowed, wolves, etc.
Then it turns out the DNR doesn't even do a count for an area except around every 10 years or so.
How can they manage something that they never look at it from the ground or the air?
I'm going to respectfully say that is the most cost effective way for the DNR to do the job because we couldn't afford to have every area of the state counted more often or flown over. Our hunting licenses fund them and can you imagine how much they would cost if we all demanded yearly surveys and paying for pilots, fuel, and more bioligist every year. DNR is one of the few user funded groups and I don't want to pay $100 for a in-state deer tag. They can only survey so much for the budget allowed so we have to wait our turn.
Can you imagine the amount of APR and other tweaking they would do if they had more data?
We have 450K hunters out the shooting about 30% so you have a lot of data being collected.
If you know of people not registering their deer - Call TIP. Clean ourselves up.
I like the new phone registration system - super easy. I wouldn't complain about the MN dnr compared to the WI dnr who uses deer stations only and they don't have the hunt data crunched when the set the next season data.
The old phrase is we don't want to get all the government we pay for, but do we really want to pay for more? And then realize wolves and weather are huge impacts. Would we really have more deer?
Afterall - the MN DnR is letting hunt timber wolves now and they take a lot of heat from the anti's for that and they contnue the hunt. They are doing something!
BTW - I don't work for the DNR. I'm just a tax payer that pays his "user fees" (hunting license) and really doesn't want to see them go up and watch more people quit hunting due to costs...
