Numbers are among our most valuable commodities as sportsmen. I don’t necessarily mean how many of us there are these days, but the numbers that we come in contact with. How many deer have you killed this season? How many bucks? How many does? When did you kill them? How many times did you fish for speckled trout? How many did you catch each trip? How many turkeys have you seen since the fourth of July?
Have you flushed any coveys of quail? Did they scare the daylights out of you, or did you hold it together and make a good shot?
Did you kill anything other than wood ducks during the early waterfowl season?
Numbers are literally a sportsman’s biggest friend, because they provide a way for wildlife and fisheries professionals to know who we are, how we’re doing, and what’s going on with the birds, small-game animals and whitetails in our neck of the woods.
My dad spent the better part of 35 years as a statistician for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, doing crop reports. He would send somebody somewhere in Iowa, tell them to walk 10 rows into a cornfield, turn right and pick the ears on the first five plants, and from what the guy brought back, he could predict the nation’s corn yield that year within three percent. That’s simplifying it a bit, but you get the picture.
I have talked with dozens of biologists over the past 20 or so years, and there is a common thread in the things they discuss. A great majority of them wish they’d taken more statistics courses in college — in addition to all the biology and zoology and forestry they cut their teeth on.
That’s because to a wildlife or fisheries manager, numbers mean everything. A crackerjack biologist can stick the harvest numbers from the past 10 deer seasons in a computer, filter them through a statistics program that accounts for variables, and make a ridiculously accurate prediction about what the next season’s harvest is going to look like. That’s how we get bag limits and either-sex days and antler restrictions.
Ditto redfish or speckled trout. Numbers that biologists obtain from fishermen, factored in with fish they sample themselves while in the field in an electroshocking boat or carrying a trammel net, give them a tremendous overview of what the fishery looks like, and whether we really need to be taking home three redfish a day, or how much that 14-inch size minimum on speckled trout is working out.
We can look at a brood survey for wild turkeys and figure that two seasons after a good hatch, there will be a lot of gobblers out there. And two seasons after a poor hatch, you’re going to have to work a lot harder.
Surveys of avid quail and rabbit hunters can give biologists an idea of regions and types of habitat that are still holding Mr. Bobwhite and B’rer Rabbit.
If you have a chance to contribute “good numbers” to the cause, do it. Sign up to be a turkey watcher and count how many poults and hens you see during the summer. If you quail hunt, fill out an avid-hunter booklet.
To wildlife pros, information is gold. And when they get enough information, we get better regulations and more careful management of our natural resources.
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