ODNR looking for hunter input

The Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources’ ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife is ask­ing Ohio water­fowl hunters to pro­vide input on the tim­ing of the fall water­fowl hunt­ing sea­son and where they pre­fer to hunt in Ohio.

The Ohio Wildlife Coun­cil will estab­lish sea­son dates and other reg­u­la­tions in mid-August after fed­eral guide­lines are estab­lished for the upcom­ing water­fowl sea­son. Biol­o­gists are seek­ing input from Ohio water­fowl hunters through this an online sur­vey so oppor­tu­ni­ties can be closely matched to the pref­er­ences of as many hunters as pos­si­ble within the con­straints of fed­eral guidelines.

The sur­vey is avail­able at wildohio.com until Aug. 1. Hunters will need to have their cus­tomer iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber read­ily avail­able (found on all Ohio hunt­ing and fish­ing licenses) when they take the survey.

Sim­i­lar infor­ma­tion was solicited from Ohio water­fowl hunters last sum­mer and used to set the 2011–2012 hunt­ing sea­son dates within each zone. This year, hunters are also asked to pro­vide input regard­ing poten­tial changes to goose hunt­ing sea­son length and bag lim­its as well as rate last year’s sea­son. The sur­vey only takes a few min­utes and I encour­age every water­fowl hunter to sub­mit their input on when they pre­fer the water­fowl sea­son to be open in our area.

• For the sec­ond year in a row, more than 100 bob­cats have been shown to be liv­ing in Ohio’s south­east­ern coun­ties with the con­fir­ma­tion of 136 sight­ings by state wildlife offi­cials dur­ing 2011, accord­ing to the ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife. The reports show an increase from the 106 ver­i­fied sight­ings in 2010.

The bob­cat is listed as an endan­gered species in Ohio and is pro­tected by state law. Bob­cats once roamed across Ohio dur­ing early set­tle­ment, but as more peo­ple set­tled within the state, their num­bers dimin­ished. By the year 1850, bob­cats no longer lived in Ohio. How­ever, a hand­ful of unver­i­fied sight­ings of the bob­cat in the 1960s announced the intro­duc­tion of the return of the Ohio bob­cat. Since 1970, there have been 691 bob­cat sight­ings in 38 coun­ties ver­i­fied by state wildlife biologists.

The major­ity of wildcat-verified reports for 2011 occurred in Noble County and sur­round­ing coun­ties. The bob­cat may be ver­i­fied with pho­tographs of the ani­mal itself and its tracks; road kill recov­ery and sight­ings by Divi­sion of Wildlife per­son­nel as well as encoun­ters through inci­den­tal trap­pings, which are fol­lowed by the ani­mals being released.

Since bob­cats are typ­i­cally elu­sive and it is rare for peo­ple to see them in the wild, the Divi­sion of Wildlife is using tech­nol­ogy to clar­ify esti­mated pop­u­la­tions of bob­cats. To help them with their research, biol­o­gists use remote cam­eras and scent sta­tions. Wildlife offi­cials also use GPS radio col­lars to track the loca­tion of bob­cats after catch­ing and releas­ing them.

The efforts to learn more about the loca­tions of bob­cats have been sup­ported by the Wildlife Diver­sity and Endan­gered Species Fund. Ohioans give dona­tions to this fund through the state income tax check-off pro­gram and by pur­chas­ing car­di­nal license plates. Peo­ple may also make dona­tions toward this cause online at wildohio.com.

• Don’t for­get that hunters want­ing to par­tic­i­pate in Ohio’s fall con­trolled deer and water­fowl hunts have until July 31 to sub­mit per­mit appli­ca­tions for a ran­dom draw­ing. These spe­cial hunts are held on selected pub­lic areas to pro­vide addi­tional hunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Ohio’s hunt­ing enthusiasts.

Hunters can apply for the con­trolled hunts by com­plet­ing the appli­ca­tion process online using the Wild Ohio Cus­tomer Cen­ter at www.wildohio.com or by call­ing 800-WILDLIFE (945‑3543) and request­ing a mail-in appli­ca­tion. There is a non-refundable appli­ca­tion fee of $3 per hunt.

More spe­cific infor­ma­tion about hunt dates and loca­tions, includ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties ded­i­cated to youth, women and mobility-impaired hunters, can be found at www.wildohio.com.

• The Ohio Water­fowl Asso­ci­a­tion is proud to announce that they will be host­ing the sanc­tioned state duck call­ing cham­pi­onship dur­ing the annual Water­fowl Boot Camp at the Car­di­nal Cen­ter July 21sand 22. The win­ner will rep­re­sent Ohio at the World’s com­pe­ti­tion this fall in Stuttgart, Arkansas. Look for more detailed infor­ma­tion about the Water­fowl Boot Camp in my next column.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing!

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jul 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.