When you buy your hunting license, you are always asked how many duck, geese, and doves you shot. Why do they not ask you how many deer you harvested? I never understood this.

Most hunting is done on private land. If you purchase a APH there is a survey they send you to fill out.

APH?

Annual Public Hunting permit $48

Oh, ok. I don't hunt on the public land. But wouldn't asking about white tail harvest data be more accurate for knowing how many hunters took game?

It's a federal thing, they ask about migratory birds. If you get a Sand Hill Crane Permit they will send you a letter asking about harvest information also...

Ok. Other states require you to visit game check stations for an Elk or Mule Deer. Is that any different than White Tail? I'm asking because I just don't know, and I'm curious to why not asking about White Tail in TX.

I'm thinking that there are so many types of private hunting that it's hard to keep track of. On public lands there are check stations for whitetail the first few weeks of the season.

Biologists have more reliable ways to gather population data than through hunter self reporting. Regarding HIP self reporting, I think that the answers aren't worth much for a number of reasons. Mostly because hunters don't affect the dove population size as a whole. With Mourning dove for example, hunting has no effect on the total population as we are only removing the surplus population. There are other factors that limit population such as food and disease, so whether dove are hunted at the current level, or not hunted at all, the population would remain the same size. In other words, we are only killing an amount that the population can easily replace back to carrying capacity. For that reason, I don't fully understand why HIP data is collected. I believe that the same logic can be extrapolated to wt deer.

That info is already recorded on the back of your license.

It is, but it is not reported to TPWD or anyone. My question is why wouldn't it be? Would your WT deer harvest info be useful if it were reported when you bought your license?

Not worth the effort for the reasons I stated above. Unless they are screening for something specific like the presence of a disease, there are more reliable and efficient ways to determine population level data.

I don't see how HIP can be accurate. Does anyone really know how many dove they kill every year?

True. I'm guessing I took about 20-30 last year. (I'm not the best shot with a shotgun!)

The reason for check stations in other states could be many. They could be screening for CWD, or attempting to prevent overharvest on public land through monitoring. It could be that the particular species is not as prolific as wt deer are in Texas so the state is worried about harvesting more than the surplus that year. Arkansas for example, requires hunters report when they kill a black bear and once the quota is met, the season ends. TPWD to manages wt deer differently. They do things like limit the harvest of deer in counties with less deer (1 buck counties), or through antler restrictions.

Good question. Maybe they do record it? I've never asked.

No they don't yet they claim to know how many deer are harvested with a made up number.

I do, dove and duck. Keep a running tally. As for the deer, I can only think that info would cause TPWD to lessen the amount of deer we take in the future if they determine people are shooting too much.

Another thread kinda related to this:

http://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/6425583/Re:_TPWD_hunt_harvest_app#Post6425583

I'll bet they have a good ratio of how many deer are typically shot in a given season based on how many licenses were sold. Feathered game would be quite the swag without any input.

Charlie

I think the deer population is so high, they don't really care. Deer are overpopulated in most parts of the state.

High populations, better ways to track populations, non-migratory animal, no federal involvement, etc.

I hunt woodcock. Very few do. The past two years USFWS has asked me to log all my hunts, sent the form, and I have done so. This season they are asking me to send a wing from each bird taken. Sending bags and postage paid mailers to do so. Only way they could have gotten my woodcock hunting info is from the HIP questions.

The questions they ask you regarding migratory birds have nothing to do with actually calculating a harvest estimate. so it doesn't matter if they are spot-on accurate. When they ask how many you shot, your response simply places you into a high, medium, and low harvest classification. Surveys are then sent out and each survey classification has a different percentage. For the low classification, the feds send out a survey to say 1%, then 5% for the medium group, and 10% for the high group (I don't know the actual percentages). It is a similar situation with sandhill cranes. A survey is sent out to a percentage of crane hunters. This is why you can't get the sandhill permit at a regular license vendor anymore (just online, phone, and LE office). Walmart, academy, etc. was artificially inflating the estimated number of crane hunters by just giving everybody a crane permit since it was free (even if they didn't ask for it). The deer harvest estimate is determined through surveys that are mailed out, and public hunting surveys are also mailed out to a those who purchase an APHP. You can't mail surveys to everybody due to the expense, so you just send a percentage.

Cause the Feds only care about migratory birds

Alaska has a requirement similar to what you're asking. If you kill a big game animal you have to complete a harvest report either by mail or online. It asks where you hunted, what and how many you killed, how many days you hunted, etc.. It only took a few minutes so it wasn't bad at all.