We are never gonna be able to manage exact numbers with wildlife. About the most we can accurately see and use is whether people are killing less, more, or about the same over time…….Trends are the only thing of real value and survey numbers only need to be close to see such. Yearly numbers don’t have to be accurate down to the last deer and decimal point to look at trends. That’s why I think that a survey should be plenty good enough…….How hard would it be to have folks take a few question survey when they bought their license each year??
What percentage of hunters are actually buying a license? Even if every single person bought one that was legally required to would it be over 50% if the hunting population? I am seriously asking. Seems I remember a number of around 180,000 license holders last year. Are there 250, 300, 500,000 hunters in Alabama?
Not sure and I am no statistician or engineer, but that I can tell you that would be a very large sample size.
