I wanted to comment in the earlier opening day thread, but didn’t want to get off point. I am happy we are seeing a shift back to an earlier opening day, but I feel like more can be done to protect the resource as well as enhance our hunting experience. Let me start by saying I’m generally against more regulations and I’m against government over reach, but something has to be done because we are on a bad road here:
1.) I think that the state should do more for the residents the way some of the other states have done. Why not ban non residents from public land for the first 10 days and only allow a non resident to kill 1 turkey each season? We might lose some revenue over it, but because turkey hunting has become the “in” thing to do, I feel like this will be minimal. Also, if I can’t travel to other states and kill multiple turkeys on public land, why should a hunter from one of those states be able to come here and kill 4?
2.) Ban video cameras on any public land or at the very least tax it to the point that it reduces it.
I’m sure I will come up with more, but these are some of my takeaways from talking to multiple people from multiple states and areas of Alabama. Also, I do not generally hunt public land, so some of this is conjecture.
With the previous administration, this would have made your proposal moot: "We might lose some revenue over it". They weren't going to do anything that might cost the department a dime. I'm hopeful that the new guy isn't going to approach everything this way.
Lots of good info and opinions in this thread. I think it's good for the department to consider the needs of resident hunters when setting seasons. The idea of reciprocal regulations for oos hunters always seemed fair to me.
