AGFC handled duck regulation process properly

Despite its ham-handed methodology, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission advanced its new regulation for non-resident duck hunters about as well as possible under self-imposed tight time constraints.

The new regulation, which the commission passed Thursday in Fort Smith, will be enacted in the 2019-20 duck season. It will allow non-residents to hunt ducks in wildlife management areas for nine specific days each in the first and third segments of the season, and 12 days in the second segment of the season.

This regulation, if not a more restrictive one, was inevitable because Arkansas duck hunters convinced a majority of commission members that the commission must manage duck hunting on WMAs must proceed in a more orderly, less mercenary fashion.

Limiting non-residents to hunting specific blocks of days is an attempt to chip away at that goal. Whether it will relieve overcrowding — perceived or real — is unknown. If it does not, then even more restrictive regulations might someday follow.

The commission manufactured the urgency by proposing the regulation in August. The commission now approves duck hunting regulations in the springtime, and August was the latest that new regulations could be proposed with a 30-day public comment period.

Voting on the regulation Fort Smith gave the impression that the commission slipped the item onto the aganda in a manner where fewer people would notice. The commission slated five meetings outside of Little Rock in July. It would have been better to have this vote in Little Rock, but it was logistically impossible to relocate Thursday’s meeting. The commission’s meetings air live on YouTube, so anyone can watch them anywhere.

Commissioners did not unanimously agree that the regulation was necessary this year, and voting to delay implementation was a logical compromise.

That was reasonable because many non-resident duck hunters have made plans to come to Arkansas outside of the days that the regulation prescribes. The same situation would have occurred had the commission waited until 2019 to propose the regulation. It would have been enacted in 2019-20 anyway. Passing it now and delaying implementation gives non-residents an entire year to plan ahead.

Duck hunter conflicts in WMAs are too complex to label “overcrowding.” In the 1970s, we believed Bayou Meto WMA was overcrowded if you could hear somebody else shoot. Now it’s not uncommon for somebody else’s shot to rain down on you.

My late father believed that every shot was a skybust, and everyone believes that someone else is shooting at “their” ducks on the swing.

Hunters resent other hunters getting too close, and they resent groups that hog more than their fair share of the woods. They get angry when others motor next to their hole and pitch decoys 20 yards away, and they get mad at nosiy motors.

You’d think that hunters would forge a gentlemanly coexistence, but it doesn’t work that way. Duck hunting on public ground is survival of the fittest. The loudest, boldest, most bellicose and most aggressive establish the environment. The meek retreat and thus address overcrowding in their own way.

For the members of the commission, managing public land dynamics is an abstract exercise. They hunt on places where this kind of stuff doesn’t happen.

You can digest vehicle count data from parking lots and count boats and read hunter surveys, but it is not the same as experiencing it live. Every member of the commission should spend a few days incognito at Bayou Meto, Black River or any other green tree reservoir to understand daily duck hunting life for so many of their constituents.

They might conclude that the situation is ungovernable, and that it works on its own as well as it can.

Regardless, empathy begets wisdom.