Harvest Information Program Answering the questions -Warning Long post

Brad Bortner

Brad Bortner

Well-known member
Supporter
A few months back I asked the following questions so you could tell me what the membership here knows about HIP. Thank you to all who responded. You helped me craft some discussion points. I am doing some part time work assisting a few states and USFWS to educate hunters about HIP in order to improve the utility of the data. Hopefully you'll be seeing or hearing more about HIP and its importance over the next year, https://www.calwaterfowl.org/hip/. I have been working on some articles, podcasts and other ways to get information out to hunters and to answer common questions. Here are the questions I asked the members. Harvest data is used directly in setting hunting regulations for mourning doves, a few species of ducks and a couple of populations of geese. But for rails, snipe, gallinules and maybe a population or two of sandhill cranes, it is the primary biological information that managers have about those birds.


Did you buy a license for the 2019-2020 hunting season?
Did you get HIP certified for the 2019-2020 season?
Did you hunt migratory birds during the 2019-2020 season?
Did you buy you license and HIP online, through an app, at an agency office or at a store?
When you bought your license/HIP certification, did you answer the questions about how many ducks, geese, doves, cranes, coots/rails/snipe/gallinules you shot in the 2018-2019 season?
Did the store clerk, license agent, or agency personnel ask you the HIP questions?
Did you register for HIP online, on an app or by phone?
Did you buy get your HIP at the same time as you bought your license?
Do you know why those questions are asked?
Do you know how those answers are used?
Do you believe that your answers help in harvest management to provide hunting opportunity or take away opportunity?
Do you consider yourself knowledgeable about migratory bird hunting surveys or management?
Do you consider yourself knowledgeable about HIP?
Would you like to learn more about HIP?
What would be the best way for you to learn more about HIP?
Do you have anything you'd like to tell me about HIP certification?

HIP is a partnership between hunters, states and USFWS, as in everything else with migratory bird management. In order to understand how hunting seasons, bird populations and hunter effort are related, managers need to understand each part. Getting HIP certified is the first step of the process in understanding how many hunters there are and how many birds they harvest, not the end of the process. Harvest estimation is a 3 part process. This includes getting your HIP certification, then a diary survey and finally the wing survey. HIP registers you as a hunter for those species you report hunting. Then, if USFWS draws your name, you will be asked to keep a diary of the birds you take that year. If you participate in the diary survey one year, you may be asked to participate in the wing survey in subsequent years. Your answers to the HIP questions are NOT used to estimate harvest.

Every migratory bird hunter is required to get a HIP certification. When you get your HIP certification, your name, address and answers to a few questions are collected by the state. The questions you are supposed to be asked by the license clerk help determine how successful you were last year. I say supposed because one significant problem is that license clerks in some stores either answer all the questions or refuse to ask hunters the questions. Your answers help USFWS survey hunters more efficiently than lumping everyone into a single sample. So if no answers are given then you get put in a pool of unsuccessful hunters and are less likely to be surveyed. This also drives up costs. If you are not asked the questions by the license clerk then please tell them that you want your correct answers recorded. If they refuse then ask to see a manager or get online and get your HIP certification through the state's licensing system.

You need HIP certification in each state you hunt and you should answer the questions about your success last year relative to your success in that state. So if you hunted in your home state last year and shot more than 30 ducks you will get put in the pool of very successful hunters for your state. Then if you travel to another state but only harvest a few ducks in that state, your name would be put in a less successful hunter pool for that state. When USFWS pulls samples to ask hunters to keep track of their harvest, you may get samples in one state or another or not at all.


Now that your name is in a sample pool, say not too successful Louisiana duck hunters, you might get be sent a letter by USFWS asking you to keep either a paper or electronic diary of your hunting trips. But in this example, your chance of being asked is probably lower that if you were in the pool of very successful South Carolina rail hunters. I used this to demonstrate why your answers are important. As you can imagine, its more difficult to identify successful rail or snipe hunters than moderately successful duck hunters, so the accuracy of the survey depends on your answers and survey participation.

At the risk of going on too long or simplifying all of the moving parts, I want to everyone to understand that HIP and the harvest surveys are used to provide sustainable hunting opportunity. Accurate harvest estimates are needed and used to show how hunting is compatible with the long-term maintenance of bird populations. I hope hunters will realize that they are integral to successful management, please do your part by accurately answering the questions and participating in the follow up surveys. It may be more important than ever this year because so many of the other surveys have been canceled due to the pandemic.

Here are links to some nice interactive graphics that are based on harvest survey information. I hope you will click the links and explore the uses of harvest data. Make sure you watch the videos on species, age and sex determination from wings. https://fws.gov/harvestsurvey/harvest-vis https://www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/...rveys/MBHActivityHarvest2017-18and2018-19.pdf

Lastly, thank you to all hunters for registering for HIP and participating in the harvest surveys. You are helping manage the resource that you all care about. Your participation in all aspects of migratory gamebird management is vital and a model of conservation success.
 
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Thanks Brad

The calwaterfowl website made the reasoning behind HIP very understandable. So a question in reading through this.

The USFWS site said that harvest surveys have been used for almost 50 years. Has USFWS been collecting wings from hunters for that long or a different kind of harvest survey was used and the wingbee started more recently? I know I participated in sending in wings early on in my waterfowling career so I know that it's been going for at least....good lord I've been duck hunting for 20 years now....anyway, I know the wingbee has been going on at least that long. If HIP started in 1998, and wingbees were conducted prior to then, how did USFWS choose migratory bird hunters to participate in sending in wings?

Dani
 
Brad

I understand the rationale of pooling the more successful respondents to draw from for wing survey and diary participants. That being to collect more wing samples and more harvest data. But to the statistician in me it seems by not going with a completely randomized sample strategy the estimates will be biased to the high side because you purposely left out hunters who kill fewer birds. How do you factor in harvest numbers from the less fortunate/skilled hunters to come up with final harvest estimates? Scale factors based on percentages of people in the very successful, and not so successful groups? That being the case misinformation in the HIP surveys could lead to the opposite problem, underestimating the harvest because if a hunter was highly successful, yet was lumped in the unsuccessful group, you've added his harvest weight in the wrong pool.

Needless to say, I see why the USF&WS is seeking improvements in HIP reporting.

Eric
 
Dani

The Harvest Survey started in 1961. And wing bees (like a sewing bee, when all the biologists in a Flyway way get together to process wings submitted by hunters) have been going on almost as long. If you watch the videos on the bottom of the linked USFWS webpage, you can see how they determine age and sex of most of the species. Prior to implementing HIP in the late 1990s there was no sampling frame for species other than waterfowl. Previously waterfowl hunters might have been surveyed when they bought their duck stamp. The surveys have adapted for changing times and technologies.
 
Eric

Good question. I avoided jumping in too deep on statistical terminology. The questions are the basis for a stratified random survey. Basically, the old adage about most of the ducks are shot by 10 percent of the hunters is true. The stratification helps get a more precise estimate of total harvest. So since most of the ducks are harvested by folks the very successful stratum, the sample that stratum more intensely than the others. Costs are reduced since you don?t sample as many hunters in less successful strata. This leads to one issue if the clerk puts in a 0 for you despite you being a highly successful hunter, if you get sampled from the low success stratum and you report being very successful, your information influences the precision and accuracy.
 
Do you know if woodcock hunters from FL ever get surveyed for wing collection? I can't imagine there are a lot of us, so I don't know if it would be "worth it" money wise or perhaps even information wise to survey FL hunters but it would be fun to participate.
 
Brad

Thanks for the insight into the strategies. I guess one other thought I try and keep in mind when I read about waterfowl population sampling is the ultimate goal of counting, or even estimating, every harvested duck is unrealistic so the numbers reported for an individual season is somewhat of a wild stab. However, by using a methodical approach, repeated annually, you produce numbers that are some representation of the actual harvest. More importantly are comparable year-to-year, and yield trends that are ultimately invaluable to waterfowl population management.

Over the years I've heard plenty of discussion of how the feds estimates are no good. Mostly from hunters who see the world from their own little piece of a swamp and can't conceive their situation isn't the barometer of all ducks. It can't be easy continually trying to convince the public that your approach is far superior than their impressions.

More power to you!

Eric
 
I must be missing the report, but I saw info on them in the third link you posted for the two seasons that were reported on.

For sure my woodcock are shot while quail hunting but with quail populations what they are in FL, I would say that I sometimes harvest a quail when I go woodcock hunting. This past season was the first season where I saw more quail than I did woodcock and I hunt a very intensively managed quail WMA.

So in re-reading your first post I got to thinking...why is it more difficult to identify a very successful rail hunter vs a very successful duck hunter? So I went and looked at the questions on the HIP I am asked on the FL website to see if I could figure out that answer. Why does the survey ask how many ducks, doves and woodcock were bagged but just asking yes/no on coot, snipe, rail and gallinules? Wouldn't it be easier to ask the how many question on coot, snipe, rail and gallinule to identify a very successful rail hunter?
 

Brad,

This may be off topic.

The HIP info, and wing samples, apply to those waterfowlers that are responsible, and adhere to the laws.

Over the years, I've often wondered if the birds killed by poachers, from all parts of North America are taken into consideration?

From what I have seen, and read about, poachers do serious damage on a regular basis.

Are the birds they kill factored into the mix?

It is especially disturbing when I read about such things, and the folks are labeled 'Hunters", not "Poachers".


Best regards
Vince
 
Eric

Excellent points. The object is to develop indices that can be compared over long terms but that have a statistical Basis. It?s population level monitoring. Hunters would probably be amazed at the caliber of the scientists who have developed and designed and operate these surveys. Many of them are world class scientists who are experts in their fields. That science is what keeps our populations healthy and seasons open when attacked.

I?ve had many conversations over the years with hunters about how the information is collected and at what scale it is meaningful. While many hunters evaluate the situation by what they see in front of their blind or maybe even county, very few see things on a state wide or regional or Flyway basis. Lots of ducks or no ducks in front of your one blind can affect your perception of overall duck abundance and the appropriateness of the seasons but not be representative of status on a Flyway of regional basis.

But hey, I?m retired now. I?m just doing what so many other people on this site do, sharing what I have to offer.
 
Dani,

Finding any rail or snipe or gallinule hunters to sample is like looking for needles in haystacks. Finding a successful rail hunter by chance from all of the bird hunters in a state is almost as hard. So if you answer that question indicating you hunt rails is so helpful in identifying you as a rail hunter it doesn?t really add much if you shot 1 or 100. You have been found.
 
Vince

The statistics that are developed measure the overall status of the birds at a population level. So they don?t try to measure the number of birds being taken by poachers directly. They look at all sorts of mortality and estimate survival at a population level. Hunting regulations are set from that survival. Great question.
 
Hey Brad,

Years ago when I used to run the waterfowl harvest surveys for Utah, we used to have a section where we asked about snipe hunts. At least once a year I'd get an angry response from someone that was incensed that the state was wasting their time asking about snipe hunts. Invariably, "snipe hunts" to them were mythical things that they'd encountered in Boy Scout outings.....

Joel
 
I think I went on a few of those snipe hunts back in the day. [angelic]

When I was the USFWS woodcock specialist, I ran the national harvest survey. I'd get hunters reporting shooting woodcock in California. Because 599 woodcock (thats another interesting story) had been released in California I would always send them wing envelopes to see if they had actually harvested any woodcock. Invariably, I would get back dowitchers, yellowlegs, and snipe wings.

But I did once get a valid woodcock wing from Utah. The hunter reported shooting a woodcock in the Uinta Mountains while grouse hunting. There are nice patches of aspen up there so I suppose it is possible.
 
Brad Bortner said:
Vince

The statistics that are developed measure the overall status of the birds at a population level. So they don?t try to measure the number of birds being taken by poachers directly. They look at all sorts of mortality and estimate survival at a population level. Hunting regulations are set from that survival. Great question.
Click to expand...


Brad,

Thank you for your reply.

Best regards
Vince
 
Okay Brad, I gotta know......why the introduction of woodcock to CA? Any indication that there are still some around?
 
Ok Dani, its a interesting story.

Sometime in the 1970's someone thought it might be a good idea to introduce woodcock to the Pacific Flyway. I guess people thought that the alder swamps in the Pacific Northwest looked like good woodcock habitat. They captured 599 woodcock in Louisiana, banded them and transported them to California where they were released. Well 2 of the banded birds were recovered in Michigan and 1 in Anchorage, Alaska. Can you imagine a woodcock flying across the intermountain west and the great plains? Or traveling all the way up the pacific coast to get to Anchorage? Any way that was the last of that experiment.

Since you asked about Florida woodcock hunters. No wings have been submitted from Florida woodcock hunters in the last 2 years and only 678 since the wing survey started in 1963. So if you indicate you are a woodcock hunter in Florida, you will likely be asked to participate in the survey. You could double the sample over the last 50 years.
 
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