Re: dove hunting
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/outdoors/3344374 <br /><br />Getting a handle on doves<br />While Texans by the thousands revel in a new season, scientists ponder the future of one of the continent's most prolific game birds<br />By SHANNON TOMPKINS<br />Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle<br /><br />Mourning doves rank as the most populous and popular game birds in Texas and the rest of the nation.<br /><br />ADVERTISEMENT<br /> <br />The birds' continental population is estimated to be 400 million, with about 40 million of them raised in Texas. That puts mourning doves right at the top of a list of avian species in North America.<br /><br />Doves are hunted by more people than any other game bird 1.5 million to 2 million nationwide and as many as 400,000 in Texas.<br /><br />But those numbers are just estimates "guesstimates," really.<br /><br /><br />Playing catch-up <br />The truth is, doves, dove research and dove management have been shoved into the background during the past few decades so much so that wildlife scientists and managers today face playing catch-up in their efforts to best monitor and manage this most important of game birds. <br /><br />"Doves have been taken for granted for a long time," said Jay Roberson, who heads dove-related programs for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's wildlife division. "We have a lot of questions we need to get answered."<br /><br />The future of dove hunting in Texas and the rest of the nation very well could hinge on those answers.<br /><br />As with all migratory birds, management of doves falls under federal authority.<br /><br />For the past several years, federal migratory bird management officials have voiced concerns about the appropriateness of dove hunting regulations when available data show mourning dove populations in some regions have been on a long, steady, statistically significant decline.<br /><br />Also, the reliability of data on dove harvest and hunter numbers major factors in species management has come under scrutiny.<br /><br />Wildlife managers are now scrambling to address those concerns.<br /><br />Getting an accurate, reliable, scientifically sound population estimate is perhaps the most pressing issue.<br /><br /><br />Checking for coos <br />Currently, dove population estimates depend heavily on a national Mourning Dove Call-count Survey (CCS), a monitoring method developed in the 1930s and implemented in the 1960s as a way of judging annual changes in mourning dove breeding populations. <br /><br />The survey, conducted by state wildlife agency staff, was set up to cover 1,000 randomly selected routes across the nation. Texas has 133 routes spread across the state.<br /><br />Those routes have been the same since the CCS was started.<br /><br />Researchers drive or otherwise travel the transect during dove breeding season, stopping at designated intervals for designated periods and listening for the cooing of mourning doves.<br /><br />The researcher counts the coos at each location and notes the number of doves seen at each stop.<br /><br />The coo-count data are then compared with past surveys along those routes. This produces a graph showing population trends.<br /><br />A graph of the mean number of doves heard per route in the Central Management Unit (14 states, including Texas) shows a steady decline from about 28 doves per route in 1966 to just over 20 in 2005.<br /><br />In some areas of Texas, the decline in doves heard has been just as dramatic. In the state's South Dove Zone, the number of doves heard per survey route has dropped by a third over the past 40 years.<br /><br /><br />Conflicting indicators <br />Confusing the issue, the number of doves seen by researchers along the routes has remained almost stable over the same period, said Roberson. <br /><br />So have dove numbers really declined as the CCS index indicates, has the population stayed about the same as the number of birds seen on those routes would suggest, or is the true population status something else?<br /><br />"Those are the questions we're working right now to answer," Roberson said. "One of the biggest ones issues is: What impact have habitat changes land use and other environmental changes along those routes had on the call-counts?"<br /><br />The agency has this year spent more than $250,000, much of it in federal funds, trying to answer that question.<br /><br />TPWD also is involved in a 30-state effort to improve knowledge of dove harvest and population dynamics through a huge banding program.<br /><br /><br />A leg up on data <br />The most recent major dove banding project wrapped up three decades ago. A new banding project is necessary to give dove managers insight into any changes in harvest rates, percentage of juveniles and adult birds in the harvest, distribution of harvest, dove migration patterns and other information available only through banding. <br /><br />To that end, the program aims to band about 100,000 mourning doves; more than 64,000 were fitted with leg bands during the first two years of the program.<br /><br />State officials have several other mourning dove-related research programs beginning or being planned, Roberson said.<br /><br />Those include projects to determine and monitor annual dove survival and recruitment rates, the impact on dove nest success and recruitment in areas of the Central and South zones, where hunting is allowed in early September, and impact of spent lead shot on doves.<br /><br />Those projects will cost considerable money a large-scale, five-year nesting study for the September hunting impact investigation is estimated to cost about $400,000 a year.<br /><br />The cost of crucial mourning dove research is one of the reasons state officials pushed for creation of a Texas migratory bird hunting stamp to replace the whitewing and waterfowl hunting stamps.<br /><br />More than $1 million of the money generated through sale of the new migratory bird hunting stamp could be used to fund research and management efforts aimed at mourning doves, something not possible under previous stamp fund allocation rules.<br /><br />New funding for increased research and management may come too late to prevent tightening of dove hunting regulations during the next few years.<br /><br />But, managers said, the information gained by the research stands to prevent those changes from being more restrictive than necessary.
and missed a chance on the biggest frog i've ever laid eyes on. it was a true rustyback. i think it could have swallowed a small rabbit if it had a mind to 
