RELOADED EP231 - Waterfowl Harvest Management Series, Part 14: Sex-specific Regs and Farewell to the Point System

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Dr. Jim Dubovsky, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service central flyway representative, rejoins the DU Podcast to provide nostalgic reflection as he share insights on the role of sex-specific duck regulations, how they were formulated under the point system, and what determined if a bird was worth 10, 15, or 35 points. Despite being conceptually sound, the point system was withdrawn in 1994, largely due to challenges with the practicality of its implementation and enforcement.


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Mike Brasher

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What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?

Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.

VO: 00:03

Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast RELOADED, where we bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In RELOADED, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.

Mike Brasher: 00:35

On this episode, we are gonna be rejoined by doctor Jim Dubovsky with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He's a Central Flyway representative, and he he works out of the Division of Migratory Bird Management. Jim's gonna be rejoining us to continue our discussion about the point system as one of the important pieces of our history of waterfowl harvest management, one of those rather unique and often talked about harvest management or regulatory alternatives that some of our listeners will be familiar with. And so we're going to get back into a discussion of it. Jim, welcome back to the podcast.

Jim Dubovsky: 01:07

Thank you, Mike. Glad to be back.

Mike Brasher: 01:09

Now, we left off the previous episode having introduced some of the challenges to the point system. We talked briefly also about hunter attitudes towards the point system. We're gonna get back into that here in a moment and talk about some of the manager attitudes and even law enforcement attitudes towards the point system. But I wanna I wanna kinda back up and talk about something that that we we also said we were gonna discuss here at the very beginning, which relates to the sex specific nature of the point assigned to some species. Perhaps to start with, and this would also be something that's useful for those people that may not be familiar with the point system.

Mike Brasher: 01:50

Give us some examples. These varied through the years, think you'll tell us, but just give us some examples of the points assigned to different species and sex combinations.

Jim Dubovsky: 02:02

Sure. Well, the the more abundant species, at least as as indexed by our May breeding population survey, tended to have lower point values. So species like teal and at the time pintails and other species that were fairly abundant and where we had indications where the pressure harvest pressure on those species were fairly low. They had low point values, typically 10 points. For the species where we had more concern about them, we had higher points.

Jim Dubovsky: 02:42

And in particular for a number of years we had a lot of concern about the status of Camusbacks and Redheads. So those birds were given either 90 or 100 points in many years of the point system. And then you had some species that kind of fell in the middle and mallards were one of those where typically the males were anywhere from 25 to 35 points and females may range from 70 to 90 points. So the points were based generally on abundance and relative harvest pressure amongst the different species and sexes of birds.

Mike Brasher: 03:25

Jim, one of the questions that we occasionally get or that one of the comments that we often hear, whether it be within Ducks Unlimited or whether we're when we're hunting with some of our friends and colleagues out in the field relates to this idea of the sex specific restrictions. Of course, under our conventional bag system that we have right now, at least in the Mississippi Flyway, you can shoot four mallards, no more than two of which can be hens. So we have that kind of sex specific differentiation. And people oftentimes wonder what do we really know about the effect of this differential harvest by sex? Or maybe I should say, what do we know about the effect on the population of whether we harvest drakes versus hens?

Mike Brasher: 04:15

And so this is really born out in the way some of the points were assigned under the point system as you talked about with hens being, mean, the the same trend occurs where we're more restrictive on the hens than the drakes if there is a sex specific regulation. And I know some of why that would be seems fairly obvious, but the point system gives us a unique opportunity to kinda talk about this. What what do we know, Jim, as waterfowl managers about the effect of drake harvest versus hen harvest? And then how how do we translate that to any of the sex specific regulations that we have nowadays or historically?

Jim Dubovsky: 04:55

Yeah. A very good question. And a lot of it I think is rooted more in culture than in real hard data for any type of harvested animal that you have out there. As you know, if you hunt other species, we have things like for pheasant seasons in at least portions of the Midwest when I was growing up, you couldn't shoot females at all. You could only shoot the roosters.

Jim Dubovsky: 05:23

We also had doe restrictions for deer. You can only shoot bucks in many cases for many years. So I think there's this culture of not shooting the females because we all know that although you need to have males in order to produce young, they obviously perform an important function. It's really the females that produce and tend to the young and produce the birds that are going to be in the fall flight in the case of ducks. So there's always been this culture of directing harvest pressure away from the females with the expectation that if you have more hens out there, you should expect more birds to be produced in the fall and therefore more birds available to be hunted.

Jim Dubovsky: 06:19

In terms of the actual data, that gets a little more complicated. We do know that harvest pressure, at least from our banding data, suggests that harvest pressure on females generally is lower than it is on males. But we also know that females undergo a lot more mortality during the summer compared to males. So I think that a lot of this is based in culture but it does have some real world likelihood that it's doing good things for birds. Now in terms of what is the appropriate ratio that should be considered for males to females in the bag, we just don't have that fine of data to determine specifically what that ratio should be.

Jim Dubovsky: 07:14

So we tend to be along with the flyways. Fact, the flyways have been one of the big proponents of this, particularly in the middle two flyways of of trying to keep the pressure off of females out there and and direct them direct the pressure as much as we can toward the males.

Mike Brasher: 07:31

Yeah. There have been a variety of initiatives, even volunteer initiatives through the years to to encourage the harvest of drakes only. And I I think most hunters would agree that a strap of of of brightly plumed drakes is much more attractive than that of a, you know, a mix of brown and amongst all that. So that's yet another reason to try to why a lot of people will will shoot for the Drakes only. And so I just wanted to talk with you about that a little bit, and thank you I thank you for bringing some some more scientific insight into that particular question.

Mike Brasher: 08:06

I think we'll have an opportunity later on to talk with Doctor. Scott Boomer about that as well in terms of what we may have learned in recent years from any other aspect of adaptive harvest management. But I wanted to touch on that with you because it is relevant to the point system. And, you know, we I I think out right now is the the January issue of the Ducks Unlimited magazine, and we have an article in there related to pintails in which we we begin that article with a little vignette down on the on the coast of Texas where we talk about pintails at that time, drake pintails being a 10 bird, and I think the hens were, like, 20 birds at at that time or somewhere in that range. And and so, of course, one takeaway from that is it's it's probably hard for a lot of people to even imagine that right now that you could harvest 10 draped pintails back at back back in the day where now, you know, their restriction is much greater than that.

Mike Brasher: 09:01

So but with regard to the point assigned to these, whether it be individual's species or the individual's sex within a species, I wanna kinda transition back here to a discussion of the point system and some of the challenges with it or other other aspects of it. Did we have really solid information upon which to base those differential point values, whether within a species or across species? What did that look like back in the day, Jim?

Jim Dubovsky: 09:30

Well, remember, at the time that a lot of this was starting up in the in the early to mid sixties, we had the May Waterfowl Survey that started officially in 1955. We had the wind collection information that started in the early 60s and we had band recovery information, but we really didn't have the tools like we do today to analyze the data the way we currently do. And so in looking through all the documents that I reviewed for this, I couldn't find anything that really did a lot of analyses to determine what the most appropriate point values were. And in fact, that was one of the criticisms of the point system at the time was that we really didn't have a lot of good information for the vast majority of the species out there. We had pretty good abundance information, but that was about it.

Jim Dubovsky: 10:32

So I have a feeling that probably a lot of the point levels that were given to the individual species and sexes were based primarily on the abundance of the birds. And as we talked about earlier, lower limits on some females in order to try and protect some of those more important species in the harvest. So that would be my thought is that the it was primarily the abundance from the May survey that was driving that. And if you look at the point values that were out there, generally the more abundant birds tended to have lower point values.

Mike Brasher: 11:12

Jim, you shared a file with me leading up to this recording, and and I didn't realize the degree of variation that occurred among some of the points assigned to species. I mean, we're talking like 10 points, then some were 15 points, and maybe 35 points, and 30 points. And so you have all the basically increments of five points. And so, yeah, it seems like I mean, even today, I don't know that we would have the information to justify from a scientific perspective. Well, this species is worth 35 points and the other is worth 25 points or 30 points.

Mike Brasher: 11:43

So just your answer there does not surprise me, and so I just wanted to touch on that. I want to shift back to a discussion of sort of attitudes towards the point system. We've talked about hunter attitudes already, but but there are other constituents involved in this effort that whose whose opinions and attitudes really matter a lot, those being the the managers, the harvest managers, as well as law enforcement. So share with us what you can about what we know from either the the data collected or any of our conversations that we had back in the day with regard to manager attitudes as well as law enforcement attitudes.

Jim Dubovsky: 12:20

Well, as far as manager attitudes, remember that as we discussed that there was a real interest in trying to provide as much opportunity to the hunters as was possible while still sustaining the duck populations at certain levels. Again, that is the Fish and Wildlife Service's primary responsibility, sustainable populations of birds over time. But within that limit, trying to provide for as much opportunity as we can. So the managers generally like the point system because they felt that we had enough information to allow that additional opportunity without jeopardizing any of the species out there. And if we could make the hunters happy, then we would continue to get the support of hunters and other groups out there that we were doing the right thing.

Jim Dubovsky: 13:13

So I think largely the administrators tended to support the point system as well. The only group really that had a strong opposition to the point system was the law enforcement folks. And it was largely due to their enforcement concerns. Essentially, couldn't they felt that they couldn't never make any citations on overbagging stick where reordering occurred because they simply didn't have the information or weren't confident enough in their information to be able to make those cases stick. Essentially, they felt that that the regulations and lawfulness was at the mercy of the ethics of individual hunters and they were concerned about that.

Jim Dubovsky: 14:06

And they felt that any regulation that required an order of take aspect to it couldn't be enforced. Essentially, they would have to have an individual in the blind with the hunter to be able to be certain of the order and the species of birds that were taken. Outside of that, there just wasn't enough good information to make any cases stick. And some of the courts who wrote in about the point system at the time said that that would be a major problem for them as well in terms of adjudicating cases.

Mike Brasher: 14:48

I found it interesting in my reading leading up to this discussion that somewhere in one publication, it might have been actually the one that you co authored, some of the surveys of hunters revealed a dislike for the point system by hunters because of the belief that it encouraged violations, which is an interesting thing and and sort of hunters sort of policing ourselves from from some sort of a moral perspective there. So I wasn't aware of that and not really considered that, but I found that interesting. And so what also, I I guess, squarely within some of these same concerns is maybe an issue of wanton waste with regard to the point system. Did that come up in some of the conversations or maybe some of the concerns?

Jim Dubovsky: 15:33

Yes. It was. And there wasn't a lot of indications from fieldwork that it was it was a huge problem. But certainly, there were observations made out there where hunters would shoot a number of birds and then only retrieve certain ones of them and they typically retrieve the lower point birds so that they could have a higher bag limit back in the blind. Part of the real problem with this too is that in a lot of hunting situations, number one, you have multiple hunters in a blind.

Jim Dubovsky: 16:10

But also hunters don't really want to go out and retrieve birds if the shooting's good. So what you tend to get in some cases are a number of birds being downed before they're ever gone before they folks go out and retrieve them and bring them back and identify them. So that was another thing that enforcement folks pointed out as well, that the point system relied on retrieve on shooting a bird, retrieving it, identifying it, determining the point value and then continuing on. If you have a number of birds that are down due to a good shooting situation, it could lead to problems. And that's probably where more of the wanton waste occurred, where you had a number of down species.

Jim Dubovsky: 16:58

And if there were some high point ones out there, you just the the hunter may just say, well, it's I'm not gonna pick that one up.

Mike Brasher: 17:05

Moving a bit more into some of the evaluations of the point system. We've kinda touched already here on some of the hunter and previously some of the hunter attitudes towards the point system. There was also some very real need to evaluate the effectiveness of the point system in achieving some of the other objectives, one of which was trying to direct harvest pressure away from high point birds. Those those birds that we thought needed some protection from harvest pressure because either they're a low population size or the hen drake thing, we get into some discussion there about which one is more important for for annual production. So but nevertheless, the objective there, as you talked about previously, was to redirect pressure away from some of those high point birds.

Mike Brasher: 17:50

What did our evaluations tell us in terms of the effectiveness of the point system in achieving that objective?

Jim Dubovsky: 17:56

Well, again, on that aspect, results were kind of mixed. It tended to look like the more restricted studies that were done like in the San Luis Valley and perhaps at Shiawassee and some other areas where the mix of birds was such that the hunters could effectively shoot drakes over hens, that there was some indication that that did occur. However, as you scaled that up to either statewide analyses or even flyway wide analyses, it appeared that those that direction of harvest toward the lower point birds or males didn't it kind of fell apart. There wasn't as strong or in fact no evidence that that direction of harvest pressure occurred.

Mike Brasher: 18:50

We've we also talked a minute ago about sort of hunter attitudes toward towards it, and some of the attitudes were were I guess, came about because of a belief that this point system would would tempt hunters into violations. What did our evaluations tell us with regard to hunter compliance? I think we may have touched on this already, but I just wanna make sure we cover from some of the formal evaluation aspects. What did we learn regarding hunter compliance?

Jim Dubovsky: 19:18

Well, generally, it revolved around reordering, which, as I mentioned, was a very tough case to make. But it did look like there was a large potential potential, at least for reordering in many cases. And in some undercover cases, it appeared that reordering was in fact an issue. Again, some areas, this wasn't a widespread issue, but in some areas, could be. And there was this concern that, yes, then we were promulgating regulations that one provided an incentive through a larger bag to reorder birds.

Jim Dubovsky: 20:02

And the hunters also probably knew that the likelihood of being able to detect that reordering was low. So I think that was a real issue. And again, it did come out in our our enforcement officers' concerns.

VO: 20:24

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Mike Brasher: 20:41

Let's move now to a bit of a wrap up with regard to the point system. This is gonna involve a discussion about when it was no longer offered. Mentioned this at the outset, you provided that date, I believe it was 1994. This And decision wasn't just made off the cuff. My understanding is there was an evaluation task force that was brought into existence to look critically at what we were learning with regard to the point system.

Mike Brasher: 21:08

Can you talk a bit about that? Who what was the makeup of that task force in terms of federal state representatives and kinda how what did that task force and its its work look like?

Jim Dubovsky: 21:19

Yeah. There was a task force that was put together in the in the early nineteen seventies, and and the the composition of that task force was representative from each of the three flyaways experimenting with the point system and a representative from law enforcement, a representative from an outside conservation agency. In this case, I believe it was the Wildlife Management Institute. And then research representatives from the Bureau of Sport Fish and Wildlife, which was the precursor of course to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The individuals that they selected came from the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center.

Jim Dubovsky: 22:01

So yeah, that group got together several times, looked over all the information that was available up to that point. Again, this was the early seventies. So only a few years of information and from a few sites really. And they came up with a number of recommendations to move forward with the point system. And I think largely they were not strongly followed up on, But those included that at the time they felt that there really wasn't enough information to move forward at a flyway level with the point system.

Jim Dubovsky: 22:40

Most of the information was from rather small geographic areas or from individual states, a few individual states. As we touched on, felt that we needed much better data on which to base decisions on in terms of what the point values were. They also because of the reordering problem and the potential for impacts on some stocks of birds that we couldn't measure, they suggested reducing the discrepancy between what could be allowed under the point system and the conventional bag. And so make the point system maximum bag limit around six birds instead of 10 like it was. And they also said that based on what they had at that point that they probably should come up with some criteria where the point system should be implemented and in other cases where those criteria wouldn't be met or couldn't be met, that maybe we shouldn't use a point system in those areas.

Jim Dubovsky: 23:47

Because there was some information that it did work well in some cases. The trick then was to find out, okay, why is it working in those areas and maybe not in others? And can we come up with some criteria to better to use that tool more effectively in certain cases?

Mike Brasher: 24:06

Jim, something just occurred to me as we're talking about this. And I'm thinking back about our conversations with Ken Babcock and Dale Humberg. We talked with Ken and Dale about stabilized regulations. And stabilized regulations experiment overlapped the availability of the point system, if I'm getting my dates correct. Am I correct that stabilized regulations overlapped point system availability?

Mike Brasher: 24:31

And within that stabilized regs experiment, are we talking about having stabilized the points across years of that experiment? Is that what was happening or am I getting my dates off?

Jim Dubovsky: 24:43

You're correct in that the the stabilized regulations period did overlap with the years that the point system was available. And I think at least up until 1987, they tried to keep the point values fairly stable through that timeframe to test the hypotheses that they set out at the time. As 1988 rolled around and the drought continued to intensify, I think there was more pressure and perhaps some modification of point values to further protect some stocks because there was concern given habitat conditions out there that even with the or if we continued even with the levels of bag limits that we had, it might be detrimental to the population. I'd have to go back and check that specifically. But I think that's the case.

Mike Brasher: 25:37

Thank you for that, Jim. There's a lot of moving parts in the harvest management discussion. I've learned a lot through through these series of episodes. I hope our listeners have too. And and so the more I learn, the more I'm kinda piecing together these dates and the different things that were going on.

Mike Brasher: 25:51

So I just wanted to kinda connect the dots between those things that we've talked about, sort of stabilized regulations and how it would have interacted with some of the decisions in the point system. So thank you for that. Let's move on here before we close out and talk about the final years of the point system. We've referenced previously that it was discontinued in 1990 I'm sorry, 1988 and then reoffered in in a various form, but then formally closed out or or withdrawn as an option in 1994, incidentally, which was immediately prior to Adaptive Harvest Management coming on the scene. What there I think there was might have been a review in the early nineties with regard to the point system that might have led to some of those changes and decisions.

Mike Brasher: 26:31

Can you talk about that bit, Jim?

Jim Dubovsky: 26:32

Sure. And and you're exactly right. Based on that task force report that came out in the seventies, obviously, there was there was still a lot of interest in the point system and a lot of people interested in looking at different ways to evaluate the point system. So over the the years after the nineteen seventies, as more information became available and and new tools and techniques for analyzing data became available, various entities looked at the data to try to better ferret out what the true impacts of the of the point system on duck populations and and harvest were. And it wasn't only the the states and the flyaways and the the Fish and Wildlife Service who were looking at this.

Jim Dubovsky: 27:20

There were also university researchers that got their hands on harvest and band recovery information and also tried to analyze it independently, if you will. So a number of those investigations went on during those years post 1970 up through 1988 when you mentioned that the the service suspended the point system out of concern for the low DUP populations that we saw on the prairies. So with that suspension then, the service undertook a review of all the different special regulations that we had at the time, including the point system, special teal seasons, special scoff seasons, bonus bird seasons, and so on. And so they took really took a a critical look at all the information that was available up through that time. And in 1990, they came out with the results of that review, and the service stated that they felt there was a lack of evidence that it was achieving the objectives that were set.

Jim Dubovsky: 28:29

And that combined with the the problems with enforcement kind of led the the Fish and Wildlife Service then to say that we we can continue with the point system, but because of these concerns, it shouldn't be any more liberal than the conventional bag limit, which, of course, was was one of the advantages of the point system was it did offer a potentially a larger bag limit than the than the conventional bag limit. So there was there was that review, and that policy then stayed and those regulations stayed in place from 1990 through 1993, at which time the Flyways asked the service to conduct another review of its policy with any additional information that may have come forward since the the review in 1990. And the the service did so, honored that request from the Flyways, and they decided to uphold their earlier decision made in 1990 to to effectively eliminate the point system as a as a regulation that could be considered by the flyways. And they they specifically mentioned a few items in that last report that really didn't change from the 1990 report, but I'll read them off here kind of annotated. There was little evidence that the point system was more effective than the conventional bag limit system at redirecting harvest.

Jim Dubovsky: 30:08

Not that there wasn't some evidence, but there there wasn't overwhelming evidence that it was a better system at re redirecting harvest. There were major problems remaining with determining what the appropriate species and sex specific point values for the birds were. If there were any species closures like we had periodically for canvasbacks and and maybe a couple other critters out there, it eliminated the bird in hand identification advantage of the point system. And then finally, that reordering remained a problem and and essentially was unenforceable. So the the service decided at that point that we should discontinue offering that as a bag limit option.

Jim Dubovsky: 30:54

And they but they did acknowledge that most of the problems were in application, not in the concept of the point system. It's it's a very good concept in terms of of allowing hunters maximum opportunity while still maintaining good populations of birds. But there were certain aspects of it that that they felt were detrimental enough that it we shouldn't offer it anymore.

Mike Brasher: 31:20

You know, Jim, I I've there's a certain bit of nostalgia for me that comes along with the discussion of the point system. It certainly was a creative system, a valuable system in concept as you talked about there, but from a nostalgic standpoint, discussions around it take me back to my childhood, recalling my dad talk about the points and and he knew how many I I just I remembered him needing to know the importance of birds and the different points assigned to them. So I don't know how many other people, how many other listeners out there kind of feel a bit of nostalgia in the point system conversation, but it certainly is that way for me. And I've appreciated the conversation here to the opportunity to talk about it and learn a bit more about it. I never really looked into much of the history of the point system.

Mike Brasher: 32:12

So appreciate your insight on this, Jim. And and yeah, it's it's another example of the way that we think about harvest regulations, the different systems that we can put in place to to manage that. And then, of course, the application of science to evaluate the effectiveness and and appropriateness of those regulations. I wanna give you, Jim, an opportunity here in closing to offer any thoughts about the point system. Where does it stand in terms of sort of being an example of the way we learn, the way we try different things and our application of science?

Mike Brasher: 32:47

When you think about it, what comes to mind and what are we what are some of the lasting lessons from the point system?

Jim Dubovsky: 32:54

Well, thanks, Mike. And I guess I'd like to, if I could, expand a little bit beyond just the point system and talk more about how we approach new regulatory alternatives or packages or or opportunities as the the Fish and Wildlife Service and as the management community. And and I'll I'll preface this with the that these are my thoughts. They're I'm not espousing the the feelings necessarily of the the division of migratory bird management who I work for the service. But over the years, like you mentioned, I'm kinda long in the tooth, and I I've had a a number of of good discussions about this with with peers and colleagues.

Jim Dubovsky: 33:39

And so these are are kind of my thoughts on on how we should approach these types of investigations in general. And I guess my feeling is that the the past evaluations of a number number of issues, including the point system, but not exclusive to that. There's many other things like zones and splits and framework date extensions and additive and compensatory hunting mortality generally had been lacking in statistical rigor, and and a lot at least a lot of the early work was was fairly simplistic analyses and and in some cases, not a not a good experimental design. And I'm not being over or I'm not trying to be critical of the the people who did that work or questioning their abilities. The bottom line is we're looking at things now in the twenty first century and all the tools that we have, and we're looking back fifty to sixty years on some of these things.

Jim Dubovsky: 34:35

And those a lot of those things just weren't available. And remember, we were just beginning to build up a time series of of data on on waterfowl populations. And, certainly, we didn't have the computers and statistical programs and and so on that we have now back in in the day. Also, I I think that there was a feeling that probably not as much statistical rigor was needed because we weren't in the spotlight as much as we are probably with contemporary society. There's a lot more people looking at us and and are demanding a lot more scrutiny in our decisions than perhaps occurred back then.

Jim Dubovsky: 35:16

And we also have to recognize that that there are social constraints whenever we wanna try something new. And by that, I mean that in order to truly test something and have a good experiment and experimental design, as you know, we have to have treatments and controls. And to do that properly and and get really good inference to make decisions, what that may mean is that we'd have to forego some short term opportunity in harvest to learn as much as we can in a relatively short period of time to make a good decision. And there's just not a lot of appetite out there, at least there hasn't been, to forego that opportunity in order to learn something that will help us manage better in the long run. So experimental true experimental designs, I think, are are difficult to accomplish in the the waterfowl management world because of those reasons.

Jim Dubovsky: 36:19

And then probably the last thing is that these experiments or evaluations are very data hungry, generally, to get those good results. And as we try to get more refined in how we manage birds, it becomes more costly in terms of resources and time needed to conduct the appropriate experiments. So all these things are are out there today. They've been there with us ever since we started trying to do this management. And we we have a difficult time then providing decision makers with truly definitive results.

Jim Dubovsky: 37:01

And in my career, I've seen it on many issues. We have a lot of different data that we analyze. But in most cases, the data were collected for a different reason and not the specific issue or experiment, if you will, that we that we're we're contemplating. And so the the design isn't good, and, therefore, being able to expand any results that you do get to a larger area or appropriate area can be very difficult. And I guess the last thing that I'll say regarding moving forward on things is that I think to a large extent, we're still working under the idea that maxim that hunters like to maximize their their opportunities out there and perhaps their harvest.

Jim Dubovsky: 37:53

And it's largely why we've got the regulations as complex as we have them today. And I I hope, and I think we're making progress in this front, that we're we're trying to understand better what the hunters really want. Is it the the most number of birds in the bag, or is it the biggest opportunity to see birds, or is it something else? And I think that that is the next critical piece of this puzzle that we need to get so that we can actually craft regulations that are good for the resource and are are what makes the the whole hunting experience the most satisfactory for for hunters. So I I think that's where I'll leave it then, Mike.

Jim Dubovsky: 38:42

If if I wasn't clear on any of that, I'd I'd be glad to, you know, try to to explain myself a little better.

Mike Brasher: 38:48

No. I I think that's great, Jim. I appreciate that information, that insight that that you bring to this. You've certainly been doing this for, well, for a number of years, closing in on the the twilight of your career as we talked about at the very outset. These experiments and new approaches and other aspects of harvest management are definitely fun to think about, to conceive, to imagine, but then you actually shine a light on some of the policy limitations you might say in some in some respect and certainly some social concerns that have to be taken into account also.

Mike Brasher: 39:23

And and all those things combined, as you said, to make to make the actual implementation of some of these some of these great ideas, creative ideas, a bit more challenging than we might initially think they are. So appreciate you sort of shining a light on some of the realities around that. And and again, just out just take a moment here to thank you for your career in this profession, for all the work that you've done, for your your commitment to this resource and and how you've kinda helped us advance the work that you've done. So and thank you for your time here on on this episode, these two episodes, sharing your expertise. It's always fun to me to connect with friends and the fact that you you're a busy person, and you've chose chosen some time out of your schedule to to join us here and share some of this information.

Mike Brasher: 40:06

So thank you very much, Jim, for your career and for your time here on these episodes.

Jim Dubovsky: 40:10

Well, thank you very much, Mike, for the opportunity to to share this information with with all your listeners out there.

Mike Brasher: 40:16

A very special thanks to our guest on today's episode, doctor Jimbo Robinson, the US Fish and Wildlife Service's central flyway representative out of the division of migratory bird management. We appreciate his time and insight on on the point system. It's been a fun conversation. As always, we thank our producer, Clay Baird, for the work he does on these podcasts. And to you, the listener, we thank you for your time, and we thank you for your support, passion, and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.

VO: 40:43

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VO: 41:05

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