The meetings begin at 6:30 pm except in Sallisaw and Muskogee and those two start at 6pm. Jan 08 @ Durant at the State Fish Hatchery, Lawton at the Public Library, Okmulgee at East Central Electric, and at Muskogee at the college auditorium. Jan 09 at Ada Vo. Tech, Altus at the public library, Broken Bow and the public library, Enid at Central fire station, Oklahoma City at the Dept. of Wildlife Conservation, Tishomingo at the community center, Tulsa at the Alliance and Conference Center building (Tulsa technology center Riverside campus), Sallisaw at Indian Capital Vo-Tech. Of course, the main topic is reducing the number of bucks allowed over all three seasons from 3 to 2.I personally don't think this will have that much impact on the herd, but I'm no deer biologist. I just don't think there are that many hunters in any area harvesting 3 bucks in the first place. Whatever finally happens, I hope they come up with some way to stop the slaughter of the young bucks and help out by encouraging theharvestofdoes and letting the smaller bucks grow up. I've been hunting S.W. Okla since 1974 when I moved here from S.E. Okla. There were few deer in this entire area of the state at that point. In fact, in 1976 there was only 1 deer harvested in the entire county and I shot it with a bow. Now, we're loaded up with deer. I had as many as 15 at one time in front of me during this past rifle season. I passed on many, many bucks, one was probably a 130-135 class 8 point. I want the opportunity to see those BIG BOYS more often. I manage my property by feeding, planting, etc. all year long and then those little bucks walk off and get shot next door. I want more to grow up. At least according to my cameras, my biggest has made it so far but each year some that were going to be great never showed up again after rifle season. They (the wildlife department) is considering making all or part of Beckham, Greer, Harmon, Tillman and Jackson counties a 1 buck/year area experimental zone. If this will help, I'm all for it. I just know that we're going to have to find a way to reduce the numbers of does for this to work. I'm convinced that all of them don't get bred anyway because of the imbalance. I plan on attending the meeting, but my gut tells me that they will do what they want anyway. I've been to too many meetings and part of too many surveys where I feel that this happens. It's just a good way to make people feel like they were a part of the decision and lends some "false" validity to them. Since we have no real way to see what the actual results were, they can tell us that they were anything they wanted and we'll go along with it. That's an awful lot of meetings to try to keep up with. Also, knowing that written comments are accepted if mailed to Attn: Proposed hunting and fishing regulation changes-----Wildlife Department, P.O. Box 53465, Oklahoma City, Ok. 73152, it makes the task impossible for everybody except them. Wejust have to trust them.
That's thebottom line.All I know is I hope they know what they are doing and get on the road to getting this corrected. I'm not getting any younger. I know that for sure. Happy New Year everyone and here's hoping that each of you harvest the largest buck of your life this next season.