In this episode of NDO Podcast, we visit with Bill Haase, Department wildlife division chief, about hunting regulation changes, habitat and access updates and how the hunting season is shaping up overall for this fall.
Cayla: Welcome to Episode 104 of the NDO podcast. On this episode, we have Bill Haase with us, wildlife division chief
Casey: Yeah. Maybe you'll get that now.
Bill: What's the story with that?
Cayla: Casey was on the news and on the thing below.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: Where? It says who this is. It said wife.
Casey: Wife life chief.
Bill: Wifelife.
Cayla: I don't think Jessica agreed, though.
Casey: I'm no good at that.
Cayla: Yeah. Thanks for being on. We're going to talk about some updates when it comes to habitat and access as our hunting seasons start to open. Some regulation changes that are new this year hunting wise. And then just like the overall outlook for this fall.
Bill: Sounds good.
Cayla: Yeah, I guess we can just start with habitat and access, which we've done a few updates on since the summit. But yeah, just some big things happening. And some new programs. Lots of new acres out there. Yeah. Lots of good things happening in the wildlife division.
Bill: Yeah. I think there's a lot of awareness of the need for more habitat and access, I think, in North Dakota and starting to build a lot of momentum. Something that we've been talking about for a number of years now. And when we get to the unfortunate number of gun deer licenses that we have available and situations like that, I think it starts to get people's attention of what's going on. Yeah. You know, and so, so, yeah. So the Governor's Legacy Soil Health and Habitat program is really a great program. You know, to help kind of turn that tide and find some way to, to work with landowners, find a program that works for them both, both the state being private property. It's really dependent on that working relationship that not only us, but other agencies have to work with those private landowners to provide programs for them that, that work for their operations.
Casey: And that was a unique one. There were a lot of partners, a lot of folks from the ag side of things that help, help build that program, run through the soil conservation districts. And so, but that's not the only program that's out there. I mean, we've got still running our PLOTS program. All the partners still have programs. And so, it's one of those things where as a private landowner now, if you want to put some habitat on the ground, I advise you to start giving some calls to some folks, because we can help you figure out which programs might fit or which partners to get you to.
Bill: Yeah, I agree. There are so many opportunities out there. It's even confusing for me to keep everything straight. And so, if there is a landowner that is interested in some type of habitat improvements, it doesn't have to require access to this legacy program does not necessarily require access either. And so, reach out to our private lands. biologist, the Meadowlark Initiative, your local NRCS offices, soil conservation districts, there's a lot of different folks that do a lot of work, it's not just the Game and Fish Department.
Casey: And a lot of those folks know everybody's programs enough to go, well, ours might not fit, but you might want to talk to these folks or these partners.
Bill: Yeah. So, so legacy program, it was just a pilot this last year, we had OHF grant that that Association of Soil Conservation Districts received, Game and Fish, we were a partner in it, along with many other groups, energy and conservation groups and had $6.5 million budget, and got us about 10,000 acres. And we had way more applications from landowners than we had money available. So quickly this spring, we awarded all those contracts, and a lot of that grass seed is already in the ground, and the rest will be planted here either this fall or next spring and hoping to really expand that program. And I encourage people that are interested in habitat to pay attention this session. There's likely going to be some bills that are looking at getting some permanent funding for this program. And so, if that's something you're interested in be vocal, let people know, let the legislators know how you want your money spent because that's important. There's a lot of different needs out there, as we know, in the state for general fund money or however money, however that would come. And so, this is an interest to you then pay attention.
Cayla: Yeah. And I guess some like you didn’t specifically list them, but like some of the unique things about the legacy program are like shorter contracts that. Crop insurance incentive or risk.
Casey: Risk management credit a credit towards crop insurance.
Bill: Crop insurance credit of $10 an acre.
Cayla: And then that access wasn't required. So I feel like it filled a niche that like didn't already exist in our other big partners suite of programs as well. Yeah.
Bill: So at this point, it's just grass plantings in crop land. That's what it is right now is those in those areas that are for the most part, unproductive properties, it's whatever the landowner wants, but they're not big chunks of land, odd areas around wetlands, really focused grass plantings. But who knows, this could expand into other habitat improvements in the future as well.
Casey: And, and really this started back when we had the habitat summit. You mentioned that earlier, almost two years ago now. But that habitat summit, a couple things came out of there was we need to come up with other programs to deliver habitat and then find a way to fund them. Because, you know, the Game and Fish Department's budget isn't going to fund something that, say, a lot of times it gets compared to CRP. This isn't CRP, but the dollar amount attached to a program like that is gigantic. And so, we're not looking to totally replace that, but we think there's ways that things can be done to benefit it. So yeah, like you're saying, there's going to be some conversations that will be happening about how to fund this program. And then this would be a good time. We're going to pull off another habitat summit this December.
Cayla: Are we?
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: We should meet on that soon.
Bill: Yeah. December 15th.
Cayla: December 15th, we have the date.
Casey: We already did meet once we established the date.
Bill: Mark your calendar December 15th at BSC again.
Casey: And so that'll be I mean, obviously we're limited by space there as far as number of folks that can come but pay attention to that because once that opportunity opens up, it'll be first come, first serve on the number spots.
Bill: Yeah, last year or two years ago, we had over 200 people in attendance. And I would expect we'd have good attendance again this time.
Cayla: Yeah. And then PLOTS wise, the goal is back to a million acres by 2028, right?
Bill: Yep.
Cayla: Yeah. And so, we're sitting at sounded like 925,000 and counting as we roll into fall here.
Bill: Yeah. Our staff have been working really hard to, to keep not only getting more acres, but improving the quality and new grass plantings new quality habitat. And so, every year we lose some PLOTS acres for whatever reason. And so not only are we having to make up for that just to stay equal but then adding more. And so, when Casey was our wildlife division chief and that was our assistant chief three years ago, we set a goal. We were under 800,000 acres in the program, and we set a goal of gaining 40,000 acres a year with at least 6000 acres of new grass. And so, our that was a pretty big challenge to our staff. And they've exceeded that every single year. And this year, again, we'll be exceeding again. And it'll be over 925,000 acres. And yeah, we'll signup new contracts up until about September 1st. But we're pretty much wrapping up for okay. For the year after that. If we sign contracts, then we just have them active the following fall.
Casey: Yeah. Because one of the things we run into is we publish maps and things like that. And so, it's hard you can't just add those acres necessarily in a map. And so, but you start working with landowners now signing them up, getting them ready to plant or whatever they're going to do the next spring. And so, it works out pretty good.
Bill: Yeah. And one other interesting project that we had is, is an OHF grant that we applied for here just this last month. And it took all of the donations that hunters provide to the department. So when you're buying your hunting license, you can choose, if you're unsuccessful, to donate that to the PLOTS program, or you can just choose to donate to the PLOTS program. And in the last two years, we've had over half $1 million donated to the department which is $550,000 is awesome. And so, we want to try to maximize that. And so, we applied for a grant to the Outdoor Heritage Fund with 75% payment by OHF, 25% by the Game and Fish Department, which is all those donation dollars. And in the end, we asked for 1.6 million. They only had so much money available. So they gave us $1 million. And so, we're using roughly $333,000 of those donation dollars on a 3 to 1 match. And using that to gain access. So all of that money will be spent on existing habitat out there to provide access in the PLOTS program.
Casey: Yeah, there's a couple there's a couple other interesting ones that we've worked with too. And one of them was the waterfowl restoration stamp that everybody's got to purchase to hunt ducks and geese in North Dakota. We match that one with some funds to do some wetland enhancements on PLOTS.
Bill: On PLOTS. Yep.
Casey: And then we have another one that we're working on, some of our native forests up in the northeast for forest management stuff. So yeah, there's a lot a lot of habitat things going on, a lot of things in the fire, so to speak.
Bill: Yeah, we are involved in a lot of different OHF grants. Sometimes we're the applicant, usually we're not, you know, the WARP, the wetland one was is done by Ducks Unlimited. And we're a partner in that one. This one was that was us. And Kevin Kading was the one that provided the information, but pretty neat. $35 deer license then turns into $140 into the PLOTS program for access.
Cayla: Cool. Yeah. And then I guess just while we're on access eposting wise headed into this fall. So that's been around for a while now. We've got 15 million acres e-posted. So the deadline to post was July 1st so that we can get all that all those maps together, kind of like Casey said with PLOTS as well. We have about 43.7% of landowners did list a form of contact information, which is still pretty high but first time we've dipped below 50% on that. I don't know, I've never really like as a hunter really looked into, I don't know that I've looked to see if it's listed, I guess, or I wonder if some of that is just like they have relationships with hunters now and so they don't need to just like list it openly to everyone.
Casey: Yeah. Part of it could be that part of it could be the new people that are putting property in never would have anyway.
Cayla: Right, right.
Casey: Never had it on their signs. Never had it. You know.
Bill: It is a nice feature though, you know.
Cayla: Yeah.
Bill: It's difficult especially with everybody having cell phones. Now it is really nice to have that contact information available for those individuals that want to be contacted.
Casey: Well, I think the biggest thing is, it's the, in North Dakota anyway, you know, you have landowners and you have the renters that are actually managing the land for those folks. So like, you can look up the landowner, right, and probably track them down, but it's the renter that actually has.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Whether it's the control over the access or whatever that is. And so, if they're the ones posting it and putting their information in, that's who you contact. And so that's made it pretty nice.
Cayla: And it is tapering a little. So 15 million is up a million from 2025 at 14 million. And then in ‘24 we were at 12 million acres. And when you see that map, it looks like there's nothing left. But I guess that's only 40% of eligible. Electronically posted, obviously, we know there's still a significant portion physically posted.
Bill: Wouldn't it be awesome if we actually knew how much was physically posted before that?
Cayla: I was like, we should hire an intern or whatever, somebody to just do that for like a year just to know.
Bill: One person for a year you probably get like a county done.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: I don't know.
Casey: It's a lot of countryside to cover.
Cayla: What a great well, what an awful but also cool job. There'd be times that'd be cool.
Bill: That'd be fun for about the first day and then be like.
Cayla: Well, until you see like cool stuff or yeah, you, you would personally would know all the unposted acres in the whole…
Bill: I know we do hear that a lot from people anymore. They're just like, I just wish it was only electronically posted then. Then you would know everything.
Cayla: Yep. We also added those two options this year to just post during the deer rifle season. For those people that are only concerned about not allowing deer hunting. And then we also allowed the option to open it after the deer season. So it's posted all the way up until the deer season, and then it opens afterwards. We weren't really sure how that would go, whether people would realize that option be amenable to that option, but fairly small interest, but still meaningful acreage, 148,000 acres are open after deer season and 31,000 acres are posted only during deer season. So as a hunter, that'll just be denoted like in the attribute tables wherever you get your mapping. We talked at length about different ways to denote that and whether it should be a bright color, but then you, you know, draw attention to it. We talked about it turning off and on, but there's just concerns about maps updating and kind of leaving someone high and dry. So it'll be listed.
Casey: So yeah, you'll have to open up your attribute. You have to click on the property that's posted and find it. So those lucky enough to find it you know we'll have that opportunity.
Cayla: Yeah. So percentage wise obviously a really small amount of 15 million, but also 148,000 acres is.
Bill: 180.
Cayla: Yeah. Yeah. Total between the two is a significant acreage.
Bill: Yeah. It didn't cost us anything. Yeah. Something people can easily do.
Casey: And we'd heard from people for a while that I would let people go after deer season or whatever that is. And so.
Cayla: Yeah, we'll kind of see how.
Casey: Those people showed up.
Cayla: Yeah. Other regulation changes for the season. Bill, I'll let you. Yeah. There’s not too many big ones though, really compared to other years, I feel like.
Bill: Yeah. Some of its nonresident stuff. Nonresident waterfowl hunting is still a hot topic for residents and nonresidents. Last year we had a lot of changes. We had a whole podcast just on the nonresident changes. And this year we're keeping things fairly consistent. We're trying to get two years in a row to get some better data. We'll see if things change from last year to this year, or if people's behaviors from a nonresident standpoint, are still hunting in those same areas during the same time periods. We'll follow up again with a survey of our users and learn some more that way as well. One change, though, is the opening day for nonresidents now is two days later, so the first nine days of the waterfowl season will be resident only. So opening day for nonresidents then would be Monday, October 5th.
Casey: So essentially, we're giving the residents two weekends a week. Two weekends.
Bill: Yep. And then on the, another staying on the nonresident theme for the archery deer season the first nine and a half days of the season nonresident archery hunters may not hunt on public lands or PLOTS. So they can hunt on private land where they get permission only.
Cayla: So that's the same thing, too. I didn't put the date on here. That's like a Monday. Is it two weekends? Okay. Yeah.
Bill: Yep. Same thing. So our season opens on Friday at noon. And so, it would go those first two weekends. So nine and a half days of the archery season. So our archery season is really long. It's four months. So there's still ample opportunity for everybody to get out there and enjoy the area. But that is one huge complaint that we've been receiving is just it really does get busy that first week or two of season on those public lands, the badlands, Sheyenne National grasslands, Lonetree, a lot of these wildlife management areas, refuges. So that was a change that was made this year. Let's see, what else do we have? Another change. This is for all hunters going back to the waterfowl side of things. So last year we changed the hunting days for goose hunting all day. Historically you can hunt till 2 pm. And after around November 29th or after Thanksgiving we allowed it to where you could hunt on both weekends and on Wednesday. Last year we added another day, so we added Friday. So we were pretty much left with what, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday only in the late season and those are the days that most people aren't hunting anyways. And so, it is later in the year where honestly, the geese are migrating when we get a bunch of snow or extremely cold weather. And so, we made that change after November 29th to where you can hunt all day for geese and ducks. It's always been that way for ducks, but for geese, you can hunt all day after November 29th. Prior to that, we'll still have that 2 p.m. restriction excluding Saturday and Wednesday.
Cayla: Look at that waterfowl hunters going back on a restriction.
Bill: I mean, our goal is to go is to simplify.
Cayla: Isn't there still like a 1 p.m. 2 p.m. thing or. No.
Casey: Yeah.
Bill: No, no there's not.
Cayla: Okay, okay. There was though, wasn't there?
Bill: There was.
Casey: Daylight savings time let's switch it to two.
Bill: Yeah, we did have that.
Cayla: Oh, man.
Bill: I admit it, our waterfowl regulations are still confusing, and our goal is to try to simplify as much as possible. Some of it's, we have a choice in with state regulations. This is one of our choices as a state. Other things are decided by US Fish and Wildlife Service, but this is one of those that's our choice that we can do and so we made the choice to try to simplify it. Yeah, and it is only 2 pm now. But again, for those users or those listeners, yeah, it was.
Cayla: Just like, we're not shooting geese.
Bill: 1:00 then to 2:00 and then we added three days. And yeah, it was even more confusing than it is now.
Casey: Well, one thing about waterfowl hunters is they're used to paying attention. Yeah. Not only do they have all those rules, but now they have to shoot a certain kind of bird and a certain number of those kinds of birds. Yeah.
Bill: Yeah, that's for sure.
Cayla: They like numbers.
Bill: On the trapping side, there's some new opportunities. So we did a marten study, American Marten up in the Turtle Mountains the last few years and found there's a pretty good population actually of marten in the Turtle Mountains. And so, this will be the first time we're opening up a trapping season. And we did have that area close to fisher trapping. And so now that will be open. And so, it's a pretty short season. It's right after gun deer season. And it'll run from November 23rd to the 29th of November. So just that week. And you can trap one per person, one fisher, one marten.
Cayla: Do you have to be pretty strategic then about like how many traps you set out?
Bill: Yeah, we thought about that. If we wanted to put a cap on it and we thought, honestly, it's just education is the big thing.
Cayla: Yeah.
Bill: And if you find sign, they're not the most difficult to trap. And so that is something people are gonna have to be very conscious of, is being careful with how many sets you put out.
Casey: And diligently check your traps.
Bill: Yeah. Or in the perfect world, I guess if you had a friend and you went together and set a few traps, that would be good too. That way you can go together with doing it as well. But yeah, that is a challenge with it in the cap. The other change that we made this year is the river otter season. Just trying again in the idea of just trying to simplify things. We're making it a three week season where you can still can only trap one. But it's a three-week season before we had a cap and you'd have to report it right away or within 24 hours. And then we'd keep track and the quota was 25. Last year we increased it to 30. Now we're thinking we want to get to 40, but we think we're going to be around 40 with the length extension of the season. Yeah. And so last year, just to give you a context, the season opened on November 24th, and it closed on December 4th. And that was to get to 30.
Casey: And, and we've been able to do that because we had those really restrictive seasons at the beginning. We always want to be conservative. And we've kind of you still can only take one otter a season in the new system. But like we've watched how those caps are affecting the population, which is negligible. And so, it takes about this many weeks to get to those types of numbers. And so that's where we feel pretty comfortable that we can just have an open season one otter per season. And we should be good within the bounds of what the population can handle.
Bill: And just, yeah, last year it right away there's quite a few caught. And then after that, it's pretty slow. And it often depends on the conditions. If it's a warm fall and open water it's easier to trap them, if it gets really cold and everything's froze over it can get really challenging as well. So yeah, it's kind of that's the changes I can think of.
Cayla: Yeah. I feel like that's the kind of formal like changes, I guess. Update on what to expect access wise out there. You said a couple new WMAs though too. I think we'll cover
Bill: Yeah.
Cayla: As we've been going around to the districts kind of some of.
Bill: Yeah, we did add WMAs and kind of all parts of the state. I think in the last year we've added about 1,500 acres to our wildlife management area system. So that was a good addition. Some of them are donations for people donate their land to the agency. Other a couple of them we did purchase. There's another one that was actually purchased by DOT and they're doing wetland mitigation out there. And then we're actually managing that property in a cooperative agreement, but they actually own the property.
Casey: Which we've done on a few now over the years. DOT has some mitigation rules they have to meet. And so it works out as a good partnership.
Bill: Yeah. And we're really limited of the properties that we can purchase. We have very, very minimal budget. There's a very extensive process to go through. And so, we're very selective of when the properties that we're able to acquire. Yeah, but it was a pretty good year last year. Some great opportunities.
Cayla: Yeah. Otherwise, I guess like more informally, what's Bill and Casey’'s overall outlook for this fall?
Bill: I'm excited. Yeah. I like to shoot birds and I think there's going to be opportunities for shooting birds this year.
Casey: Yeah. Especially in those areas where we haven't got hailstorms. The hailstorms maybe have affected some of the upland birds as they were chicks were running around and stuff. But in a lot of places in the state, we're running the brood routes right now, so we won't know for a couple weeks yet exactly what we find, but there's going to be pockets of a lot of birds, especially pheasants.
Bill: Yeah. I think the pheasants are doing good. It'll be interesting to see. Last year our turkey production was actually a bit low. The year before was a bumper crop and so we'll see what the turkeys do. For grouse, you know, it was a little bit cool. We did have some really cold nights early on and then all of a sudden, we switched to blazing inferno, 105 or whatever it is scorching hot. Really dry. And so, we haven't really had much normal, I guess what normal is. So it will be interesting to see, you know, what things look like. But there are early indications are there does seem to be a fair amount of broods of pheasants running around. Like you said, it could be spotty. But yeah, I think if I had to guess, the pheasants should be doing pretty well as a whole.
Casey: Our waterfowl survey was up.
Bill: Yep. Our brood numbers were up 55% for ducks, which is a great sign. I imagine the sloughs are drying up pretty quick now with the dry conditions we've had. But again, during that crucial part of the time when we're producing broods, the conditions are actually fairly good this year and so should see a little bump up in waterfowl numbers, which is a good thing. And then yeah, in the big game side, I just like hunting everything. Yeah. As you guys know, I just like to go out trapping and hunting for whatever.
Casey: I run out of time more than I run out of species.
Bill: But yeah, I mean, the mule deer are doing well outside the badlands. They're really expanding and doing well. And some of the best mule deer hunting is probably outside the badlands at times. And they're doing decent within the badland’s units. The 4A through 4F probably similar to maybe slightly below the long-term average. So not horrible. We're still just really recovering from that bad winter of what, 22, 23. It just takes big game a lot longer than it does pheasants. They don't produce broods of a dozen.
Casey: You know, even though we've had easy winters we haven't had since then, we haven't had real great conditions throughout the year to really bolster. We've either run into drought situations, dry situations, which makes it hard for a doe to raise a couple fawns when she's got to produce milk and stuff, maybe one fawn. And so it's just slowly ticking up population wise.
Bill: But yeah, and I'm hopeful this year and when everyone gets out and goes hunting that they're going to see a noticeable increase in deer numbers. But we need that. And then it really just depends where you're at. You know, when we had oodles of CRP and oodles of habitat across the landscape, we know we're going to have bad winters, we're going to have more in the future. It's just how we recover from them. And that's where the struggle has been. And it's really been an eye opener even for us of its the recovery is much slower when the habitat is limited on the landscape and that eastern portion of the state is as you look around, if habitat is limited and so the recovery has been very limited, which is why we've had to be really conservative on license allocations. And even that maybe isn't enough. And so that portion of the state, I'm sure our numbers are going to stay low here for a while. The middle third and western third, I think we're going to start to see a pretty good rebound barring any other issues of disease or bad winters or those type of things.
Casey: Yeah, it's one of those things. There's, you know, we talk about a lot of times all the different stressors on deer, you know, or big game. It's like winters diseases like EHD. And then you have, you know, the predator conversation, which yeah, they have an impact at some level too. But the one thing that buffers all of those is habitat. So, I mean, you could spend a lot of money on one of them and not affect the other one. And then you really aren't doing a whole lot where you can spend a lot of money on habitat and buffer the effects of all of that and benefit other species.
Bill: Yeah.
Casey: You know, that's our goal.
Bill: That is our goal. I mean, that's where you get to the end of the day habitat and access are the most important things we work on, and we try to put as much time and money into those two things as we possibly can. But yeah, I mean, I think there'll be some good opportunities for deer hunting for those folks that had a gun tag this year. There won't be as many other people competing out there.
Cayla: That's kind of nice sometimes. Like if you got one where there's twice as many tags, there's twice as many or roughly twice as many hunters out there.
Bill: That's for sure. And yeah, and then, you know, for those people like to archery, hunting is still a nice season to get out and an opportunity to get out as well for those folks. And then we did complete our pronghorn surveys and a slight uptick there in population, but we did still keep the fawn and doe licenses at zero, just still trying to build that population up. So all the licenses we issued were any licenses yet again this year about the same number as last year.
Casey: Yeah. It's always a tricky balance with big game. You can you can be ultra conservative and try to, you know, save animals, save animals. But if your habitat doesn't support them, when that bad winter comes, you lose more, faster. And so you go, well, should we have offered more opportunities? So there's more, you know, habitat on the landscape to save the ones that are there, you know? And so, it's always that strange balancing act you get into.
Bill: It is and you look at the landscape out west; it's changed a lot. You know, there's windmills and roads everywhere and energy development and row crops. We never had cornfields. So the habitat isn't necessarily what it used to be for our pronghorn 20, 30 years ago.
Casey: Well, and even we've talked about aged like aged grass plantings that are out there. They used to be diverse grass plantings or more diverse. And now you've got those brome grasses and things that have kind of taken over, and there's a lot less forbs in them. And so, the just the ability for the landscape as it shifts naturally changes too if we don't have some of those management practices on the landscape to keep some of those grasslands diverse.
Bill: Yeah. Yeah. That's the truth. And that's one of the concerns. You know, Bruce Stillings, our big game supervisor has is he's kind of worried that, you know, our pronghorn population recoveries, this might be the new norm. This might be where we get back to more like 8,000 animals instead of 10,000 plus animals. And that's a possibility. It all depends on conditions. Drought, bad winters are really tough on them. But our fawn recruitment is 50 some, you know, fawns per 100 does where we used to be higher than that in the 70s. And so, all that, you know, predators, all those are all factors that that can and influence that. But we'll see. We're on the outside range for pronghorn. So it is a balancing act. What do you stockpile and what do you harvest? So we try to walk that fine line as best we can.
Cayla: And they’re like struggling in their core range too. So it's not like it's just North Dakota that they're. Yeah.
Bill: Bad winter. Yeah. That's bad winter is brutal in Wyoming and so it just takes them also a while to just start to recover. But yeah, I mean, there's lots of other opportunities, furbearers provided that opportunity. And if it's a good way to develop relationships with landowners, oftentimes you can get permission for coyote hunting or trapping or those type of things. And then, you know, develop that relationship with that landowner and then maybe next time they'll allow you a pheasant hunt or do other things. And that's what I say too with kids, it is tough because you once they get past, you know, 15, you don't get a deer tag all the time. And so it is important if we can, to try to get them out bird hunting or furbearer hunting or trapping, or some of the other hunting opportunities that we have available out there.
Casey: I mean, this will probably make Steph mad because she's a big mourning dove hunter. But the opportunity to go mourning dove hunting is almost endless. If you just want to get into hunting.
Cayla: Don't tell them about my new spot, though.
Casey: Okay, I won't.
Cayla: Yeah. The other night on the deck. I at some point have told Fisher that they're mourning doves, but we were eating dinner out there, and he was like, where are the night night doves?
Casey: Night night. Good question.
Cayla: Yeah, that is a great question. Yeah.
Bill: Speaking of that, when we were doing our brood runs earlier this year, is that it seems like there's a bumper crop of mourning doves for whatever reason as well.
Cayla: They're going to become night night doves.
Casey: Yeah. They are.
Cayla: Just you wait.
Casey: At least supper doves.
Bill: Yeah. I love dove hunting. It's so fun.
Casey: It is. It is.
Bill: I just wish that lasted more than a couple of weeks.
Casey: Our season is fairly long, but the weather doesn't keep them here long enough.
Bill: No.
Cayla: I feel like we always flush a stray one, like in October and I don't know, it just takes your brain a minute. And then I was like, dang, that was a dove.
Casey: Yeah. Yeah.
Cayla: Okay. Well, thanks for being on. Why are we so bad at this?
Casey: We're out of practice. Out of practice!
Cayla: We'll get into the department droppings. Dove season, as we just talked about, night, night and morning dove season opens September 1st. I think it's a I shouldn't even say I don't want to go down this road again. It's like a Tuesday or Wednesday.
Casey: September 1st.
Cayla: Yeah. Yeah.
Casey: And we got fall turkey deadline September 2nd. So if you want to fall turkey tag, you got to get your app in.
Cayla: The deer archery season opens September 4th.
Casey: And then hunt for tomorrow, especially be mindful of dry conditions. The fall is turning out to look pretty dry. So pay attention to the local fire dangers. And get out and be a responsible hunter. Now that we've dropped the droppings, you can get off the pot and get outdoors.