I posted many pages back about a mule deer sensing meeting that I attended prior to the selection of the Mule Deer Citizens Advisory Committee. At that meeting, basically every single person in attendance supported mandatory reporting, debated for it, argued for it, then even said we’d prioritize fees to pay for it.
MTFWP absolutely loves their f-cking algorithm. They use (and pay for) 3 separate shitty processes that collect partial information that feeds the statistics. We have staff check stations that get a fraction of the hunters. We have the bullshit random calls from telemarketers as late as April AFTER hunting season. Now we also have the eTag.
There reasons were…
Our data is “statistically valid”
We don’t need exact data
It will cost too much
We can’t enforce it
If it was enforced, eventually someone “important” would raise political hell about it
They do not know +/- 10,000 how many deer/elk are killed annually. They don’t know +/- 100,000 on “hunter days” annually. That is why I laugh when people say they looked on Go Hunt for MT “data”. MT has essentially ZERO “data”… we have statistics.