Changes - ““can we make this “list”??

Changes

Proposed changes to 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 state hunting regulations and seasons and changes to the 2012-2014 regulations and seasons on state wildlife management areas offered during Thursday’s Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission meeting:

• Restricted deer seasons and bag limits on State Deer Area 6 lands south of Interstate 10 and within the levees for the Morganza Floodway and the Atchafalaya Basin for the next two hunting seasons. There will be limited either-sex hunting days. The either-sex archery season will run Oct. 1-Jan. 31 with Oct. 1-15 limited to bucks-only hunting. A single end-of-the-season primitive weapons season will be limited to bucks-only hunting. Further restrictions are for still-hunt only and with/without dogs modern-firearms seasons.
• Carryover from the recent season to restrict deer hunting seasons on the Attakapas Wildlife Management Area (inside the Atchafalaya Basin) to a bucks-only, modern firearms season for nine days from the third Saturday in December and a bucks-only, primitive weapons season for seven days beginning the Monday after the next to last Sunday in January.
• For 2013-2014 season, deer hunters will be a “hunter’s choice option tag.” The season limit on deer will be six, but hunters will be allowed to use one tag to be used either for a buck or a doe, a move that could mean a hunter could take three bucks and three doe, or two bucks and four doe.
• Addition of 14 bucks-only days during the modern firearms season, and allow the take of either sex deer during primitive weapons season in State Deer Area 5.
• Amending the designation of only “pre-1900” limitation on the list of approved weapons allowed for use in primitive weapons seasons.
• All the use of air rifles to take squirrels, rabbits and outlaw quadrupeds.
• Update state hunting regulations to match changes enacted by the State Legislature to allow “sound suppression devices” to take nutria, beaver and outlaw quadrupeds (mostly feral hogs), and to allow night hunting to take outlaw quadrupeds (feral hogs) after notifying the parish sheriff’s office 24 hours before hunting.
• To allow hunters 17 and younger to use “any legal weapon” to take deer during any primitive weapons season.
• Establish tent-camping areas on the Maurepas Swamp WMA. The areas will be along the Reserve Canal and the Amite River Diversion Canal.
• Eliminate the experimental “quality” deer hunting season on the Camp Beauregard WMA.
• Remove the “hunting with dogs” allowance for the spring squirrel season on the Thistlethwaite WMA beginning in 2013.
• Allow the use of ATVs to retrieve deer on the Tunica Hills WMA.
• Ban the use of ATVs, motorcycles, horses and mules on the Atchafalaya Delta, Pointe-aux-Chenes, Biloxi, Lake Boeuf, Pass-a-Loutre and Salvador/Timkin WMAs.
• Clarifying the rule for using air-cooled engines on shallow-drive outboards to no more than 36 total horsepower on the Atchafalaya Delta, Pointe-aux-Chenes, Biloxi and Pass-a-Loutre WMAs.
• Establishing feral hog seasons on as many as 10 more WMAs.

Joe Macaluso