The Utah Upland Game Advisory Committee

Meeting minutes, April 22, 2002

OPENING

A meeting of the Utah Upland Game Advisory Committee was held on this date.

Present:

• Robb Leishman
• Dean Mitchell (DWR Upland Game Program Coordinator)
• Ernie Perkins
• Tony Perkins
• John Staley (Chair)

Approval of Minutes: The minutes of the previous meeting were approved as distributed.

OPEN ISSUES

Sharptail and Sage Grouse Counts

Sharptail and Sage Grouse counts have been proceeding since the last meeting and will be complete at the end of this month. The initial reports were presented at the meeting, keep in mind that these results are preliminary, as not all of the counts have completed yet.

Sage Grouse counts match or may even exceed last year's counts.

Sharptails on the other hand are not doing so well. The preliminary count is well below what was seen last year.

Dean wants to compare the numbers from this year's survey with those from the 1998 survey, since this is when the Sharptail Grouse season was re-opened. However, based on the preliminary numbers both he and the committee felt that the season should probably be severely curtailed this year. The number of permits allowed this year would probably target a maximum harvest of 10 percent of the fall population.

Dean will complete his research and the committee will submit a final recommendation during the first part of May.

Upland Game Proclamation

The committee approved of Dean's proposal to publish the upland game proclamation every three years, instead of the current two-year proclamation.

The committee's proposal to push back the start of the chukar season one week due to the ongoing drought conditions was rejected by the state's biologists. They felt that the pushing the season back would not impact the harvest of the birds over the course of the season. Dean wants to use the data gathered by the guzzler survey to prove whether or not this is true.

The committee recommended that a $5 processing fee be charged for the following permits (which are currently free): Sage Grouse, Sharptail Grouse, Band-Tail Pigeons and Ptarmigan. This should increase the opportunity for serious hunters of these species to get a permit and offset some of the costs incurred by the Division.

The youth pheasant hunt in the south-eastern region will be moved from the commercial hunting unit it is currently on to Huntington Wildlife Management Area. Concerns about the appropriateness of releasing public-funded birds on private land prompted this move.

Chukar Management Plan

John Staley made a pass over this document, trying to remove redundancies and standardize the format of it. Dean has now taken ownership of the document again and will attempt to fill in the areas that still need more specific information. He should be done in the first part of July and the committee will discuss the document during the July meeting.

NEW BUSINESS

Sage Grouse Season

The committee proposed that the Sage Grouse season be modified to mirror that of the Sharptail Grouse season. The specifics of the proposal are:

• Should target a maximum 10% harvest of the fall population
• Permits will be required for each hunter
• Each permit entitles the holder to harvest 2 birds during the season
• The state will be divided into geographical areas
• Only a certain number of permits will be available for each area
• Each permit will entitle the holder to hunt in a specific geographical area only
• Any area with less that 500 breeding birds over a three year running average will have hunting severely curtailed
• Falconers will also need to get a permit and will be limited to the same number of birds harvested per season
• Permits will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis

The intent of these changes is to ensure that one area of the state is not getting over-hunted and to manage the harvest of the birds scientifically. An additional motivation is the political aspect of hunting a threatened species. It is considerably easier to justify a well-managed hunting season than it is one that does not have a fixed harvest target.

Due to logistical difficulties in getting this set up, this plan may not be able to be implemented this year even if it is accepted.

Quail Season

A proposal to mirror the Gamble's Quail season after Arizona's, with the season extending into February, was considered by the committee. The consensus was that the Utah Quail population was not sufficient to support the longer season.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

The following meetings of the Upland Game Regional Advisory Committees and the Wildlife Board are scheduled for:

North East RAC	May 20
South East RAC	May 21
Southern RAC	May 22
Central RAC	May 28
Northern RAC	May 29
Wildlife Board	June 11 in Vernal

For more information about these and other meetings you can go to www.wildlife.utah.gov/public_meetings/

AGENDA FOR NEXT MEETING

Our next meeting will be held on Monday, June 3rd at 6:00 p.m. at the DWR State offices at 1594 West North Temple, Salt Lake City.

Dean will be giving a review of the current state of Utah's upland game species. Then we will conduct a brainstorming session to try to find other upland game-related issues we need to address over the course of the coming year.

Everyone is invited to attend this meeting; it's an opportunity for you to get any issues you know about onto the table.

Let us know of donations, projects, etc., made by your group — we want to publicize good activities!

If you know of other interested parties who should get copies of the minutes, and who are involved in upland game organizations or programs, please get us their name. If you want to make an electronic mail input, please send it to one of the following:

Ray Lee	rlee@mail.rhs.weber.k12.ut.us	Rob Leishman	Robbrpt@uswest.net
Dean Mitchell	nrdwr.dmitchel@state.ut.us	Darrell Noble	roofs@inconnect.com
Tony Perkins	tperkins@att.net	Joe Riches	Starrline@efortress.com
Hal Smith	hmsmith@parkcity.net	John Staley	jsmunster@aol.com

Respectfully submitted,
Tony Perkins