Many FWC-managed lands get new dates for 2011-12 hunting season
News Release
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Media contact: Tony Young, 850-488-7867
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) passed
new rules that modify hunting season dates on many FWC-managed
areas. These rules become effective on July 1 and apply to the
2011-12 hunting season.
For more than a year, the FWC and its partners and
cooperating agency landowners have worked with stakeholders to
develop changes to season dates for these public hunting lands.
These lands include wildlife management areas, wildlife and
environmental areas and miscellaneous areas.
Making these adjustments will align the seasons on
these areas more closely with the newly adopted zonal season dates,
which took effect on private lands last year.
"With the new changes in dates to hunting seasons
on private lands, we and our hunting stakeholders felt that season
dates on several of our management areas needed to be modified to
correspond better with the new zonal seasons and the timing of deer
breeding," said Diane Eggeman, director of the FWC's Division of
Hunting and Game Management.
The FWC held nine public meetings across the state
and gathered input and feedback on the subject through an online
poll. New changes take into consideration when deer breed on each
area and other hunter preferences, such as hunting during holidays
and the desires of other area users.
"We want to make things as good as we can for
public-land hunters," said Cory Morea, FWC biologist and
deer-management program coordinator. "Adjusting some of these dates
to make the seasons occur closer to peak deer activity or during
holidays should increase hunter satisfaction."
"But, at the same time, we didn't want to fix
something that wasn't broken," Morea said. "Hunters have told us
that on some of our areas the seasons are timed just right, so we
didn't make any changes to those areas."
For information on the specific season date changes
made for each area, go to MyFWC.com/Deer.
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