Fish, Wildlife and Parks Biennial Hunting Season Regulations meeting

On Wednesday, June 11 the Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) Region 3 had their first biennial meeting for hunting regulation proposals this year. During this meeting FWP biologists make proposals for changes to the hunting regulations for the 2026 hunting regulation book. Many proposals were covered during this meeting. The first proposal covered was a statewide proposal for whether or not hunters within the unlimited bighorn sheep hunting areas be required to “personally” report their harvest or would it be permissible to allow someone else to report the harvest for them. Most of these areas are remote and the ability to send a text message to a proxy could accelerate the harvest reporting. The mandatory reporting requirements have been shortened from 48 to 24 hours. With this change it will still be required that successful hunters personally present the animal for physical inspection. 

The next state wide proposal that was made concerned the 900 archery antelope series. This has a statewide quota and hunter harvest is not distributed equally, which means some areas are harvested more heavily and other license types may be more restricted. FWP is proposing setting Regional quotas for the 900 archery antelope to distribute hunter pressure or possibly reducing the overall quotas until the harvest is more equitable. Part of the proposal involves removing Region 3 from the 900-20 License and creating a Region 3-Only Archery License (399-20). This is due to Region 3 having the lowest antelope population but the highest harvest rate out of the regions 1 through 3. FWP is considering several more options for this situation but they were not all covered in detail at the time of the meeting.

For further information on this article please subscribe to The Madisonian. Happy Reading!