Several topics discussed at LWFC meeting

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The North Zone dates run Sept. 5-20, Oct. 10-Nov. 8 and Dec. 12-Jan. 4. The South Zone splits run Sept. 5-13, Oct. 17-Nov. 29 and Dec. 19-Jan. 4.

With the exception of noon-sunset Sept. 5 hunting hours, bird season hunting hours are one-half hour before sunrise to sunset.

The first segment of seasons for rails and gallinules will run the same 16 days as the teal season with the balance of the season set in August when the state’s dates and bag limits for migratory waterfowl will be announced.

The dates for the 2009-10 woodcock season remain the same as the past six seasons, Dec. 18-Jan. 31 with a daily limit of three woodcock.

DEER DOGS: In May, the LWFC ignored U.S. Forest Service demands to stop the practice of hunters using dogs to hunt deer on the 600,000 acres in the Kisatchie National Forest.

The LWFC unanimously supported an eight-day, deer-dog season during the Christmas period for Kisatchie hunters and built in stipulations the USFS issue special permits to deer-dog hunters and the dogs be fitted with special tracking collars or the dogs be marked in some manner so that the dogs’ owners could be identified.

Newly appointed Kisatchie National Forest supervisor Mike Balboni asked the commission to reinstate the same days of the 2008-09 deer-dog season for the 2009-10 season, but asked that permitting and other tracking/identification regulations be omitted from the regulations. Balboni said USFS has no permitting procedures and would violate its regulations by issuing permits.

To change the hunting regulations, the LWFC had to suspend its rules — it took a two-thirds majority vote — and approved a Dec. 19-24 and Dec. 26-27 deer-dog season for all of Kisatchie’s Winn Ranger and Kisatchie Ranger districts and parts of the Catahoula Ranger and the Evangeline Unit of the forest.

Balboni said the USFS plans to hold public meetings to determine its future plans for the use of dogs in the area.

OTHER ACTION: The LWFC heard a survey of hunters showed hunters had taken an average of 10.849 bobcats each of the last five years since the bobcats were returned to the species available to the state’s big-game hunters.