Harvest Success Rate Estimates

[Pasc43]

Looking over the harvest success rates for 2015 in general tag areas. What do they base the % off of? If 50 WT were taken in a wmu and the % of success is 25% then what does that "200" number represent?

[Okotokian]

Originally Posted by Pasc43

Looking over the harvest success rates for 2015 in general tag areas. What do they base the % off of? If 50 WT were taken in a wmu and the % of success is 25% then what does that "200" number represent?

I take it there were 200 hunters who said they hunted white tail in that WMU in the post season hunter harvest survey. That's where they get the data from. 50 WT taken would = 25% success rate.

Now for special licenses that are WMU specific, I wonder if they use the number of license bought or whether they still go with the survey data as buying a license doesn't necessarily mean you hunt it.

[Pasc43]

Originally Posted by Okotokian

I take it there were 200 hunters who said they hunted white tail in that WMU in the post season hunter harvest survey. That's where they get the data from. 50 WT taken would = 25% success rate.

Now for special licenses that are WMU specific, I wonder if they use the number of license bought or whether they still go with the survey data as buying a license doesn't necessarily mean you hunt it.

Yeah good question, I would think they would use how many tags were issued as that's a more accurate/known number, where as survey participation is highly variable. So in that case, success % are likely higher in special draw areas and lower in the general than what is reported.

[Jadham]

The value in these tables is the trend over time and comparison between zones.

A zone with 200 animals harvested vs 20 in another or a success rate of 50% vs 5% are useful comparisons, not an individual number in isolation.

[Outdoorfanatic]

I've asked this exact question of the Bios. The answer they give is that numbers are based on the surveys but not exclusively. Meaning they take the total purchased tags plus harvest surveys and make a predicted total harvest rate over the course of all purchased tags. So if there are 100 tags drawn but only 85 purchased and only 50 respond to the harvest survey and out of 50, 30 are successful then the bio would make a prediction that if everyone purchased the tag and everyone hunted with that tag then 30/50 = 60% so therefore that draw would be considered 60% successful. General tags are similar. They now ask what zones you hunted your whitetail and whether or not you where successful. For those that don't respond, the government still knows how many general tags total it sold, so again they take the difference in response vs. total purchase divided by total WMUs as compared to the success reported and make the predictions. The other thing that I think is more or at least as valuable is average hunter days to success. If you call you can get that info as well. So which WMU is more productive one that is 50% successful on the average of 3 hunter days or WMU that is 80% on 25 days average?