2024_08_20 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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in two weeks and he’ll be able to jump in the Commission and take action with us, so, mahalo, thank you very much. TWC: Thank you… LT: All right, moving on to item 5c – Wildlife Biologist, Game Section, Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Wildlife presenting “Potential Turkey Rule Amendments and the Greater Rule Changing Process.” Ah, Mr. Pang-Ching, aloha. c. Joshua Pang-Ching Wildlife Biologist, Game Section, Hawai’i Department of Land Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife presenting “Potential Turkey Rule Amendments and the Greater Rule Changing Process”. JPC: Aloha, my name’s actually Joshua Pang-Ching. I think there’s a Jason Omick that’s talked before with GMAC so that may have been \[unclear\]. No problem, yeah, aloha, my name is Joshua Pang- Ching. I’m with the DLNR DOFAW here based out of Hilo,Wildlife Biologist assigned to the Hilo section so… I’ll try to keep this pretty concise and try to see – we have not much longer left there somewhere on the stuff to talk about but, I wanted to talk about, I think – was it the June meeting, there was a topic that came up – Mr. Duerr had talked about a letter that was written by Mr. Hoeffliger about turkey change, turkey rule changes and stuff happening, some of the issues – the main one being, the rumor that we were taking away the Wednesday and Thursday hunt days which are unique to Mauna Kea during game bird season to allow for which helps out \[unclear\] weekends, they can come \[unclear\] season, so we’re not doing that. We’re not taking away – no plan to take away the Wednesdays, Thursdays. I think where maybe the subject might have come up from was the greater discussion of rules being able to be changed for the better or worse, mostly for the better for the hunters, better for the resource – it depends on what’s going on, a year-to-year thing depending cause \[unclear\] can change if there’s like a say a catastrophic \[unclear\] a big fire on the mountain, you know, bird season maybe birds took a hit or something like that, a more adaptive rule changes \[unclear\] but that’s a different subject but \[unclear\] rule changes, what kind of rule changes that talking about would be some things better for the turkey would be – there’s spring turkey and then there’s turkey hunting during the general season so, for spring turkey, we’re gonna open up additional areas, upper Piha in Laupahoehoe. Right now, you can hunt there during spring turkey season because of the 10-20 rule changes \[unclear\] there was a temporary rule change that allows upper Piha and upper Laupahoehoe to be included in spring turkey season. But one great one for the general game bird season that we’re talking about is potentially interest in moving turkey hunting on Mauna Kea during the general game bird season to November – only which is how it used to be for a long time, the main reason being – so Mauna Kea is one of the main areas that people hunt during \[unclear\] general game bird season and spring turkey season, and so, it’s one of the few areas that has a full season for turkeys, right, and so, ah, you know, hunter \[unclear\] in general bird season, if you were to hunt every day and bag out every day – which is 50 something turkeys per hunter, that’s pretty taxing on the resource – the turkeys, game birds is there’s no hiding that they’re not what they used to be for various reasons so, there’s conversation about that because if you have and then during the general game bird season if you’re shooting, jakes, for those who know what jakes are – an adolescent male turkey, an unadult male turkey, hens, toms. You know if you’re shooting jakes then they don’t make it to the spring turkey season where, they’re made it to adult, bearded turkey, ah hens are the breeders and stuff so, that’s 21