2017-11-28 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – November 28, 2017 NEW BUSINESS The Agenda going into 2018 Game Management Rules Changes 183D; 122-123 TL: I do have some ideas on the rules changes which we have before you, apprentice licensing, we want to re-introduce apprentice licensing – any questions anybody has on that. So let’s go through that first and then I want to get to the retiring commissioners and any of the new commissioners that we might have coming on board that might be here tonight. Chapters 122 and 123 and 121 are rules for – 122 is Bird Hunting – 123 is Mammal Hunting – 121 is the rules in general and we may actually have changes to all three. TL: In front of you, you have a document that says rules change – partial list – the idea of a rules change has been around since 2007 and it went from 2007 to 2015 to adopt a very simple rules change. We didn’t really want to go through another ten years with a rules change so we thought that the easiest thing for us is to try and keep it simple – change the things that we can that make sense to some of us for example – Tony brought this up – so this is really the first one on our agenda – “when hunting without the use of dogs no person shall use the following” and in the rules right now in §13-123E. It says, “cartridge rifles with a muzzle that discharge energy of less than 1200 foot pounds is prohibited,” and we thought we would just strike that basically all together – it serves no purpose – 1200 foot pounds – we have pistol hunting – none of the pistols – same cartridges. They’re nowhere near 1200 foot pounds of energy; yet, we have pistol hunting here so why we even have that – we have lots of firearms that use pistol cartridges. Having this rule in there – it’s not justified with the changes that have come down so far – so that’s one that we would want to change. Those of us that shoot muzzleloading rifles,I have an argument with this minimum bore of 44 caliber, so we thought that we would change that – what the change there would be muzzle loading rifles with less than 44 caliber – these are all prohibited. Muzzleloading rifles with less than 44 caliber regardless of mode of ignition and we wanted to add, “unless using conical bullets of more than 200 grain weight.” That would allow the use of smaller calibers that are very efficient. I have a muzzleloader, for example, it’s based on a Sharp’s 41 caliber and every bit as effective – kills everything that it hits – but I can’t use it. This is one of the reasons why we’d like to have changes. Crossbows is another one – crossbows are not permitted here – we would like to have crossbows permitted in general hunting season – I’m not into pushing it for archery only areas if the public wants to move to get ‘em approved, I mean, these are 3