2017-11-28 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – November 28, 2017 habitat enhancement for game mammals – they feel that they have an adequate hunting program that we’re being served by but providing or improving the habitat for game is not something that they feel is part of their game management strategy. And many of us feel that, that is not really the strategy that we would like to take and one of the ways that we can get around that is with having money and the only way – the only money that’s there that we might have control over would be from the Wildlife Revolving Fund so we had – this is back in 2014 – but now that we have a Game Commission it seems to be more appropriate to have the Game Commission involved and the wording here may not be exactly accurate for that but this is a 2014 bill that we have here so it needs to be tweaked probably and we’ll sit down with Joey and see what he can come up with on that for us that’ll be helpful. Any comments? Good, bad, indifferent? TL: Should we pursue this? WJC: Yes. Legislation – Apprentice Licensing reintroduction TL: For the third time – I would like to introduce the Hawaii Apprentice Hunting License bill. What the apprentice license bill does is encourages young hunters – we don’t have enough hunters – we’re losing hunters – half of our hunters here probably don’t buy a license to begin with – you’re waving in the air – oh, I’m easily influenced just in case you wondered – but the apprentice license – what the apprentice license will do will allow you – anybody, one of your neighbors or friends or somebody from the mainland moved in – somebody you know – never been hunting before – you’re gonna go hunting – oh, where you going brah? Oh, I going hunting – you like go? Oh, I don’t know. Yeah, come on. I’ll show you what it’s like. You could take them down to DLNR – get an apprentice license – this is at any age – ten years or older – and you can take them hunting for up to a year and you could mentor them for that year – to see if they enjoy the sport of hunting if they enjoy the activity – hauling out the game – the cleaning and the gutting – if that’s for them – then if they want to get a permanent hunting license they’ll have to take the hunter education course in order to qualify for that – but in the interim – as long as you’re with them they can go hunting. And a hunter Ed program has killed this three years in a row and it was really funny too – the last year they killed it because they wanted it only for youngsters. Nobody over eighteen, ten to eighteen were good other than that and only for one year, we do youth hunts – that’s enough – that was their rationale. The problem is, is that seven or ten to eighteen doesn’t address the new hunter – it doesn’t address the single mom who may have a child that has a relative that may want to go hunting – or take them hunting – and they’re not hunters – they have nobody that they can – or themselves had an opportunity to go hunting and at the last hunter ed conference that they had what they came up with at the conference 6