He implied that he
> has gotten so many complaints from hunters about birders disrupting their
> hunting by chasing their birds away, that the department would probably
> just have to close the area to everybody but hunters during hunting
> season.
>
>

I'm not sure that he could legally do that (assuming you do have the
conservation license) but, if it is legal, then you have to
remember that to the people that work there the bias will naturally
be that hunters, who can only ply their sport for a short while each
year, should get "first dibs" during their season.

When I read the post earlier about the hunter being impolite to the
birder who was looking for the redpolls, I kind of passed it off-- I
would assume that the bird watcher was near the parking lot and the
hunter was not being inconvenienced-- in short was just being a jerk.
But, the last time Clarice and I were out there (Saturday a week ago)
I noticed a few points that bothered me, that I was pretty sure would
lead to a confrontation eventually. Most waterfowl hunters do
(believe it or not) have a certain etiquette about staying a certain
distance away from each other while hunting. If a hunter is on a set
he or she will expect that any other hunter who walks by will be
going past him to someplace else, and will move by fairly quickly so
as to not be "in the way"-- that is visible to any ducks or geese
that might fly by in sight of his decoys. Birders, on the other hand,
move slowly and tend to stop for a long time and look
before moving on. Most hunters will get antsy about this-- kind of
like golfers behind a slower group on the greens, and many will bitch
about it.

What bothered me out there last Saturday was that I noticed that a
hunter had set his decoys in the field just east of the field that
birders have been using to get to the towhee. That is, the towhee is
hanging out on the east edge of a field, generally along the west
side of a ditch and hedgrow that divides "his" field from another
field to the east of the ditch. In that easterly field, just a
little north of the towhee spot, there were a bunch of decoys sitting
in the flooded field. I thought it looked like a pretty poor setup,
but of course the hunter who did it might have thought it was a work
of art. Now, if no ducks fly in, and there are people watching a
blankety blank little dickey bird just over there-- guess whose fault
it is that the hunter got skunked?

There have been some hard feelings toward birders in the Skagit/
Samish flats before, mainly over people pulling off on the narrow shoulders
of the roads. Add to that hard feelings from the hunters and things
could get a little testy. Add to that this new hunting pressure at
the west 90, which birders won't appreciate, and I have to admit that
I'm a little pessimistic.

Maybe in addition to being vocal and appearing to be more or less
useful members of society, we should be being a little extra careful
about the general etiquette of how we handle ourselves out there. I'm
not saying we should have to bow to pressure from total dips, and
there are a few of those in the hunting world, but until we "get more
respect" maybe we should be mindful of the complaints that the
managers are hearing. Of course, I'm not saying that birders should
unfairly take the blame for some hunters who don't get their geese
(or swans, for Christ sake) only that you look out for the hunters
and give them some space.
Jerry Broadus
P.O. Box 249
Puyallup, WA. 98371