California hunting license sales have declined steadily from 767,149 in 1970 to 268,841 in 2021. A leading cause of this decline is the loss of hunting opportunities and access. To help reverse this trend and to recruit, retain, and reintroduce hunters to the field, CWA developed a program based upon the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s lottery system for hunting on public lands.
Through CWA’s relationship with private landowners, the program has created access to private and public lands and is identified as the California Waterfowl Hunt Program. The program has grown steadily over the past 13 years and now includes almost 40 individual properties encompassing over 60,000 acres. Since its inception in 2009, over 19,000 hunters have participated in the program with hundreds of landowners and volunteers providing in-kind services (donating, hosting, guiding hunts, etc.) and access to high quality hunting opportunities being made available to the public. The program currently hosts waterfowl, pheasant, quail, dove, deer, turkey and pig hunts. Applicants have an extensive variety of hunts to choose from which include access to some of the most prestigious and exclusive hunting properties in the country. Hunt locations range from the Klamath Basin in Northern California to the San Jacinto Valley in Southern California.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife outlined in the 2019 California Hunting and Fishing Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation Action Plan that access and opportunity were among the eight topics of interest. Specifically: “Participation in hunting and fishing is limited by many types of access barriers. Access barriers include anything that prevents or obstructs participation. Opportunity barriers include circumstances that make it impossible to participate. Having access to fishing and hunting opportunities is contingent on addressing multiple types of barriers within both. For example, some opportunity barriers are physical or related to resources, like having access to land and water, technical equipment and the training or skill required for participation.” [CDFW R3 Action Plan]. Our objective is to continue offering upland gamebird hunts through the California Waterfowl Hunt Program, but we need additional support to make this a reality given the ever-rising costs associated with managing and improving the habitat, stocking pheasants and facilitating public access. This proposal requests funding to assist with managing food plots, pheasant stocking and administrative tasks in order to provide public upland game bird hunting opportunities.
We propose a stocking program of 700 pheasants from October through January at CWA’s 2,175-acre Goose Lake. This would allow us to host 20 hunt days in the fall, allowing us to reach up to 24 hunters per date, totaling up to 480 potential hunters. These hunters will be provided with a hunt map on specific hunt zones and areas of past hunter success. During shoot days, hunters will be allowed to harvest dove (during fall season) and pheasants. In addition to dove and pheasants, we will allow hunters to pursue waterfowl as well. The hunt will be advertised as a sportsman package given that hunters can hunt dove, pheasant and waterfowl in a single hunt day. Additionally, we would plant safflower food plots totaling 50 acres for mourning doves: Locations Butte County, (Butte Creek Island Ranch and Sanborn Slough, 5 total acres of safflower) and Kern County (Goose Lake, 45 acres of safflower). Public dove hunting program at CWA’s Butte Creek Island Ranch, Sanborn Slough, and Goose Lake will provide 10 hunt days giving 100 hunters the opportunity to hunt doves during the first dove season September 1-15.