Outdoor Notes : Odds Stacked Against State’s Hunters

The odds of drawing a tag to hunt pronghorn antelope or Roosevelt elk in California are approaching those of hitting it big in the state lottery.

The increasingly popular pronghorn hunts, held in late August and early September in Northeast California, drew 16,279 applications for the Department of Fish and Game’s drawing. Only 685 tags were available, making the odds 24-1.

Odds in the elk drawing were even longer, more than 648-1, with 6,488 hunters applying for 10 permits. The elk hunts are held in northern Siskiyou County.

The DFG license office in Sacramento also reported that 35 of the state’s 66 deer hunts are filled and that all but 29,000 of about 140,000 hunters who applied by the deadline received tags for their first-choice hunt zones.

Attracting the greatest number of applications was Zone X10, a small stretch of land along the Inyo-Tulare County line just west of U.S. 395. There were 1,982 applications for 75 tags.

Construction has started on three radial gates designed to control the flow of saltwater into the Suisun Marsh, the largest remaining unbroken brackish water marsh in California.

With flows of fresh water declining because of heavy upstream agricultural use, the water supply has grown saltier, threatening plant and bird life in the marsh, located near San Francisco Bay. As many as 200,000 birds, many of them ducks, live in the marsh during winter migration seasons.

Briefly The National Trails Coalition claims that although use of National Forest trails in the U.S. has doubled since 1969, the number of trail miles has declined by 32% over the last 45 years because of a continuing pattern by Congress of allocating less money for trail maintenance. . . . Thirty-eight of the 209 hunters who obtained permits to hunt pigs on the DFG’s 44,000-acre Tehama Wildlife Area bagged animals in April and May. . . . Because of numerous complaints of fishermen exceeding limits, Arizona undercover game wardens are patrolling fishing waters in several cities, disguised as fishermen. . . . The Catalina-based $250,000 Southern California Marlin Sweepstakes Tournament will be held Sept. 21-24. . . . Entry deadline for the federal duck stamp art contest is Oct. 1. . . . Forest Service rangers caution Sierra Nevada back country visitors that black bears have been very active in the Kearsarge Pass area. . . . The Wyoming Game and Fish Department estimates that elk hunting revenues will decline from $26 million in 1983 to $18 million in 1989 because of a recession-caused drop in numbers of resident elk hunters. . . . California taxpayers contributed $727,036 to the state’s Rare and Endangered Species Fund on their 1985 state tax returns. . . . “Condor,” a documentary film about the giant, endangered California vulture, will be shown on PBS stations Sunday.