Wildlife agent meets with Rotary to discuss upcoming hunting seasons

Many hunters around Vermilion Parish will be up early Saturday to take advantage of the opening of teal season.
The season will wrap up on Sept. 28.
With the season kicking off, the timing proved perfect for the Abbeville Rotary Club to welcome Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Agent Justin Sonnier as its guest speaker during Wednesday’s meeting.
“It’s definitely appropriate timing,” Sonnier told the Rotarians. “Currently we are switching modes from fishing to hunting season.”
Sonnier focused much of his discussion on changes.
“We always have changes,” Sonnier said. “Every week it seems like something new is coming. Some of the changes come from public request.
“It’s ever changing and we always want to make sure people are aware of these things.”
Among the changes that will affect this weekend relate to bag limits. The daily bag limit is six teal, but the possession limit is now 18.
“Let’s say you go out on Friday,” Sonnier explained. “You do a Friday, Saturday and Sunday hunt. They changed it last year to say you can have three times the legal bag limit.
“On Sunday, I am just using that as an example, it can be whatever day, you can have three times the limit in your possession.”
Sonnier said that it helps with transportation of the birds.
“This (new possession limit) helps those people whose areas are not close to home,” Sonnier said. “They will not have to make a special trip to bring some in and go back to get the rest.
“They are just trying to get more lenient on some of these regulations.”
Sonnier told Rotarians that he has noticed a pattern when it comes to regulations.
“I have noticed in the past 10 years, especially in Vermilion,” Sonnier said, “that I am coming across less violations. I don’t know if we are educating more people or they are educating themselves, but whatever it is, it is a good thing.”
Another change that will impact duck season is its November start. That change comes from the aforementioned public request.
“We had a big push from the public to push duck season back one week,” Sonnier said.
For the coastal zone, which includes Vermilion Parish, duck season will take place from Nov. 15 to Dec. 7 and Dec. 20 through Jan. 25.
“It usually starts the second weekend in November,” Sonnier said. “Now it is the third. What that does is push the closing date back to almost the last weekend in January, as opposed to the second weekend in January.
“There was a big public push for that from many of the coastal residents.”