Commission to Set Rules

Spring steelhead limits and 2003 wild turkey hunting rules will be among subjects for action by the Idaho Fish and Game Commission when it meets in Boise December 11-13. The Commission meeting will be held in the Trophy Room at Fish and Game headquarters, 600 South Walnut, in Boise with a public hearing set to begin at 7 p.m. December 11. The regular Commission meeting will begin at 8 a.m. December 12. Up for action in this session are recommendations of department staff to raise steelhead limits for the 2003 spring season from two per day, four in possession and 10 for the season to three per day, nine in possession and 40 (with two permits) for the season. With the count recently at more than 201,000 steelhead over Lower Granite Dam, Idaho anglers are enjoying the second largest run of hatchery steelhead in history. The run was even bigger last year. The proposed limits are the same as for the fall season. Increasing numbers of wild turkeys and, in some areas of Idaho, numbers of landowner complaints about depredation, has prompted the department to recommend changing the fall controlled hunts to general hunts as well as taking other actions to increase turkey hunting opportunity. Changes in seasons would also make spring turkey hunts begin on the same day, April 15. The wild turkey harvest has grown from 487 in 1992 to more than 4,000 in 2002 while the number of tags sold has gone from about 2,000 to more than 20,000 in the same time. The Commission will discuss other items including wolf delisting, commercialization of reptiles and amphibians and access for hunters and anglers to private lands, and will elect the Commission chair and co-chair for 2003.