Have you guys ever heard of a heat map. This is basically what they're trying to do. Map hunter density to the best of their ability. What areas have a higher hunter density than others. What they'll likely find is one area had a higher hunter density and has been decimated. But 10 miles away where permission is more difficult and nobody hunts, the population is good. They're trying to get an idea of that so they can better manage an area by something that matters like hunter density.
Here's an example of a heat map. This isn't for hunting but just an example. Let's say the very light green areas are never hunted, the light blue moderately hunted, and the dark green get clobbered. Good management would tell you each needs different management limits. But how would you ever know that if you didn't survey the hunters. They don need every hunter to fill one out. But the more the merrier. But after a point the law of averages will take care of the rest. Survey 20,000 people, or survey 200,000 people, odds are the averages will be very similar. Hell. Political polls for candidates usually only have 2-5k people. And they're usually very close to reality.
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