Published: August 02, 2008 09:20 pm         

How much do bear preference points help?

Some numbers I understand. Some numbers I don’t.

I understand 30.06. I understand 2,950 when it is applied to feet per second and associated with the business end of a rifle barrel. I understand the number 15, as in 15 dollars. I understand the numbers when they tell me that there are 10 times more hunters who want a permit to hunt Maryland’s black bears each autumn than there are hunters who actually get to do that.

I won’t pretend to understand, however, the mechanics of how preference points work. Starting a year ago, the Maryland Wildlife Service began giving unsuccessful bear permit applicants a preference point. So, this year, hunters like me, who put in but didn’t get a permit in 2007, will actually have our names put in the hat twice as long as we apply and pay for the 2008 season.

If you keep putting in, but keep getting rejected, you keep getting preference points. If you eventually get a permit, or if you do not apply and pay in a particular year, you lose any preference points you have built up.

The agency has even made it possible this year for people who cannot hunt, but want to stay in the running for future seasons, to simply spend the $15 to purchase a preference point.

So, I get out my nubby pencil, find an old envelope on which I can cipher and try to figure out just how much better my chances will be to get a permit if I keep applying and failing or if I simply hand the state $15 via a piece of plastic and cyberspace.

Let’s see. Two plus two equals four. Carry the naught. Put the naught beneath the common denominator, divide by the integral factor, reverse the numbers on the credit card and my chances will improve by...

This isn’t working.

I realized I needed professional help and I got it in the form of Kurt Lemmert, who does numbers for a living. Don’t try this at home, even if you have a calculator as well as all of your fingers and toes and even a slide rule. Folks of a certain age will remember the latter instrument. Folks of all ages should be familiar with fingers and toes.

Kurt is a mathematics professor who teaches people about numbers at Frostburg State University. I lean on the university a lot when I need an expert witness to quote in an article. I call Liz Medcalf, whose job it is to deal with newspaper people who want information yesterday. Liz is good at this because she is a former newspaper person from Hagerstown who used to need information yesterday. Liz was once the person who bugs. Now she is the person who gets bugged.

I call her and tell her what kind of expert I need and, thus far, FSU has always had one. Much appreciated.

Kurt and I met on campus, which was in its summertime quiet mode. Kurt was interested in the bear lottery, though his hunting is mostly for ruffed grouse, which are much easier to get out of the woods than a bear.

“This looks relatively straightforward,” Lemmert told me after I showed him the number of applicants and the number of permits for the first four hunts and explained to him the best I could how the preference points would work.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I thought. “You’re the math professor.”

Lemmert said that if there are 3,000 applicants this year and half of them have a preference point apiece and the other half do not, that those with the preference points will have a 0.0962 probability of drawing a permit. Those applying without preference points will have a probability of 0.0505. As you can see, your odds with the preference point are almost twice as good.

In 2009, and this is me talking now, there will be people applying who have two preference points, people with one preference point and people with no preference points. In 2010 there will be people applying who have three, two, one and no preference points. At that time, folks with three preference points will have their names in the hat four times and those without preference points will have their names in their once.

Lemmert believes as time goes on that the system will discourage new applicants who look at the odds of a first-timer drawing out and back off. On the other hand, it will encourage many to continue paying and applying, knowing that their odds are improving as others have been drawn or simply dropped out.

In any event, the Maryland bear hunt will take place in less than three months. Will there be the usual noise from those who oppose bear hunting in Maryland? Who knows? Maybe.

Astute watchers of the bear hunt protesters tell me they believe that the anti-hunters’ lack of success a year ago when Gov. O’Malley refused their request to stop the hunt may have quieted, at least somewhat, that clamor.

I personally am getting more calls and visits than ever from Cumberland area residents who are seeing bears in places such as Frederick Street, Christie Road, Willowbrook Road, Valley Road, Holland Street, etc. This is right-in-town stuff I’m talking about.

Just yesterday I spoke with a friend who lives in Bel Air. He said his son has a photograph of a backyard bear that approaches 400 pounds. That bruin would have to wrestle in the unlimited category.

In 2004, the first modern bear hunt, the wildlife agency set a harvest quota of 30 bears, but stopped the season after 20 were killed on the first day. Since then, the agency has used a harvest quota range, but has appeared to use the lower number in that range as the quota (see chart elsewhere on page).

I’d like to see the wildlifers let the harvest quota range play out this year. That range is 55 to 75 bears. Let’s say 68 bears have been killed in four days.

QUESTION: What would it hurt to let the season continue for another day, even if the range was exceeded a bit, such as a total of 77 or 80 bears?

ANSWER: Nothing. And that would be a number I would understand.

Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.

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