Game and Fish Department director looks at the state of North Dakota’s outdoors

Hunting, fishing, trapping and conservation issues can change quickly with a nasty winter, disease and other influences that challenge the animals on the landscape and the people who pursue them. Then again, sometimes the stars align and both animals and people benefit.

To see where we been of late and what’s instore down the road, Jeb Williams, Game and Fish Department director, assesses the state of the state from an outdoor perspective.

Highlights of 2024

I think people are going to look back at 2024 as a really good upland year. I think that our pheasant numbers, grouse numbers, partridge numbers – the three of them provided as good of hunting opportunities that we’ve had in the upland season for some time.

Also, and increase with our public access in our PLOTS program of about 40,000-acre. We know access is a pretty significant issue in North Dakota. Hunting opportunities are certainly very competitive. And so having additional acres in our PLOTS program is a good thing.

From our fisheries aspect, probably not quite as good a year, from an overall catching standpoint, but we know our fisheries are still very strong, still very healthy. A very good production year between our department and the hatcheries stocking effort and the number of fingerlings, the number of fry that were raised.

Challenges in 2024

Gov. Kelly Armstrong said it well in his opening remarks, where we’re probably not going to solve any of these big issues in that meeting. We are looking to bring in a lot of different folks from different areas to collaborate with. Whether that be different partner groups, whether that be landowners, whether that be energy … there are just a lot of different players when it comes to the North Dakota landscape. And we need to collaborate to try to help determine what our future hunting and fishing opportunities are going to be Iike. It was just a great night of collaboration and a lot of great ideas, a lot of great discussion and just building relationships because that’s ultimately what it takes.