by Jim Shepherd
posted June 14, 2006
What's the hardest animal to hunt and the hardest fighting game fish? That was the question asked in the latest surveys of huntersurvey and anglersurvey -dot.com, respectively.
According to the anglers, the hardest fighting North American freshwater game fish is the smallmouth bass. The wild sheep or goat is the most difficult North American animal to hunt. Having hooked smallmouth, they are prodigious fighters. Having seen wild sheep and goats from helicopters and small planes, I know they're prodigious climbers. As I'm decidedly not a climber, they're more or less safe from any threat mounted on my shoulder.
The monthly surveys are, at time, downright interesting. For those of us who suffered through statistics and other similar arcane practices in college, it's good to know that while we scraped through the class as students, we did finally see some practical advantage to the beating the statistics class administered to our grade point averages.
There were five species listed in the angling survey. The smallmouth received 50.93 percent of the votes, musky collected 17.76 percent, largemouth bass were good for 15.89 percent, rainbow trout got 9.7 percent and walleye were good for 6.26 percent of the vote. I'm not into analyzing research, but I'd bet we'd find some of what demographers call "huddling" if we correlated the fish most anglers go after and the percentile results. What I mean to say is there are decidedly more bass fishermen than musky or walleye. That may have shifted the statistical applicability of the survey. Of course, it's a gee-whiz survey and not a scientific study, so that's just grist for the conversation - or filler for the column.
Hunters could choose between eight species. Wild sheep and goats collected a majority of the votes with 41.27 percent and turkeys, with only 19.63 percent were a close second. Deer were third most popular (9.01%) bear (including both grizzly and brown) received only 8.37 percent, elk got a measley 7.88 percent, antelope 6.36 and hogs only 1.45%.
The survey respondents have an opportunity to win gift certificates to the retailer of their choice. One winner, Marcia Rubin of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, said her win came at just the right time. The business entrepreneur who's also a professional angler and model, took her gift certificate to Bass Pro Shops the week she left to compete in the Women's Bassmaster Tour Event on Lake Lewisville in Texas. "I enjoy filling out the survey," Rubin says, "I like to talk about fishing and if the survey helps to make the experience of anglers better, I want to do my part."
Incidentally, there was a conservation question included in the April survey. The question: "do you think the use of live bait not-native to your fishing site is…Always OK, Sometimes OK, Never OK or Do Not Know."
More than fifty-eight percent of anglers responded it was never ok to use non-native bait (I wonder if the next question will concern the use of fish attractants (scents) on artificial lures).
There's an interesting combination question coming up in the month of June.
"Do you think that anglers (hunters on the hunter survey) are accurately portrayed in television and movies?" Absolutely. All fly fishermen look like Brad Pitt and all hunters look like Randy Quaid or Grizzly Adams. Right. Oops, that's introducing bias into a survey question.
Anyway, if you'd like to participate in the surveys, you can go to the websites, cleverly labeled anglersurvey.com and huntersurvey.com, and cast your votes.
The results aren't exactly what one would call scientifically significant, but with a large enough sampling, the numbers will overcome a bias (as in bass versus walleye or musky) and will actually become "scientifically significant." That much I remember from the statistics class - although I don't remember if it was the first or second time I took the class that I remember if from.
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