Who's the expert, anyhow?

John McCoy’s column in the Charleston Gazette this morning got me thinking about how we as outdoor sportsmen always like to think we know better than our paid biologists and game managers how best to manage the resource. McCoy’s column cited a 1967 Outdoor Life article by O.L.’s then hunting editor, Jack O’Connor, wherein O’Connor opined that state biologists and wildlife managers are in a no-win situation:

“I long ago found out that if I wanted to get all the correct answers to the problems of management I was wasting my time if I went to see the game department biologist. These poor slobs have only studied the various aspects of game management in universities for from four to eight years. They only spend about 250 days a year or so in the field and in the laboratory.

“They only know something about ecology, biology, chemistry and various worthless subjects. As a consequence these biologists are all fatheads and their opinions are without value.

“If I want to get all the answers but quick I just go to any bar, barber shop or sporting-goods store. I quickly find that many people know exactly how all the problems should be dealt with, and that all this wisdom comes to them through a sort of osmosis — through having bought a hunting license, having spent two weekends hunting deer, or having talked to old Hi Jenkins, who used to be a market hunter who came here in 1908.”

Had O’Connor written that article in the new 21^st Century context, he surely would have added Internet chat rooms and message boards to his list of places to go to find these “swivel-chair experts,” as he goes on to call them. But I digress….

The gist of McCoy’s article gets to the heart of a kind of trap that nearly all of us outdoorsmen fall into at some point or other in our sporting careers. The more time we spend afield, the more competent we generally become at our chosen sport. Add to that the time most of us spend reading and researching about the habits of our particular favorite quarry, and we begin to feel like genuine experts. Then put us in an environment where we’re surrounded by other like-minded sportsmen who have sought the same knowledge and come to the same level of “expertise,” and we really get an inflated opinion of ourselves, both individually and collectively.

I speak from personal experience, and I’ve learned the hard way that I’m seldom really as smart as I think I am. When I first took over as editor of the West Virginia Trout Unlimited newsletter some six years ago, one of my first columns was to complain about how Pennsylvania’s trout management seemed SO far ahead of what we poor West Virginians had to deal with. I cited a PATU article regarding the desire to manage first and foremost for wild trout and I basically called out our WVDNR on the issue.

It’s funny when people are new to any environment how they forget that there was a whole history there before they arrived on the scene. I see it in new flyfishers regularly and went through the same phase myself….You discover things for yourself, on your own, and assume that you’ve had an epiphany of almost Biblical proportions. Being enthusiastic and wanting to prove yourself, you then rush out to share your grand discovery with your fellow anglers, only to find that to most of them your “discovery” is either an old-hat, tried-and-true tradition, or something that seems like a good idea to every newbie until they learn better.

That’s much the frame of mind I was in when I wrote that column all those years ago. My newfound enthusiasm had me skimming research from all over the East to find out why it seemed like other states had so much better wild trout fisheries than I thought we did, and how much better it seemed they dealt with the problems of over-harvest, stock truck chasing, and all the other ills I felt surely were just inherent in our system. In the process, I found all these great ideas from everywhere, it seemed, but right here at home. “How could we be missing something so obvious!?” I thought. “All we need to do is change the rules to be like (insert name of any other state here) and all our problems will just melt away like a gob of bacon grease on a campfire.”

Problem was, I didn’t bother to check at home first. If I had, I’d have learned more about West Virginia’s long history of wild trout management. I’d have learned that the reason some states might seem to have better wild fisheries has less to do with management than it has to do with more basic things like, say, water quality, or maybe something really unique like good habitat, or perhaps something as drastic as year-round favorable temperatures.

There are always going to be times when sportsmen disagree with wildlife managers, because as sportsmen we all generally come to a fairly narrow definition of the type of experience we as individuals or as groups of like-minded individuals want to enjoy. We tend to think that if the resource could just be managed in a way that suits us, everything would be perfect for everyone. Trouble is, there are just as many (or maybe many more) people who are seeking a different kind of experience. And they think if the resource could just be managed THEIR way, everything would be perfect for everyone.

Not only is it impossible for biologists and game managers to please all of their constituencies, the fact that those constituencies even exist makes it exceedingly difficult for them to just manage the resource from a sound scientific standpoint. Still, at least here in West-By-God, they do what seems to me to be a remarkable job of seeking input from all of those constituencies and working with them, rather than against them, to the greatest extent possible.

I’m not saying that I personally agree with every single thing DNR does to manage trout in West Virginia. But I will certainly concede that they know a hell of a lot more about managing trout than I do, and they sure have to keep a lot more people than me and my compatriots happy. My hat’s off to them for the job they do and I look forward to many years of working WITH them rather than AGAINST them to achieve what is truly best for the resource.