The Wyoming Game and Fish Department will hold public meetings in Cheyenne and Torrington to obtain feedback on the 2022-2023 waterfowl hunting regulations for the Central Flyway Zone C1A in southeast Wyoming.

The meetings will focus on shooting hours and bag and possession limits for dark geese. Proposed regulation changes involve increasing the daily harvest limit to 5 geese, an increase  from the current limit of 4. The proposed change would reduce confusion of regulations by standardizing the dark geese harvest limit with surrounding states and other zones in Wyoming. It would also provide more opportunity for hunters, and is intended to stabilize the Central Flyway population in eastern Wyoming. “The  population is over objective and biologically it can withstand the increase in harvest,” said Wheatland Wildlife Biologist Keaton Weber.

A proposal to change shooting hours to run from 1/2 hour before sunrise to sunset for each day of the week would reduce the complexity of waterfowl regulations, help promote hunter recruitment and retention, and provide more hunter opportunity with no early shooting hour closures. “There is a federal and statewide push to simplify waterfowl regulations in order to promote waterfowl hunter recruitment and retention,” Weber said.

The Cheyenne meeting will be at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 7, at the Game and Fish Headquarters, 5400 Bishop Blvd., in the Elk Room. The Torrington meeting will be at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, at the Platte Valley Bank conference room, 2201 Main St., Torrington.