The last training session will be held on Saturday, Feb. 8th beginning at 2 p.m. at the Santee Cooper Auditorium in Moncks Corner.
Also, they are changing the rules. Boats will have to be stopped or at idle speed while shooting. They are also going to cut the season in half.
http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/24/3225190/high-interest-in-cormorant-hunting.html
High interest in cormorant hunting prompts shortening of season
By Joey Holleman
COLUMBIA, SC ? Surprised that nearly 800 people signed up for permits to hunt double-crested cormorants on Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, the Department of Natural Resources plans to tweak planned rules to ensure hunter safety and reduce the number of birds shot.
The two major changes to original plans reduce the hunting period from Feb. 2-March 31 to Feb. 2-March 1 and require boats used in hunting the large-bodied, duck-like black birds be stopped or at no-wake, idle speed.
Meanwhile, the Audubon Society, which typically cooperates with the DNR, is adamantly opposed to this first-time effort to reduce the cormorant population. Audubon doesn?t think the effort is necessary and fears it could have an impact not only on the cormorant population but also on similar-looking species such as anhingas, loons and some ducks.
Anglers and fishing guides have complained that growing populations of the cormorants ? some migratory, some year-round residents ? have been eating huge amounts of bait fish and impacting the economically important sport of fishing on the lakes.
Because cormorants aren?t considered a game species, the natural resources agency had to get special permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a volunteer program to cut the number of cormorants on the lakes.
Derrell Shipes, chief of wildlife statewide projects for the agency, said there is little scientific study of the impact of the rise in cormorant populations, but there?s no doubt they eat a lot of small fish. Thousands of the large, long-necked black birds hang out aroun
