The dissertation consists of a collection of personal essays about hunting and fishing. Because the essays are narratives and contain dialogue, characterization, description, themes, etc., they fall under the genre of creative nonfiction. The dissertation has two parts. Part I consists of an essay that discusses the author’s struggle to combine creative nonfiction with outdoor writing and also describes the author’s dilemma of writing about hunting, a topic that is often controversial at the university, while a graduate student. Part II of the dissertation consists of narratives that recount the author’s hunting and fishing experiences that occurred in North Texas and in the mountains of New Mexico. The essays discuss fishing for trout and hunting for deer, wild boars, quail, and duck. Three major themes are developed throughout the dissertation. The first theme describes the close relationship that exists between the author and his father. This closeness is partly due to the time that they have shared during decades of hunting and fishing together. The second theme discusses the ethics of hunting and especially focuses on which methods of hunting are ethical and which methods are not. The third theme explores the complex and sometimes unpleasant interactions that occur between sportsmen when they encounter each other while hunting and fishing. This theme explores the give and take attitude that must exist in order for sportsmen to get along. This attitude is necessary because no two outdoorsmen view the outdoors and hunting and fishing in quite the same way.

Hunting and fishing made up a large part of the life of Ernest Hemingway, and these sports, in turn, frequently served as a means of communication for some of his most serious ideas.

Though it bears favorable natural environment, the development of Taiwan coastal fishery is blocked by many factors. Among which, the exhausted fishery resources stays at the top, resulting from the various pollution, over-fishing and illegal fishing etc.. In addition, subject to the WTO regulations, the fiercer competition facing fishing products is another factor. To improve this situation, the Fisheries Administration takes many measures, in order to protect the fishery resources, realize the sustained development and increase the income of fishermen. This research is to, by the method of policy analysis and the principle of the fisheries economics, discuss the protection measures on Taiwan coastal fishery resources in recent years. Taking the policy planning into consideration, other than restoring the cultivation and re-productivity of the fishery resources, the diverse development is also concerned. While the analysis of the fish output, production value, unit fishing effort and the income of the fishermen presents a well performance. This research is designed to discusses, with the method of cost-benefit-analysis, the executive benefits of the measures in 2000, 2001 and 2002, with the results showing the proportion of the profits to the cost over 1 and the net profits also speaking for the well performance. Suggestions: 1. The policies for the coastal fisheries should be pertinence of the concrete targets, in order to avoid the decrease in profits resulting form the conflict regulations. The harmony among regulations is important for realization of the diverse development. 2. More detailed statistics is necessary for objective assessment of the executive performance. 3. The results attained always lag the policy application, so that the timing and the durative of the execution cannot be neglected or all efforts may be in vain. And experts are necessary to supervise and assess if the running cost of the policy enforcement is regarded as the scale economy, and such performance should survive the changes in personnel and the decrease in outlay.

There are 231 fishing ports and harbors along the coast of Taiwan now and utilize the phenomenon on the low side of function as to some fishing ports and harbors. This research intends to investigate a practical evaluation index for breakwater reduction based on the functions of fishing ports and the re-utilization of coastal space, the factors of security of fishing ports, fishing environment, development of tourism and some other factors are taking into account while evaluating the breakwater. In the research approach, the statistic data of usability ratio on the breakwaters at the fishing ports in Taiwan is first summarized. Then, to investigate the visiting scholar different fields, such as expert, government's fishing policy unit and fisherman's group, etc. The factors for evaluating breakwater reduction and the weighting number for the standard quantification of evaluation indices are proposed and the feasibility is confirmed with the statistic analysis. Furthermore, the evaluation criteria for the implementation of the construction methods of breakwater reduction in a fishing port is devised, and the breakwater reduction at Hemei Fishing Port is taken as a demonstrative example to analyze the achievement of reduction work, hoping to provide the reference basis for the fishing port facility reduction works evaluation by each level of fishery authorities and to achieve the requirements of the policy for the reduction of water-breaking to construct the decrement of things.

The primary purposes of this dissertation were understanding the nature of an attitudinal scale designed to measure the consumptive orientation of recreational anglers and filling a gap in the published literature regarding measurement using the scale. Consumptive orientation was defined as the attitude anglers hold towards catching fish, including catching something, retaining fish (as opposed to releasing), catching large fish (size), and catching large amounts of fish (numbers). In order to confirm these four attitudes are measured by the scale, a model was hypothesized and tested using a confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of male anglers in Texas. It was reasoned that a different subculture may interpret the attitudinal statements differently; thus, the structure of the scale was explored using women as a separate sample. Finally, an example of how the scale could be used was provided by examining differences between tournament and nontournament anglers?? attitudes towards the four constructs measured by the scale. Overall, results were varied with the hypothesized model used to confirm the scale. While results indicated dropping four of the sixteen statements would not result in a significant change in the structure of the scale, results also confirmed there were four distinct attitudes measured by the consumptive orientation scale. The use of the scale with the larger angling population was confirmed by finding the same structure using a sample of women anglers. Finally, the scale was shown to be useful for examining activity-specific differences in angling social worlds. Differences were detected between tournament and nontournament anglers on three of the four consumptive attitudes: ??catching numbers,?? ??catching large/trophy fish,?? and ??retaining fish.?? Differences found were related to the commitment level of tournament and nontournament anglers. Further analysis examined how avidity may have affected differences among angler groups. These differences further current knowledge about tournament anglers and their expectations for fishing experiences. Overall, results support the usefulness of the consumptive orientation scale as a survey tool for understanding recreational fishing clientele.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on December 22, 2009). Thesis advisor: J. Mark Morgan, Ph.D. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.) in Wildlife Ecology--University of Maine, 2009. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-87).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2009. / Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Sustainability, Environmental and Life Sciences. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-208)

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2002. / Advisor: Dr. Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 15, 2004).

This thesis develops statistical methodology for modelling the selectivity of fishing nets, using data from covered codend experiments of fishing trawls. First, the effects of subsampling an experimental catch instead of measuring the entire catch are investigated. Often the subsample is not taken at random. This leads to bias in the selectivity parameter estimates. Simulations show that the effects of non-random subsampling are minimised when equal proportions are sampled from the test and the control net. A model is developed for describing the selectivity of a net with a window panel inserted. This model quantifies the selectivity of both the codend and the window panel, which can then be combined. The model is used to investigate the selectivity of different window panels and their contribution to the combined selectivity. Traditionally, selectivity has been modelled as a fixed and random effects model, estimated in two stages. As an alternative, Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques are explored. A Bayesian selectivity model is formulated, and the effect of the prior distribution on the variance components is investigated. The posterior distribution is relatively insensitive to a prior distribution having variation of similar magnitude as the variation present in the data. For model selection, the p-value approach applied to the posterior marginal densities is more useful than the Bayes and pseudo-Bayes factors. The Bayesian selectivity model is extended to include variation between seasons and variation between trips. The new model is applied to a data set containing seasonal variation. Finally, a Bayeisan multi-species model is developed that accounts for dependencies between species. This gives more precise selectivity parameter estimates. It also reduces bias in the parameter estimates by accounting for mechanisms behind non-random missing data.