What do you do?

If you go back to TX let me know. I have some connections in TXPW, the new head of the wildlife arm was my college roomate and still current hunting partner. Another is one of the fisheries guys at A&M who is a Dr. and also works in one of the cooperative fisheries deals with TXPW.

Sounds like a good deal on your end all around. The deal we had was it was REALLY easy to get volunteers are people with minimal background to work doing spotlight surveys and even easier to collect deer (shoot deer at night from a high rack and do a necropsy). Nobody wants to volunteer to crunch numbers or go to the library (pre internet days) lol.

The 12 hours for my biology minor were probably more wasted than the music appeciation class I took. Glad you're puttitg it to real use in the field.

Speaking of electro fishing I'll give you a good tip that's much easier than hauling a generator backpack out to the field. Take burlap sack, fill it with walnuts (whole walnuts with the husk not shelled walnuts), drive your truck over them over and over to crush them up pretty good. Dunk the burlap sack upstream of where you want to collect fish and presto, fish float to the surface. It's also highly illegal (at least in TX) but effective and lighter than a generator. There's a reason nothing grows under a walnuts tree.

I had fisheries for one class. My instructor wasn't amused when I shared that info and thought I was full of shit so he tried it. I then had a talk with the dean....I got off seeing as the brother of the assistant dean showed me and handed it down to my great uncle. Funny how stuff works out.

Hey thanks man I appreciate that! I will definitely give you a shout if/when I end up back in TX.

It sounds like the projects you were working on were more short term and amenable to volunteers than the projects I've been on. Most of em up here you are catching fish all day every day from May through October. There's no way anyone could go that long without some kind of compensation to live on. And also I think they've cracked down a little more on "volunteer" labor, heh. But regardless, there will always be grad school students taking undergrads out in the field to help on their work and if they're lucky they might get a burger for lunch!

Yup that would be a long volunteer. But people in school used to do summer deals up in that neck of the woods working for near minimum wage to have it on their resume. For National Park Service, US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service and such. But if you need them longer than a summer that becomes an issue.

Get up to AK if you ever get the chance, they got it figured out lol. Those fish wheels running 24/7 catching fish in the rivers for natives and I saw a few being checked by Alaska Fish and Game for salmon counts I assume. They opened and closed the season and changed bag limits daily and you had to call in each night to find out what they were.

Anyway sounds like a lot of fun. You probably already figured this out, but the higher you move up the less "fun" stuff you get to do and less time spent in the field. That's what kind of altered my path in the field. I wouldn't chase that masters unless you just have to have it.

Just curious, where did you go to school in TX?

UNT, I worked in Dr. Jim Kennedy's lab. He's one of the top aquatic invert guys in TX and has a former PhD student doing a lot of work down at A&M with freshwater mussels. I have a feeling a lot of the people we know, know of each other.

We have those same fish screw traps here in Salmon on the Lemhi River and it's tributaries and that's actually what I'll be doing this weekend. Pull em out of the trap, weigh em, measure em, tag em, and then dump em right back in. We're 800 miles inland but still get tons of ocean run Chinooks and Steelhead, it's really incredible seeing these huge saltwater fish in streams 18" deep.

Alaska is definitely at the top of the list if I can pull it off. Me and the guys I worked with this summer became really close and we've done a lot of talking about seeing if we could land in Alaska together next summer. One thing about working with Idaho Fish and Game, they don't pay real well and it's hard as shit landing a permanent gig but they give you a wide array of experience in the field and you can really fill out a resume in a short time.

I went to SFA when it was just coming into it's own for wildlife and not just forestry. Got a double major BS in Forest Management and Wildlife Management with a minor in biology. A&M isn't real happy that the wildlife division for their part of the state is now run by a SFA grad for the first time ever. They are still tops for research but they've lots a step in the field so to speak.

The only person I know that's really big with fisheries in itself is Dr. Billie Higginbotham who works at A&M now with their AG extension for fisheries.

Most state agencies don't pay a whole lot from what I've seen. Most people I went to school with took one of two paths. They either went state and liked it and decided to stick around, or they went state for the resume building and went into private consultating and other stuff for money later on.

When I first saw a fish wheel it looked like a river boat paddle wheel. It must have been 40' in diameter on the Kenai river.


Sounds like you're having a good time and it really sounds like a great resume builder. Get the field experience early if you can. From talking to others who have done the same it has really paid off for them.

Higginbotham sounds familiar for sure. Sounds like an awesome double major. If I could do it all over I would go to the U of Montana and major in Forestry but growing up in Texas/OK I had no idea wtf a real forest even was.

And ya I interviewed for a couple environmental consulting jobs in Ft. Worth that would have paid really well but I didn't have enough experience at the time. Not real sure I would like it though, wearing slacks and a tie to work 50% of the time doesn't really sound appealing. The state agencies are really laid back. You're right though, the money would be much better but if that was my primary motivation I wouldn't have majored in biology or would have at least tried for med school. But alas, I care WAY more for fish than I do for people and would have been a shitty doctor.

It's the only way (at least at the time) to get a wildlife degree at SFA double major in forest managment (habitat) and wildlife management with a minor in biology. 148 hours for a BS.

The people I know that ended up in consulting sure don't suit and ties to work lol. Most of them work for private landowners in various parts of the state and the big ranches in South, TX.

We had a LOT of people wash out (I think it was 50% the first semester) in school who thought a wildlife management degree was playing with bambi or some shit. You mean I get hot and dirty and deal with dead animals a lot - oh the horror lol.

Eventually I figued out wildlife management outside of habitat managment is mostly people management and that didn't interest me at all.

I interviewed for a teaching posistion in the forestry department this summer. Not for me.

I'm considering teaching at a community college or "lecturing" part time so to speak in my other career to pass on some knowledge. Go ahead and laugh.

148 hours taking wildlife/bio/forestry courses doesn't sound bad if you are into that kinda stuff. I knew SFA has always had a kickass forestry program, didn't realize that their wildlife program had become such a force. Good on them, there's so few good ones in Texas we could use all of them we can get.

I got my masters there. The "project" had been abondoned by 3 other students prior to it being handed to me. Most of the work was done already. Temple Inland funded it so what did I care? Funny how that works at the Arthur Temple College of Forestry at SFA. I really wouldn't call it a masters. I was just the person to finish it up and put a bow on it.

148 hours but a LOT of that is stuff you never really use like hydrology from a Chinese professor that didn't speak any english and had to ride with him during labs. All my biology classes were of the intro to biology kind in their respective fields, ornithology, mammology, comparative anatomy and botany. Not real in dept stuff.

Anyway how much do you shut down fisheries work in the winter time? Not to mention having hunters hit the field there this month doesn't sound like a place to be out doing sampling.

A lot of the fisheries guys up here go and work hatcheries in the winter. This is my first winter not being in school since I started. A guy I work with worked as a biological observer on fishing boats in Oregon and is where I found out that was even a thing. They make great money but the catch is you have to sign a one year contract with the company he was with. I heard there's another outfit that doesn't require the contract but I just polished up my resume today and will start the search in earnest this weekend. I still have at least one month left with IDFG.

Have you ever heard of the A&M jobs board? It's the number one source for wildlife bio jobs in the nation. That's how I got my current gig. I'll be combing that every day as well as keeping tabs on state agencies like WA/OR/ID/MT/CO/TX and USAjobs.gov. When it comes to job hunting I'm the fucking worst, I hate it. But if all else fails I can always go back to Dallas and pick up a job servicing pools. That's what I did for 13 years prior to getting my bachelors.

Job Board | Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences Job Board

Oh and funny you mentioned hunters, last time I was out in the field was day 2 of the Elk bow hunting season and there was a outfitter camp set up right on one of the streams we're doing redd surveys on. At least it's just bows for now.

NM - I don't speak native Alaskan.

Apply for that, good resume builder. Get to see some incredible country if nothing else.

Edit - I didn't see the native AK thing. One thing I noticed while up there the natives and the people who live in AK are really on two separate sides of issues a lot, especially concerning fishing. Natives could run a fish wheel 24/7 and people who were born there had to buy a license and were limited to 3 fish a day for example.

I went up to AK in '92 and stayed with my great uncle. He knew a guy who was a biologist for AK fish and game and I spent some time with him. He had a pipe cub and a pilots license so we flew around and did some fishing in the not too crowded areas (fuck combat fishing). He died 2 years later picking up dall sheep horns to sell for scrimshaw to make a few extra bucks.

Decided after 2 years at my job that it was time to move n due to issues with Product Management and sales leadership. Have 2 opportunities I like and it is killing me to decide which to go with. Total comp for both is within 5-6 % of each other, one is higher base the other has a commission component that could make it more lucrative. Trying to weigh the pros and cons and they balance a ton. One is no travel work from home working for a VP that is an old friend with my own devops team and the authority to build cool things but no equity. The other is traveling gig with a bunch of equity options and higher potential upside in commissions... but fairly constrained technologically (search focus).

Really hard to know if I should go for the more corporate growth path (Principal architect with Sr director within a year or two) with a better end game (work life balance) or the big potential (possible upper six figures worth options if they IPO high) high effort job that is very specialized and mostly individual contributor focused and tends to be a career dead end (Sales Engineer).

I'd go with the one that has the bigger boobs.

Sexy factor is definitely with the search company.

CnCGOD_sl said:

Really hard to know if I should go for the more corporate growth path (Principal architect with Sr director within a year or two) with a better end game (work life balance) or the big potential (possible upper six figures worth options if they IPO high) high effort job that is very specialized and mostly individual contributor focused andtends to be a career dead end(Sales Engineer).

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Sounds like you answered the question. I couldnt be in a dead end job no matter how fancy it was.

Yea that is the concern, you have to go up through pre-sales managment but that doesn't do much besides add work.

Skype interview today. Feels fuckin weird being on camera.

The plus side is you don't have to wear pants

True, but the downside is I had to clean up my office.

Or rather, clean up my wife's mess in OUR office. I really need to just cave and use our spare bedroom as a work space. Every flat surface is covered in coupons and wrapping paper.