Undergrads and recent graduates are often uncertain about pursuing graduate school opportunities, so I'm posting some lessons-learned and readings. First, if you do not have experience working with graduate students, faculty, or natural resource agencies, then get some ASAP, because coursework and GPA, while important, are not enough to provide you with the many skills you will need in graduate school and the job market afterward. Experience and good references are critical, and they reflect your level of interest and enthusiasm.
In addition to the tips below, I suggest reading Fischer and King's 1998 Wildlife Society Bulletin paper, Suggestions for new and aspiring graduate students in wildlife science. Stearn an Huey's Some modest advice for graduate students, with the Reply to Stearns: some acynical advice for graduate students, from the 1987 Ecological Society of America Bulletin, provides two sometimes contrasting views of what grad students should expect and how they should perform. Karban and Huntzinger's How to do Ecology: a Concise Handbook is a superb book for guidelines on how to succeed in grad school.
Lastly, Schwatz's The importance of stupidity in scientific research provides a useful perspective on how grad school in the sciences should make students feel "stupid", because recognizing the limits of and going beyond one's comfort zone is critical for continued learning and skill development. Schwatz highlights the fact that grad students should not only expect but even strive to be at the edge and outside of their comfort zone.
With that said, here are some tips for pursuing and beginning grad school:
1) In the fish and wildlife ecology job market these days, it is unlikely that you will obtain a career position with opportunity for advancement with only a BSc degree. If you succeeded in doing so, you would probably have less potential for advancement or spend more time trying to advance compared to the 2-3 years you would commit to an MSc program. Your job market for career positions could be larger with an MSc, and 2-3 years is a rather short commitment for a career-long investment. So, for those of you with "senioritis", enjoy your summer, and maybe work for year or two, but consider pursuing a grad school as a worthwhile long-term investment.
2) My MSc adviser at Texas Tech University asked me a number of questions during our first face-to-face meeting, including, "Do you want to do a PhD degree program after you finish here?", to which I responded that I did. He asked why, and I explained I wanted to teach and research at the university level, which I think he considered a sufficient answer. His point in questioning was to make me think about my long-term career objectives and associated education requirements.
It is important to identify your potential career objectives before committing to a grad program. Do you want to be a manager at a state, federal, or private wildlife refuge, management area, or park? Or do you want to be a government, university, or private researcher to inform and guide management and conservation decisions? Or maybe you want to work at the interface of management and research, such as a biologist at a public property (national or state parks, forests, refuges, etc.) to conduct research and manage land. Or perhaps you want a formal teaching component in your job, in which case you would focus on research and teaching in a PhD program. Yet another possibility is pursuing a career in extension, where you can conduct or translate research and publish it in popular literature for land owners, or work with landowners directly on issues such as land management and subsidy programs. Of course, there are many other related positions in such areas as science communications, computing, policy, administration, and so on, but the examples I gave are commonly sought after by students in fish and wildlife biology.