Maine’s “Very Restrictive” When It Comes To Hunting?

The debate has been prevelant for some time as to what we are going to do to encourage our kids to sustain the tradition and strong heritage of hunting. Many feel that with all the electronic gadgets and gimmicks, kids are getting hooked on computers and video games long before they are old enough by law to go hunting.

Some states are taking bold steps to make a change. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are two states that now have some type of program to get kids as young as 8 into the woods with an adult.

Today opens youth turkey hunt day in Maine. Any kids, with a proper hunting license and/or permit, between the ages of 10 and 15 can go turkey hunting if accompanied by a licensed adult. Some people want that age restriction changed.

According to an article this morning by Deirdre Fleming, in the Portland Press Herald, Tom Nannery regional officer for the National Wild Turkey Federation, says that the Federation is planning to make a proposal to the state of Maine to get that restriction of minimum age lowered to 8 years.

The article further states that according to the National Wild Turkey Federation in South Carolina, Maine is listed as “very restrictive” when it comes to introducing kids to big-game hunts.

According to federation figures, of Maine’s adult population, 12% hunt while kids age 6-15 only 7%. The highest percent goes to neighboring Vermont whose youth hunters total 12% of the population in their age group but only 6% to the south of us in Massachussets.

Many feel, as I do, that when states began the youth hunt days it was a good thing and has proven itself to be affective. It is now time for some amendments to the rules to improve the opportunities and along with those changes, some serious attention needs to be paid toward the age restrictions and how to safely and affectively get our young, young kids out enjoying the benefits of hunting.

Tom Remington

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Placing More Financial Burden on Hunters

New Mexico’s Legislature has enacted a new law requiring hunters, fishermen and trappers to purchase a $4.00 habitat management and validation stamp to go along with their regular licenses. This extra money will be used for a number of projects not all of which are strictly for hunting, fishing and trapping. One dollar from each permit will go toward the purchase of easements for access to public lands.

Tom Remington

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Today Kids Chase Turkeys – Monday Everyone

In Maine, today marks the opening of turkey season for youths. A special day has been set aside just for the kiddos. On Monday the A-season begins for the regular spring hunt.

Dave Sherwood, outdoors writer, has an article this morning in the Morning Sentinel telling of the prospects for this spring’s turkey hunt and relays some precautions to the many hunters heading into the woods. It’s a good read.

Tom Remington

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That Dad Gum Dumb Hunter

Hunters are profiled by outsiders everyday. We are thought of as dumb, evil, killers, poor…..well, you know what? You fill in the blank. I’m sure you’re good at it. Heck, I am. I’m being honest so you might as well. Profiling has saved our lives many times over.

Everyone has an opinion too. Some have too much opinion and I may be one of them but I guess if I’m going to continue paying for my slot of space on the World Wide Web, I’ll continue being opinionated. It keeps me from driving my wife crazy as well.

When it comes to the management of wildlife there are more opinions, theories and experiential knowledge and science than has ever been recorded in any amount of books. We are all good at expressing what we know to be fact and there are so many dang “experts” on the topics that, well, it just becomes really difficult to know who to believe.

Take the brand new controversy – don’t you love controversies? – out in the John Denver State. You know, that Colorado Rocky Mountain high place. In Rocky Mountain National Park they got an overpopulation of elk and they want to get rid of a whole bunch of them.

This proposal that has gone out for public comment, as if that really matters, is recent and so the debate has, as the late Karen Carpenter would have sung, “….only just begun”. But the opinions, facts and closet scientists and experts are showing up everywhere. There’s more of them then there are elk. Oh, hey! New thought. Let’s give them all an elk to take home…..forget it. It’s fun to read the opinion pieces and chuckle, as I know people do when they read mine. Besides, I have a right! Ha!

I get confused easily and I’m sure to most of these “experts” that are weighing in on what’s the right thing to do in RMNP, they would classify me as one of them “Dad gum dumb hunters”. I surmised that by reading some of the comments as the debate is beginning to rage. If you don’t have “credentials” don’t enter the conversation because, well, you’re just too dang dumb to offer anything any of them want to hear.

I am far from an expert on anything, except maybe spending too much time pounding on a keyboard that at times appears a futile effort. But, I do know one or two things. One thing I know is I can read and I can add (is that two things?) – provided the numbers don’t get too big. I also know when I’m presented with a contradiction provided I can understand the language it is written or spoken in. (crud! Now I think I know three things. TIme for a raise).

One the one hand you have a completely qualified expert who will tell you that (I’ll try to use layman’s terms because I’m dumb) a chunk of land can only feed so many critters. If there’s too many critters, they’re going to eat too much of the land up. That’s simple enough. Now what happens is what do we do? Well, in my ignorant way, I see two options. Make more food or get rid of some critters.

We have brilliant scientists who say that culling – that’s a kind way of saying killing – a herd of critters only makes them same critters get upset and start making more babies to make up for the ones we just killed. Makes sense to me, I guess.

We have brilliant scientists who say that ain’t so. They say that if animals got enough to eat and everything kind of stays normal for them, they’ll populate like crazy. All I know is this is just a big contradiction. Who you going to believe?

We have brilliant scientists, with credentials too, who say wolves can be brought in to control elk herd numbers. We have brilliant scientists, with credentials too, who say wolves won’t have an affect on the elk herd. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that another contradiction?

Wouldn’t it work just as well to capture a few of the elk and inject them with some fatal disease, something highly contagious? We can’t wait too long. We will have succeeded in reducing the population that’s for sure and yes, we have another problem on our hands – too many wolves….er, um, I mean a disease to stop. Same thing but what do I know.

My daddy was a dad gum dumb hunter who never said much but when he spoke you better be listening. One day I remember asking him how he decided who he was going to vote for. He said, “That’s easy. I take a quick look around, then I check the contents of my wallet.”

Dumb hunters look around and check the contents of their hunting grounds. They know when things change and they got a pretty good idea what’s causing the changes too. I don’t know how they know this. Many of them never been to college and never read up on wolves and elk, deer and turkeys. But somehow they know.

It’s not a complicated manuever on their part and usually they don’t spout off about it in the newspapers, magazines or on TV. They just know. They’re out there a lot more than most scientists and them educated sort need to listen. The problem in RMNP isn’t a complicated matter at all. Just ask them dad gum dumb hunters. They could remedy that problem quickly and wouldn’t cost anything. But what do they know?

When you’re profiled into the ranks of “that dad gum dumb hunter” you’re down near the bottom of the food chain. You got to have credentials, money and connections, then maybe someone will listen.

Like me, for example. I don’t know squat but if I can stay at this long enough, I know I can convince enough people that I do know something. I can call myself an expert because, well, I am. And I do know that if it’s written down somewhere, it’s the truth. (Oh dang it!! I think that means there’s something else I know. I lied when I said I only knew two things. I knew that would cause trouble. Oh, no! I’ve done it again) THE END.

Tom Remington

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U.S. Wins World Black Powder Championships

The National Rifle Association of America team won the 4th World Long Range Historical Rifle Championships held in Cape Town, South Africa. Shooting 1880-era black powder rifles with metallic sites, the American team made up of eight finalist, scored higher than any other team from five other countries.

Individual honors went to Dave Gullo of Ponderay, Idaho scoring 329 out of a total of 375 points. Teammate Frank Minikowski of Hope Valley, Rhode Island placed second.

In the individual competition, each shooter gets 15 shots at each distance of 300, 500, 600, 700, 800 and 900 meters.

Congratulations!

Tom Remington

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Proposed Colorado Elk Slaughter a Repeat of Yellowstone

There is a parable that has been around for many years that goes something like this:

I walk down the street. I see a hole. I fall into it. The next day I walk down the same street and see the same hole and I fall into it. On the third day, I walked down the same street, see the same hole and try to jump over. I fall in. On the fourth day, I walked down the street, saw the whole, tried to go around it. I fell in. On the fifth day, I took a different street.

Humans are creatures of habit and often we have to travel down the same pot-hole-littered street and encounter all sorts of problems before we learn how to navigate safely. Why can’t National Park authorities remember what happened in Yellowstone back in the 1960s and take a different street? Have all the participants from that era died off? Was history not recorded?

Back then, the elk herd in the Yellowstone National Park had grown too big, just like the herd in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. With national attention, by 1960s standards, people were disgusted and outraged as they watched as park personnel systematically slaughtered the elk. It was a disaster for the park service and after much protesting, the killings stopped in 1967.

The elk continued to grow in numbers eating up everything in its path, until two things happened. The grizzly bears began to multiply in this same area and wolves were re-introduced to the park. The mortality rate of the elk went up and the numbers came down. Now there are too many wolves and in areas the elk herd is getting too small. One problem has replaced another.

I walk down the street and I see a hole. Several years later, the same National Parks System has the same problem brewing in Rocky Mountain National Park – too many elk. The same park pesonnel have put together five proposals in a plan to manage the elk and bring the numbers down. Guess what’s included in this plan?

One plan, which park officials declared as their preferred method is to send park personnel out into the woods, at night, with silencers on their rifles and slaughter hundreds, even thousands of these creatures over the next few years. Evidently they believe that by stealth of darkness and with silencers equipped, the public won’t see or hear what they are doing.

There are variations in the five proposals but in essence all five proposals involve some amount of slaughter and/or the introduction of wolves. I walk down the street…….

It doesn’t matter what the park service does, other than to do nothing, which is an option proposed in their management plan, they are fighting a winless battle as far as keeping people happy.

Animal rights groups will come out in droves to protest the killing of the animals. Environmentalists will be demanding that wolves be brought back and the millions of hunters in America will be saying what they have always said – hunting is cheap, safe and the only effective way to management wildlife.

It is my belief that this will end up being a much larger controversy than the Yellowstone debacle of the sixties. What will make it different is today we have more resources to gather information quickly and saturate the media outlets, including radio, TV, newspapers and the Internet, plus there are more groups on all sides of these kinds of issues.

Not included as a viable option for reducing the elk herd in RMNP is hunting. Is this such a bad idea? Think about it for a minute. There are millions of visitors each year to the park. Couldn’t the park be closed for let’s say one week each year while hunters do their thing? Would that be such a huge imposition? It could be done in the late fall after the real busy season has ended.

It would cost the National Park Service essentially nothing and would actually provide a revenue as hunters are willing to pay for the opportunity to bag and eat elk. The money could be used to improve habitat and other good elk management needs. Is opening the park to hunting for one week as inhumane as killing them at night or knowing that wolves are going to destroy baby calves to reduce numbers?

A precendent has already been established when it comes to allowing hunting in National Parks. The Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming allows hunting elk in a portion of that park. In 1950 the park was enlarged and as part of a complicated compromise between the federal government and the state of Wyoming, hunting was allowed in the park east of the snake river.

As I understand it, there are four parts to the park and in three of those sections, the elk population is mostly stable. It is the area just north of Jackson Hole that has a runaway elk population. It also is part of the area where hunting isn’t allowed and wolves have had very little impact on the herd.

There are problems that exist with the hunting and I’m not sure what is being done to remedy it. The major problem there has to do with how the zones were set up that allow hunting and not allow hunting. With this boundary that was created it has established what is known locally as “the firing line”. Hunters have set up shop, if you will, to shoot the elk as they migrate from one zone to the other before the elk cross into the “safe zone”. Everything has its problems and I’m sure this one can and will be worked out eventually.

The park service is alone no matter which of the five options they have decided to implement. They have intentionally left off what I believe to be the best viable option to cure their problem – hunting. Imagine the support they would receive from the millions of hunters should they make the right move and solve the elk problem with hunters. They certainly wouldn’t be alone any longer.

The proposal is just making its way out into the public and is sure to become a hot issue and receive a lot of attention before it is done. We’ll continue to follow the story.

If you think that the NPS hasn’t already made up its mind and you want to let the powers that be know your thoughts on this topic, send an email to: romo_superintendent@nps.gov

*Previous Posts*

National Park Service Wasting Money and Resources, Again?

Tom Remington

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Maine Gobbler Addicts Getting Antsy

This Saturday the kids get the day to turkey hunt and the A – spring season begins on Monday. Mark Latti from Inland Fisheries has release the following two press items.

Youth Hunters Get Their Own Day This Saturday

AUGUSTA, Maine — Once again this year, junior hunters who are interested in turkey hunting get their own day before the regular season starts.

Hunters who are 10 years of age or older and under 16 years of age and possess a junior hunting license and a Spring Turkey Permit may hunt under the supervision of an adult on April 29, 2006.

Junior hunters may hunt for one bearded turkey with firearms or bow and arrow, and must be accompanied by parent, guardian, or a qualified adult.��The qualified adult must be a person 18 or older who has been approved by the youth’s parent or guardian and must hold a valid Maine hunting license or have completed a hunter safety course. The accompanying adult cannot possess a firearm.��

And this one concerning the regular turkey hunt.

Turkey Season Opens Monday

AUGUSTA, Maine — Wild Turkey Season begins Monday, and for the first time ever, hunters can purchase their permit through a license agent or online at www.mefishwildlife.com.

The reintroduction of wild turkeys in Maine is a true success story. Wild turkeys are now a common sight through southern and central Maine, and this year, all hunters have a chance to hunt turkeys in the state,” said Roland D. Martin, Commissioner, Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Once again this year, the season will be split into two seasons. Hunters born in even years are assigned Season A, and those born in odd years have Season B. Season A runs from May 1 – 6, May 22-27, and May 29-June 3 2006. Season B hunters have May 8 – 20 and May 29, 2006 – June 3, 2006.

Hunting hours for Wild Turkeys are � hour before sunrise until 12:00 p.m. and hunters are allowed one bearded spring turkey per permit holder per season. Turkey hunting is open in southern and central Maine in Wildlife Management Districts 10-18, and 20-26.

Hunters are reminded to ask for landowner permission before hunting private property, and to hunt safely.

Tom Remington

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Wisconsin DNR Says December Deer Hunt Will Happen

It’s been up and down, over and under, around and through for where the DNR stands on opening up an early December deer hunt for Wisconsin. The concern has always been how to best manage the deer herds, especially in the areas north of U.S. Route 8.

There’s too many deer and management experts want to reduce numbers. The DNR originally proposed opening up an antlerless deer gun hunt in early December for northern Wisconsin. They met with a lot of opposition from the snowmobile clubs who said having a deer hunt that late in the season would hamper their efforts to prepare their trails for snowmobiling.

Evidently feeling the pressure, the DNR backed down and said the 2006 deer seasons would remain the same as 2005.

Now, the DNR has unanimously approved the early December hunt. It will be for 4 days, commencing on the second Thursday following Thanksgiving. This hunt has a sunset clause after one year. At the end of the hunt, officials will evaluate how it went and what overall effect it had on herd management, etc.

As part of the December hunt approval, the DNR ended the October antlerless deer hunt and ceased the Earn-a-Buck program for those zones troubled by chronic wasting disease.

Tom Remington

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Grolar Bear or Pizzly Bear?

No, it’s way too early in the morning to have had too much to drink. Actually, anytime for me is the wrong time to have had anything to drink, so what’s up with the title?

A big game hunter forked out about $50,000 for a polar bear hunt. He acquired all the right permits, got himself a reputable guide who has been at this business for a long time and set out to bring home a polar bear.

During their hunt, both men spotted a polar bear. Jim Martell, the American hunter, hesitated for a second and the guide told him to shoot. So he did. BANG!

Martell had himself a polar bear, or was it? It looked like a polar bear but it wasn’t the bright white normally seen on the arctic beast. It was kind of a dirty blonde. The guide told Martell he may have shot a cross-bred bear – a polar bear and grizzly cross breed, which is extremely rare.

Only the beginning! A wildlife officer has confiscated the hide from Martell and has sent it for DNA testing to determine which species of bear he has killed. If it is determined to be a grizzly, he faces charges of illegal possession of wildlife because he didn’t have a permit for grizzlies. That could bring him a $1,000 fine or one year in the pokie!

The moral to this story? A bear in the hand makes you wish it were back in the bush. Or try this one: Confucious say, “Bear who look dirty lead to grizzly mess.” Or, “Don’t look a gift bear in………ah, forget it!

Tom Remington

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News Headlines and Briefs For April 26, 2006

[AUDIO:http://www.mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/audio/april26.mp3]

In a hurry or can’t be at your computer to get caught up on all the hunting news around North America? Now get the headlines and briefs in about 5 mins. Listen to it while you work at your computer or you can download it to your IPod.

Today’s Headlines -

Florida Passes Anti-Gun Grab Law

Minnesota Approves Funding For Hunting Fishing Habitat

New York State Deer Bear Hunting Rule Changes

VP Cheney Hunting Again

Maine Teen Charged

Ohio Gun Rights Group Endorses Candidates

Tom Remington

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Ohioans For Concealed Carry Endorses Candidates

The grassroots organization called Ohioans For Concealed Carry, has compiled a list of political candidates for the May 2, 2006 primary election that they endorse. If you are interested in their endorsements, visit their site. You can even print out a copy of the entire list to take with you to the polls.

Tom Remington

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Maine Teenager Charged With Manslaughter

Back in March we brought you a series of stories and upates about the shooting death of Joshua Sawyer of Pittsfield, age 15 (scroll down for links to these stories). He and two other boys were playing with guns when one boy accidently shot Sawyer in the neck. The first report that went out, claimed the boys were hunting, on a Sunday. Later it was determined they were in a nearby field with guns. All three boys admitted later they were playing with the guns.

The 14-year old, whose name is still being withheld, has been charged with manslaughter and reckless conduct with a firearm. His name will be released on his schedule court appearance in Skowhegan on June 12, 2006.

A 34-year old man, Scott Rioux, is being charged with 3 counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count of Sunday hunting. Officials say he was responsible for suppling the three boys with the guns.

*Previous Posts*

Update on Death of Pittsfield Teen

Shooting Death of Teen Was Result of Playing With Guns

Update on Maine Shooting Accident

Child Killed in Hunting Accident

Tom Remington

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V.P. Cheney Goes Hunting Again

This is humor by the way. If you haven’t seen the VEEP on his second hunting outing, you might want to check this one out.

Warning! This is not for the faint of heart.

Tom Remington

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New York State Proposing Changes to Deer and Bear Hunting Regulations

The Department of Environmental Conservation has announced its proposals for changes to the deer and bear hunting regulations for 2006. Comment period on the proposal runs until June 5, 2006.

You can visit the New York Hunting Today website news section and get all the information along with links to the text of the entire proposal and directions on how to comment.

Tom Remington

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Minnesota House Approves Dedicating Funds For Hunting and Fishing Habitat

There is one thing that appears both Houses and both parties agree on, the need to dedicate money from sales taxes to go toward improving and protecting habitat for hunting and fishing. Another thing that is certain, both sides can’t agree on how to get it done.

The Senate passed a version earlier that would increase taxes and appropriate $270 million a year to the program. The House’s version would take a percentage out of existing taxes that would total $135 million a year.

As you might guess the differences follow party lines with the Republicans opting to not raise taxes, the Democrats saying they won’t cut existing programs to make it happen. The Republican version would take affect in 2009, giving the Legislature a chance to shuffle funding for programs to make it happen. The Dems want it to take affect immediately by raising taxes.

This is typical political wrangling and hopefully a plan will be adopted that will fund the needed habitat protection program. The message that the Minnesota Legislature is sending is that the state supports hunting and fishing. It lets everyone know that these two activities are valued and are apart of the heritage of Minnesota.

The bill, either version, is being presented as an amendment to the state Constitution making it a permanent change. This sends a very loud message to a lot of people. More states need to consider similar legislation that will protect the heritage of hunting and fishing through Constitutional Amendments.

Let’s hope both Houses can reach consensus and get this amendment passed. The sooner the better.

Tom Remington

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