ORIGINAL: Crazy Horse RVN
One of the posts, I believe by DougE-dce, stated that Officer Boddenhorn was shown and taught theses things by PGC, Penn Stateand DCNR people. So he's repeating exactly what they have fed him. I'd like to see an independent evaluation/study by some unbiased group/agency.
Remember the MAT evaluation of the PGC? That was an unbiased, independent study, and the agency was found lacking. Just goes to show you that when you feed money into a university sometimes you get to hear what you want to hear.
And yes, Boddenhorn is a Game Warden (LEO) and is not qualified to act and report as a biologist. I also am not qualified as is not Doug or just about anyone else posting here. Especially those who hunt on land that offers70 deer per square mile and still maintains superior habitat. (Is that honey hole "Treasure Lake" DMAP country?)
Just because he cut someone's cousin a break does not give him a free pass to spout biologic, scientific dogma as though he did the studies himself. Law Enforcement is Law Enforcement and Biology is an entirely different field.
And to get back on track, there was no distortion concerning Rocco Ali's words. He spoke of what he knew and he made it was clear that 30 to 40 percent of his membership was/is displeased with the PGC's deer management program. Believe me, there is a great deal of talk about it in Harrisburg.
If you think that Wildlife Conservation Officers are only Law Enforcement Officers you are very sadly uninformed. Far less then 10% of my time throughout the year is spend on law enforcement. In fact, most of the time I get to spend on law enforcement is donated outside of my paid hours or I would have almost no time for law enforcement.
We have many WCOs that have Biologist degrees all the way up to Masters Degrees. All WCOs are trained in the biology field as it pertains to wildlife research and data collection. All WCOs also do a lot of work with the Agency’s Biologists and it is the WCOs who collect a pretty large amount of the data the Biologist then compile and use in determining the direction of the various wildlife management programs. WCOs are also the front lines voice on all of the Agency’s wildlife management programs; we have to be well versed in answering questions and explaining the various management programs to the multitudes of public we deal with.
You are way off base in your understanding, or in this case lack of understanding, as to just what the job description really is for a Wildlife Conservation Officer and how that relates to wildlife management.
But then I have noticed you are frequently pretty far off base with a lot of the things you harp about.
R.S. Bodenhorn