I am ready, I will spend $125 to hunt in Ohio next year and say screw continuing to fund this current commission. But really, How many others are willing to do the same? Will it even matter, the current lack of sales doesn't seem to concern them enough to take more pro-active measures. Their answer... raise the cost of licensesand punish the remaining hunters they have.
I like traveling around to different areas of the state each year to hunt. I try to pick out a new state forest or state gameland each year, and spend the third week of October hunting. This year, I decided to see what all the hoopla was all about in WMU 2G. I secured a 2G doe tag, along with a 3A doe tag. I stayed at a motel in Colten Point, just outside of Wellsboro. I hunted the Tioga State Forest in several different places, along with SGL 64 west of the town of Galeton.
I like to walk. I put on alot of miles in search of deer sign from last Saturday to yesterday. I found a little in the Tioga State Forest. Not much. During the 4 days that I hunted in various areas of the state forest, I never jumped a deer. Never heard a deer bolting or blowing. Never seen a hair.
SGL 64 was a little different. I found a bit of deer sign, and actually jumped a deer on the last day that I hunted it.
I found very few scrapes, 3 buck rubs and not a single bed in either location the entire time I was there. I can see why people are upset. The deer numbers, at least in the areas I hunted, are ridiculous.
Now I'm not sour because I feel the PGC owes me a deer. I'm not sour because I didn't kill a deer. I'm not sour at all. But I am above wasting my time in an area that should hold more deer than it does.
One night, while walking out of SGL 64 in the dark after spending the entire day hiking around looking for deer sign, I contemplated pulling my license and doe tags out of my license holder and ripping them up and sending them to Roxanne Palone to use as toilet tissue. But I'm above that. I think I will just hang on to them, frame them, and hang them above my desk as a reminder of what happens when special interest group infiltrate a wildlife management agency.
Next year, instead of picking out a different area of the state, I'll just pick another state. What these people have done is unforgivable. They'll not get another penny from me.
*Sidenote edit: I did see more then several deer in the no hunting zone of Colton Point SP. What a beautiful area.