RE: Missouri MDC continues to push against hunters!
Check out this post I left on the MDC comments website:
"Dear Sir or Ma'am:
Let me start off by telling you that I am a native Missourian that now lives in Kansas. I grew up in Missouri, joined the service (U.S. Army) and after my enlistment was over, came back to Missouri to attend college at the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri S&T). I currently work in Missouri and pay income taxes in Missouri (not to mention paying a 1% Kansas City, Missouri TIF tax) but due to the proximity of my work and the fact my wife attends school at the University of Kansas, I now live in Kansas. I am also an avid hunter and am fortunate enough that my extended family owns land in Northeastern MO (near Atlanta). It was quite a sticker shock to see my deer and turkey hunting tags go from $15 to $150, then to $175 and I actually had to give up hunting turkey in MO all together due to this expense. I now see that the MDC is making it's steepest price hike on deer hunting tags yet (from $175 to $225) AND have eliminated discount pricing for non-resident landowners for deer and turkey permits. Now, I understand that the states of Missouri and Kansas (not to mention Iowa and Illinois) are having a price war with each other by charging exorbinate rates for non-resident deer and turkey permits (at least 10X the rate of non-residents) but this is getting out of hand and the only people that are losing are hunters. We have a problem in this country with not enough people passing on the tradition of hunting to the next generation and we are losing hunters faster than we can replace them. This form of price gouging not only excludes lower and middle-class income families from hunting in their neighbooring states and passing on the rich tradition of hunting but will start to hurt the small town economies that rely on out-of-state hunters to patronize their establishments during the hunting season. I hope the MDC and the conservation departments of Kansas, Iowa and Illinois see that these continual price hikes only serve a near-sighted goal of bolstering your tax coffers at the expense of alienating hunters that live in neighbooring states. I would love to teach my children to hunt on the land that they may one day inherit, but at the current rate that the permits are being raised, I probably won't be able to afford it.
Regards,
Sean Garrison "
It probably won't due any good and I'll probably get some lipservice email but sending it made me feel better. I guess I should start looking for deer and turkey hunting spots in Kansas [&:].