ORIGINAL: R.S.B.
ORIGINAL: J Pike
RSB we actually agree on some thing!! I have always believed that farmers and other land owners (timber co.'s, nurserys etc.) should be able to harvest as many deer on their lands as they see fit. With the only regulation being that the meat gets donated and does not go to waste. Pike
Though I agree with farmers, nursery and large forest land owners being able to have the tools to control deer populations to levels that are consistent with their business objectives I also think we need to use caution by keeping hunters as the actual management tool they can use.
In other words we need to allow the hunters the tools on those lands to control the deer populations in cooperation with the landowners. I think both red tag (only on farm lands) and DMAP on forest lands goes along way toward providing those tools.
What I don’t want to see is forested landowners being permitted to kill deer for damage like farmers can legally do. If large forest landowners had the right to kill for damage they could use their employees to kill deer in one week of the year with spotlights then hunters kill during the entire season. At that point the landowners that really do harbor the deer year round would no longer need hunters at all. We would then see more land closed to public hunting, more hunters crowded onto public land and even more disparity of hunter harvests across much of the large forested lands of our state.
In other words we all need to work with those landowners toward finding the tools that hunters can use to help them control the deer numbers to meet their business and land management objectives. The Game Commission has been trying to work with them to help improve the future for hunting and hunters, it would be a lot better if more hunters understood that and learned more about working together instead of trying to tear down the work that has already been accomplished to make a better future for hunting.
R.S. Bodenhorn
Yup.
Hunters that continue to position themselves asadversaries instead of cooperatorswithtimber property owners are shoting themselves in the foot, the timber interests will eventually give up on utilizing hunters as a tool and do exactly what RSB has suggested. We need to remember that we are their guests and we
will get tossedif the day comes where we bring more grief than benefitto those that provide food and habitat to the deer.
Think hunting access is tough now? just keep crying for more deer. It's going to continue to get tougher and tougher to find huntable places every year.
BTW, many of those states mentioned as having far higher success rates already have very limited public access. If you want to hunt in the south or the midwest, you better own some land, have family who does, or pay big $$ to belong to a club.