lifesadrag

This guy has got to go......Must be robbing hunting dollars to pay for 40 million dollar lecture halls with his name on it and million dollar church donations!

http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?id=3681

mulvany

so i am looking at the list, and there is no meetings below central il!!! that retard doesn't realize the state is bigger than chicago! How did he get in?

jbird77

make sure you vote in the upcoming election before sportsman lose every right they have

lifesadrag

Hopefully he will be tucked away in a nice cozy cell before the next election.

Cougar Mag

Thanks for the link...I should not have read it because its another thing that Blago does that gets me upset. Sad thing is I have read editorials on his proposed budget from different newspapers and not one of them have mentioned anything about his cuts to the DNR. Its time for all Illinois sportsmen to call/write their state representatives.

2 Lunger

Have we ever had a govenor that paid any attention to any part of our state other than Chicago and it's suburbs?

fastetti

I personally take this as a shot to all hunters in Illinois, especially pheasant hunters. We have been talking about this for a while and some new information was just found out the other day dealing with this. I encourage everyone to take a look. After looking at this, I see that there is no way by removing this program will the state say money. Take a look:

http://www.gspci.org/modules/news/templates/template.asp?articleid=219&zoneid=1

Here Is A Bulleted List On The Discontinuation Of Illinois Pheasant Hunting.
Sunday, March 23, 2008 - by Greg DuBois

On Thursday, 3/20/08, I spoke with Terry Musser of the Illinois Dept. of Land Management and is the program manager for the controlled pheasant hunting program.

Here is a bulleted list of information from Terry:

[ul]
* The Governor’s office of management and budget has made a directive that the controlled pheasant hunting program be discontinued.

* The DNR is trying to negotiate a fee increase in an effort to save the program

* There are three facilities devoted to breeding, hatching and raising pheasants; a hatchery near Lincoln, the farm on the east grounds of Des Plaines and a similar farm near Mt Vernon.

* The controlled pheasant hunting takes place on 18 sites around the state.

* In 2006, there were over 37,000 hunter trips paid for on these controlled hunting areas. If the average person goes 3 times per year, the cancellation of the program will affect over 10,000 hunters.

* To put one hunter in a controlled pheasant hunting area for one day, it costs the state $42. Of course the hunter pays $15. This fee has not changed since the early 90s. It actually takes a bill to be passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor to raise this fee.

* The other $27 comes from the Wildlife and Fish Fund that gets it money from licenses, tags, fees and permits paid for by sportsmen. NO TAX PAYER $$$

* The state has said that the staff of these pheasant raising facilities will not be laid off. They will be assigned maintenance duties at the facilities and “other tasks”.

* Of that $42 it takes to put the hunter in the field, 2/3 of that cost is the staff who raise the birds. The other third is the cost of the birds, which is covered by the $15 fee paid by the hunter. SO, if the state keeps paying the staff and no birds are raised, birds that were already paid for by the $15 hunting fee, where is the savings to the state?[/ul]

Now for the commentary, there is no savings to the state. Many have speculated that the state is trying to disguise a ban on hunting of pen raised birds by telling us it is being cut out of the budget for money reasons. The above data from a very credible source has convinced me otherwise. I attended a town hall meeting in Joliet the same day I talked with Terry Musser. A member of Mike Madigan’s staff did a nice presentation on how the state budget works. The gist of her talk was that the state must cut funding of the big ticket areas of the state budget. She showed a pie chart graph that illustrated that the Discretionary spending portion of the state budget accounts for only 3.1% of the entire state budget. The Dept. of Natural Resources is only a fraction of that discretionary spending portion, that 3.1%. I ask myself, how much of the DNR budget is the controlled pheasant hunting program costing? Even if the program was not covered by the hunter $$ as noted above, what fraction of the fraction of 3.1% could the state hope to save? If I was not convinced by Terry Musser’s info above, Madigan’s staff member’s presentation on the state budget convinced me even more that this is not a money issue we are facing.

We will not beat this issue by complaining to each other. Take the credible information above and contact your state representatives and state senators and politely let them know the facts and how you feel about it. Here is a link to find your state rep and senator.

http://illinois.gov/government/gov_legislature.cfm

I encourage everyone to get out to a meeting or at least write a letter with these points as well as your deep concerns about this program. I believe that if they discontinue it for this year, it will be extremely hard to ever get back! Even if you don't hunt public ground, please voice your concerns for those of us that do! It may just be pheasants on public ground now, but lets not give these anti-hunters and politicians any fuel to get rid of any more of out hunting privledges!!!