District 5 Public Wildlife Meeting
I’m about brain dead at this point. After a crazy day at work I fought the rush hour traffic to get out to the Graham NC Courthouse for the public meeting on the wildlife proposals. Many of them I covered in previous posts, Fishing Proposed Changes, Turkey Proposed Changes, and Big Game Changes.
I took these photos just prior to the start of the meeting and it was a rather full house really once it started standing room only. I won’t go through everything at this point but just some highlights.
The first 30 minutes was taken up with another Sunday Hunting Proposal to allow Sunday Hunting on a limited number of Game Lands only. There is no additional information because if they decided to go with it the Wildlife Commission will have to decide which ones and how to go about doing it. Not knowing which game lands they my select you get into the issue of dog hunting, no specifics on whether it would be normal hours or start after church time, very ambiguous to say the least. With out going back and reviewing my notes I’d guess that more then 80% of the comments had little to do with the question they asked rather most of the comments were about the study and Sunday Hunting in general. I won’t say it was a waste of time but I doubt they got much useful relevant information for the specific question they asked. The other thing I gathered, not only at this meeting but it was certainly reinforced, is we as hunters are very divided on the topic of Sunday Hunting.
The split turkey season was not well received and it probably got the lion share of public comment over any of the other proposals. I will go into this in much more detail at a latter date but the motivation behind this is strictly political. Vice Chairman Steve Windom was not at this meeting but some folks made it perfectly clear that his involvement and pushing this issue for the third year in a row despite the opposition from the biologists, NWTF, and the general public was getting old. They asked by a show of hands who supported this proposal not a single hand was raised, then they asked for a show of hands who opposed it to raise their hands. I did not see a single individual other then wildlife staff who did not have their hands raised. The moderator said “about 95%” and I think he short changed us a bit.
After the meeting I talked with a NWTF representative who said that at the district 4 meeting on Monday there was not a single person who spoke in favor of the proposal. That’s the District that the hunters are supposedly asking for the early season. Seems funny that not a one stood up in that district to support it but then again Vice Chairman Steve Windom wasn’t at that meeting either.
It is going to take me a few days to work through all the details I got and I’ll make additional posts. Anyone that attended I’d be interested to hear your comments on the meeting.
[...] District-wide meetings were held yesterday in North Carolina to discuss many of the 73 proposed changes, nine of which involve deer hunting alone. The District 5 meeting was held at the Graham Court House and Skinny Moose Media’s outdoor blogger Moose of Moose Droppings, attended the meeting and files his preliminary report. [...]
Pingback by Black Bear Blog » Blog Archive » North Carolina Holds District Wildlife Commission Meetings — January 11, 2007 @ 9:08 am
For or Against - at least the people there were part of the process. Good Coverage.
Comment by Bill Anderson — January 13, 2007 @ 11:01 am
[...] Because baits are legal for deer and people do put baits out for bear as well an exclusionary zone will be established around bait sites. You can not kill a bear inside that bait zone unless you’re a dog hunter and the chase begins outside the exclusionary zone which is 100 yard zone for unprocessed foods like grains and fruit and 300 yards for processed foods and sugars. My reading of the rules if they are passed as proposed will make a warden’s job nearly impossible. How unless he witnesses the entire hunt will he know where the hunt began and whether or not a dead bear inside the exclusionary zone was killed legally? Is he going to carry a quart jar to measure the amount of grain at the site? It also sounds like if someone really wanted to they could easily get around the exclusionary zone by baiting in an area where they have a clear field of view that exceeds the 100 yard exclusionary zone. There was minimal debait about this issue at the district 5 meeting but in the mountains where there is a lot more bear hunters the Asheville Times reports “strong opposition” to the proposal. [...]
Pingback by Moose Droppings » Is that a Picnic Basket Over There? — January 18, 2007 @ 10:50 pm