Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Allen" data-source="post: 188696" data-attributes="member: 389">This whole animosity that pops up at times between landowners and hunters is going to be a huge problem for both one of these days. Hunters who torque off landowners create individual landowners who get fed up and eventually say enough and just close their land off to all hunting, or let just a few family members hunt. This is GREAT for them! However, it also pushes more and more hunters onto already crowded public lands and available private lands. We all know the number of acres where almost no hunting is allowed goes up every year, often due to one or two bad apples.  I've even seen this with some of the most gracious people I know who once they said "no hunting", it even included myself after having known the family my entire life.On the flip side of this coin, landowners/ranchers/farmers who see initiated measures or Century Code changes that affect them (HFH, animal cruelty, special tax rates, etc, etc) should be expecting a greater number of negative changes in the future.  Quite simply, when they alienate a significant fraction of the population who in the past were very sympathetic to their operations and causes in general, they will lose their votes. Often times they voted for what was in the best interests of their "friends" because they didn't really have a horse in the race and in the future when more and more hunters have become fall anglers, are they going to still consider the people who no longer treated them like friends when they asked for permission to hunt as someone deserving of their support? Personally, I doubt it.  And the truth is there are thousands of acres that I hunted as a kid that are no longer available to me in my home area. These are people who I helped on their farm (working cattle, transporting machinery, etc) where I received no pay for my time. I've heard more than one of them comment about the good old days. I can't lie, the day I was told "but if I let you, then I have to also let so-and-so and his friends hunt" was the day I knew our relationship wasn't as tight as it once was.  Granted, quite a few of those acres are now also rented out and the landowner has allowed the renter to control hunting, but still.There are no winners involved in hunter/landowner spats.  Just a bunch of losers. I spend fewer days in the field chasing birds each fall, and it's not because I'm getting older, there are fewer birds, or I'm that much busier with the kids. It's an access issue which has lowered the quality of the hunt, period.</blockquote>

Verification: What is the most common fish caught on this site?

Reply to thread

Recent Posts

Friends of NDA