Formerly The Outspoken Sportsman

EXAMPLE #1 

In deer management unit 452, (Zone 2), hunters can still bait, but can use only 5 gallons of "grain, seed or pelletized food" from October 1 through December 15. 

By the way, are you aware that the alfalfa pellets endorsed by the DNR wildlife people as being such wonderful feed for the deer, actually become deadly poison if the pellets fed become wet and a fungus forms!  The DNR biologists know this but they still recommend for deer feed!

Throughout the rest of the state, bait hunters can use whatever they want, but still only 5 gallons at a time.  In other words, there can be only five gallons of bait in front of any given hunting location at any one time.

In the event that you throw down and scatter five gallons over a 10 X 10 foot area, (another requirement of these new regs), and the deer happen to eat all of the food up before the close of the hunting day, you are allowed to put down another five gallons.

I personally can't wait to see a DNR officer down on his, (or her), olive-drab knees, picking up scattered kernels of corn as they try to determine I have spread out more than the prescribed five gallon limit.

The major bit of stupidity involving this first example has to be the dates that hunters are allowed to do their baiting activities.  October 1st, through December 15th!

What this effectively mean is that there will be no pre-season baiting for anyone in the bow hunting fraternity.  these folks will be forced by these new regulations to take your bait into your blind area on the morning of the opening day of the bow season.

Most everybody who bow hunts over bait realizes that it usually takes a couple of days for the deer to begin showing up at the bait site on a regular basis.  That being the case, you can pretty well count on a few wasted days of your hunting time as you sit in your tree stand or ground blind watching a bait area with no deer around.

Further, this new law also means that you late season bow hunters will not be able to bait at all if you decide to hunt anytime after the December 15th deadline.

Now, you may be asking, why in the name of thunder would a group of supposedly intelligent individuals ever pass such nonsense and then make it the law of the land?  Well, let me submit to you that there are a couple of major reasons.  First, never forget for even one moment that the honest and actual agenda for the bureaucrats involved in this silliness is to see the end of all baiting and supplemental feeding in the state.  I truly believe that if it weren't for people like myself and Kyle Randall as well as a whole bunch of other concerned folks who time and time again have made our wishes known to "The Wild Bunch" down in Lansing, that baiting and supplemental feeding would have been stopped this year for good!

But we forced the issue to the degree that the NRC was forced to back down......A LITTLE BIT!!!

In essence, these new baiting dates are simply on the part of the NRC to clearly show us that they are still in charge and that every right to make as many stupid laws as they choose, just the same way that they have always done!

This is a blatant, mean-spirited, muscle-flexing, show-of-power on their behalf with no legitimate reasoning behind their actions.

AND IT DOESN'T HAVE A DAMN THING TO DO WITH THE FANCIED SPREAD OF BOVINE TB!!

Secondly, it's no secret that a lot of people have been hollering for a long time that the bow hunting season in our state is way too long!

What better way to shorten things for the bow hunter than to make conditions such that the vast majority of hunters just won't bother going out for the last two weeks of the season if they can't bait?

Nice going you NRC thugs!

You're beautiful when you're angry!!

EXAMPLE #2

Although hunter in the rest of the state, other than DMU 452 are allowed to use whatever kind of foodstuffs that want for bait, it all must be chopped up into "bite-sized morsels!"

I'm serious as a tax audit, folks!

That is now the law!!

And, my question is, exactly who is going to decide what constitutes the true definition of what a bite-sized morsel might be?

Perhaps we will see little faun bite=sized morsels and maybe there will be larger, doe bite-sized morsels and then without doubt there will have to be great big husky bit-sized morsels!

But in any event, we won't have to worry about any of these pesky detail after this coming hunting season because the word is that next year nothing will be allowed to be used for bait but corn, grain or commercially prepared deer pellets.

And get this!

GUESS WHO is going to be in charge of making the decision about what kind of food should be used for baiting!

THE STATE FARM BUREAU AND THE MICHIGAN AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT!!

Oh, you people are priceless.

BEAM ME UP SCOTTY!!

But anyway, for the time being it's a done deal and once again the DNR and the NRC has made it abundantly clear that to them the end justifies the means and that in order to get their own agendas made into law they will lie, cheat, misrepresent the facts and use any means at hand to get their way.

And they will do this whether the vast majority of sportspeople in the state want these laws or not!
Well, I'd like to go on but I ear that I would wind up going over already ploughed ground and I don't like to do that.
Besides, my fight has just begun.
Next week, State Representative Rick Johnson, himself a Michigan dairy farmer and former member of the State Farm Bureau Board of Directors before going into politics, is introducing his bill which will, if passed, ban all supplemental feeding throughout the state.  And frankly, I'm not about to let him get away with a cute little move such as that without taking him out behind the barn! 

Besides, I have to spend the rest of the day cutting up my sugar beets into bite-sized morels and raising my bird feeders up high enough so that the deer can't reach them.

Oh well, a hunter's work is never done.

PLEASE!!!, LET'S GET RID OF "PROPOSAL G" AND STATE TERM LIMITS!!

See you next month.

Bill Moore

THE OUTSPOKEN SPORTSMAN

Note:

This article was written a while back, but it demonstrates just how wrong-headed these incredible lovers on the NRC truly are.

Let's bring things up to date!  Since this article was written several change have been implemented by the all-wise, all-knowing wildlife personel within the DNR.  First and foremost, the amount of bait allowed at any bait site has been reduce from 5 gallons down to two!  And this was unanimously approved by every member of the Commission even through each and every one of them admitted at one time or another that this reduction in the overall quantity of deer bait at the hunter's blind wouldn't make a whit of difference!  but when you feel it necessary to back up the DNR in their dedicated campaign to eventually remove all baiting for deer from the hunting scene, what better way to start then by reducing the amount we can put out.  And believe me when I say that they are not done yet!  Remember what is said about "INCREMENTAL, PROHIBITIVE, MANIPULATION!!

And now, in an effort to make life easier for our poor, overworked, beleaguered DNR conservation Ossafurs, they have been provided with cameras so they can TAKE PICTURES OF A HUNTER'S BAIT PILE WHICH IS SUSPECTED OF HAVING MORE THAN THE LEGALLY ALLOWED, TOW GALLONS!!  Say maybe, THREE GALLONS!!
Folks, I have been saying for many, many years;  well since this TB B.S. first came on the scene that the pathetic posturings and ridiculous bans and restrictions talked in the above article were, purely and simply, very expensive hogwash, designed to keep a bunch of of short-ball hitting state biologists gainfully employed as members of the "STATE BOVINE TB ERADICATION TASK FORCE!
OOOOOO-WOWIE!!!
And this was easily proven when a recent, SHOCKING PUBLIC statement by Michigan's own, STATE VETERINARIAN STEVE SCHULTZ announced in a very public meeting that since the TB fiasco started some ten years ago, the state has spent over 100 MILLION STATE AND SPORTSMAN'S DOLLARS ON THIS BUREAUCRATICALLY APPROVED BOONDOGGLE.  aND WHAT'S WORSE, HE ACTUALLY ADMITTED THAT THE BOVINE TB INCIDENT RATE HAS NOT BEEN REDUCED ONE, TINY BIT!!

Now, there's a fine example of proper spending by Becky Humphries and the DNR finance people, wouldn't you agree!!

But, to be fair to our female, cutie-pie, DNR Director, Becky-Baby is on the job with a magnificent solution to the problem.

You see, pilgrims...Becky has a vision, and it is this!

What dear old B.H. wants is a totally, Bovine TB-free State of Michigan!

Never mind that the disease has been around since old man Noah let the deer off the oat! 

Never mind that there has never been the slightest indication based on, (dare I mention) SOUND SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT BAITING OR SUPPLEMENTAL FEEDING HAS BEEN THE CAUSE FOR THE SPREAD OF THE DISEASE!

Nope!  All that matters is the impossible proposition that a zero Bovine TB state is what she wants and she is by God gonna get one, no matter what she has to do to achieve her goal. 

See, her spin on the thing is that it's the fault of the deer hunting fraternity for not killing enough deer in the TB infected area.  So she has come up with a solution!

You're gonna love this one!

Each and every farmer who has any kind of agricultureal or livestock operation located anywhere within, what is considered by her crack team of DNR wildlife biologist deer "ex-spurts" to be the Bovine TB infected area has received five...count them five DEER KILL TAGS!!

Please note that I did not refer to these permits as "antlerless tags!"

Nosiree Bob!!

These are DEER KILL TAGS!  Any deer!  Buck, doe or fawn.  And these tags can be filled ANYTIME DURING THE CALENDAR YEAR!!

Want to fill a tag on a big buck still in the velvet in August at night using a spotlight?

Why, go to it Mr. Farmer!  You have the blessings of our gal Becky and the DNR!

And make no mistake about it.  This is not something that is just casually being discussed by the folks at the Stevens T. Mason Building in Lansing that "might happen" or "may perhaps" become a reality.

Oh no, dear hearts!

This is a done deal!  These permits have been mailed to, and are in the hand of the farming fraternity as we speak!

Can you even begin to conceive of a better way to set the hunting community against the farmers in that TB disease area?

Divide and conquer, that's the thing to do.  And right on the heels of this particular bit of lunacy by our illustrious leader, Becky also disclosed that many thousands of sportsmen's dollars were to be bestowed on the research people at Michigan State University to pay for a major study to be done by them to determine,  (and this is a direct quote from Humphries), WHAT MAKES HUNTERS TICK!!

I swear!  This woman almost makes stupid a virtue!