The other day I received an e-mail from Mark Latti of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. I finally took the time this morning to read it over. What great information he sent along.

Back in 2001 the state of Maine instituted its latest management plan for deer, bear and moose. This plan remains in effect until 2017 but along the way certain adjustments need to be made to achieve the long-term goals within the management plan. Each year around October, the department issues a report that summarizes any changes in strategies and how the working plans are producing desired effects.

What Mark sent me was a sneak peek look into what will be in that report in October about deer, bear and moose. It also contains an overview of what should be expected for upcoming season harvests for hunters.

If you are interested in the management strategies for three of Maine’s big game animals, I would highly recommend the read. You can find it posted here at Maine Hunting Today.

Tom Remington

In Sequim, Washington there’s a herd of 67 elk that is managed by the Washington Fish and Wildlife and the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe. The herd is often refered to as the Dungeness herd.

The problem there, like so many other places, is there’s too many animals in too small an area. There’s not enough natural forage so they go eat whatever they can find causing extensive damage to crops and terrorizing people in their automobiles.

But perhaps the biggest problem is for all intent and purposes, the herd is tame. They no longer migrate with any of the other elk and the townspeople have become attached to them.

There was a public meeting held in town and about 100 people showed up most in opposition to the state’s plan to move the herd to the South Olympic Peninsula.

Kurt Grinnell, tribal councilman says the need to move the elk is urgent.

“The long term health of the herd is at stake,” Jamestown tribal councilman Kurt Grinnell said.

In recent years, the elk have stayed on and near farm fields north of U.S. Highway 101 instead of following natural migration paths, so they don’t mix with other herds.

“The longer the wait, the worse off they will be,” Grinnell said.

“They won’t know how to forage . . . and as people move in, their range gets smaller.”

The mayor of Sequim pledged his support for a reasonable elk management plan that specifies moving the elk outside city limits.

Now the fish and wildlife officials are reconsidering the move. Are you kidding me? Does science have a role in determining what is best for wild animals anymore? Because people think it’s fun to drive around in their cars and look out their back windows and see wildlife, this is reason to leave the elk where they are? Whatever happened to the old fashioned way of getting off your overgrown backside and out of your padded air conditioned automobiles and taking a walk in hopes of seeing some wildlife?

It is absolutely unbelievable how people are thinking these days on all sides of issues like this. Out of selfish greed, people are willing to jeopardize the lives of 67 elk in order to have fun seeing them act like cattle. Whoopeeeeeeeee!

It is just as unbelievable that scientists would do the same thing. It is understandable when there are more options available to them and they need to decide on one but it is my understanding that the only option scientifically available to them is where to move the herd.

I am totally fed up with people who want to live in an overgrown zoo with animals living in their back yards that don’t belong there. They don’t even know what a wild animal is or how it is supposed to act. They think bears are to be petted and deer hand fed. Educators are teaching our kids that animals have emotional feelings like humans and that we should co-exist at the same level. Oh, puleeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzeeee!

The longer the people believe this, the more troubles just like this we all will be facing. In our attempts to restore certain wildlife species and protect them we are creating an evil monster that threatens the animals we are trying to protect.

Science has to trump emotion. A trained wildlife biologist should know what is best for an elk more than Mr. and Mrs. Suburbia who want to dance with elks.

Wildlife officials cannot cave in to the public outcry when they know what has to be done. It must stop.

Tom Remington

I got a report from our man in the woods, Rod Davis, at Libby’s Camps in Oxbow, Maine again this morning. Sounds like Rod got a little impatient and moved to another stand. Shouldn’t have done that Rod. Here’s his report and picture.

More news from Northern Maine!

I chose to change stands on Wednesday night after seeing no bears for two nights. Brenda, the mother of the young lady who killed the bear Monday was moved onto my stand by the guides and killed a 200 lb. bear! Next time, I’ll stay put!

There is another family here with three generations of guys, all named Sam. As of Wednesday, all three Sams, from grandfather down to grandson, killed bears from the same stand on consecutive nights!!

Two more nights to hunt for me, then the big drive home begins. I am attaching a picture of my son-in-law’s, brother-in-law and the 200 lb bear he shot Monday. His name is Doug Lambert of Hewitt, WV.

Rod

Tom Remington

When I set out to do this report I had every intention of putting all my facts and figures together and posting my story right here at the Black Bear Blog. After I began, it became crystal clear that it would be too long and detailed to use here, so I posted it at Maine Hunting Today as a feature story.

I began this debate the other day with a post about how Sunday hunting may affect the length of the season. I gave you a copy of an email I received from Lee Kantar, wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. You can read that post here.

There is at least one other issue that has bothered me for some time and so I tackled it to see if I could come up with some answers. Consequently I think I arrived at a place where I have more questions now than answers but I learned a lot and am going to share with you about it.

The issue in question has to do with a statement I have heard from various sources over the years. The statement goes something like this, “Any state that doesn’t offer Sunday hunting is losing millions of dollars in revenue from hunters and in particular non-resident hunters”. In my attempt to find someone who could support that statement with some facts, I always seem to come away empty handed. So I rolled up my sleeves and went digging.

The article I have done looks at a lot of data that I was able to collect. Being a bit of a numbers freak, I began to see some interesting indications coming from this research. Interesting doesn’t always mean conclusive evidence.

What I wanted to find out was if Sunday hunting really had that big of an affect on the economies of states that have it versus those that don’t. I will tell you that I can’t say I proved one way or the other but I did learn exactly how much you mean to your state’s economy every year you buy a hunting license and head into the woods.

I hope that you will take the time to read the article. It is one of those things that you can read several times and study often and each time I guarantee you’ll find things that will make you think.

Within the article I left a link to one report where I got a lot of my information. Go there and take at look at numbers for yourself and draw your own conclusions. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Tom Remington

My good friend and contributing writer for Maine Hunting Today Rod Davis, just emailed me from the woods of Maine. He is at Libby’s Camps in Oxbow on his vacation and bear hunt. He sent this short story with a picture of some other campers having some bear hunting success.

I am forwarding you a neat photo for the magazine. The first night of bear hunting here at Libby’s was marked by a first-time kill by 18 year old Meghan Pidgeon of Salem, Ohio. She is here with her Mom, Dad, and two younger brothers, all bear hunting.

She shot her bear on Monday at 4:30 PM but it was wounded and the guides caught up with it late that night. She made a perfect shot right behind the shoulder at 100 yards, but hit nothing vital.
She is very proud and they are a neat family of hunters. Her brother shot a bear on Tuesday and they are looking for it now.

More later

Rod

Tom Remington

Hunters are no different than people who don’t hunt. We all have our opinions on issues that involve our sport of hunting. Opinions are one thing but when we resort to telling lies in an attempt to support our own opinions, no good is being served. One of the biggest mistakes we all make is by lumping large quantities of a group together qualifying them as all being the same.

Here are some examples of what I mean. “All hunters are cowards who hide behind a gun”. We have all heard that one many times. How about this one? “Hunters who use a scope on their rifles are cheaters” or better yet, “Hunting behind fences is not hunting. It’s unethical, animal abuse and anyone who would do it is sick”.

This last comment is one I have heard endlessly over the last several months and I sure wish we would all do a better job at clarifying our statements. We have used a couple of terms to describe what it is that we are opposed to but how we have used them isn’t right.

The two terms I’m talking about are “canned hunts” and “high-fence hunting”. We use these descriptions to lump together any and all game preserves and ranches as unethical hunting. This is an unfair characterization and it’s not truthful as well.

In our passions to protect a good image of hunting, we can’t resort to an approach of two wrongs making something right. We can all easily agree about the obvious when it comes to hunting in enclosures. Tactics such as drugging and tying game up for hunters to shoot is pretty much a no-brainer.

Not all game ranches are the same. Each has to be taken on an individual basis for the quality of ranching they employ. To lump all preserves as canned hunting destroys aspects of our sport that many of us are fighting to protect.

For an individual to make a blank statement that hunting within any fenced in preserve is unethical, is ignorant and more than likely hypocritical. Ethics is a touchy subject and many of us feel very compassionate about certain issues surrounding it.

In all fairness to hunters, the businessmen and ourselves, we all as one big group should think a little harder before we make generalized statements about our fellow sportsmen.

Tom Remington

According to this report from the United Press International, Sweden is making papier-mache elks to remind drivers that elk roam the highways too.

Papier-mache elks are being used to remind Swedish drivers of the dangers lurking along the side of the road.

Police say about 35,000 elk are hit on Swedish roads each year.

The imitation elks are being placed about 80 to 160 feet from the road so that they appear as real as possible. Police will then stop many drivers and ask them if they saw the animal, the Local reported.

Some 9,000 car travelers were stopped during last year’s campaign.

35,000 elk and vehicle collisions is a lot. And then the police stop drivers to ask them if they saw the fake elks? What do they want to know if the elk looks real? Are they asked to judge the quality of the paper elk and award a blue ribbon to the best made fake elk?

I understand the program is designed to educate drivers as to the hazzards on the highways. I think what they really need to do is import a few damned Yankees and turn them loose on a few days hunt. That would help, don’t you think?

Tom Remington

All bears are cuddly little creatures that humans should take home with them and tuck them into bed with their children at night. This is the picture that has been painted in the brains of people for decades. It is often called the Disney Syndrome or the Disney Affect. Some just can’t get it through their heads that some animals, like the bear, as beautiful as it can be and as gentle as it may appear, can be a deadly killer.

Here is a brief letter to the editor I stumbled across this morning from a reader who thinks bears are cute and cuddly and of course they couldn’t complete their rant without calling all hunters cowards. So what else is new?

On a recent visit to my daughter in Vernon, I had the incredible opportunity to see a black bear for the first time. I was amazed at how gentle this creature was. In the one minute it took for her to slowly walk through the backyard, I could not take my eyes off of her. At no time was I ever afraid or felt threatened in any way. Thank you to the BEAR Group for working so hard to educate the public and for their extraordinary efforts in protecting these animals from hunting. The hunters should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who would kill one of these gentle and beautiful bears just for fun is a worthless coward who obviously cannot feel like a man unless he is killing a defenseless animal.

Makes you wonder what the BEAR Group is teaching people.

Tom Remington

Last February the courts in Alaska backed the wolf reduction program being run by the Alaska Board of Game. A lawsuit that was filed by a Connecticut based animal rights group, Friends of Animals, saw their efforts go down the drain when Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that the Board of Game was following all the legal guidelines in running the program.

Alaska game officials say that wolves are killing 80% of the moose and caribou populations in some areas. They fear that if not checked, the wolves will essentially eradicate that area of moose and caribou. The areas being affected are remote and densely wooded making it extremely difficult to reach. Traditional methods of hunting the wolf don’t work because of this. The Board of Game began a program to hunt the wolf by air. A hunter could either shoot a wolf from the air or could land and then shoot.

Two other animal rights groups have filed suit to get the wolf hunt stopped. The Defenders of Wildlife and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance have joined forces and have asked the Superior Court to stop the hunt claiming the program is based on faulty wildlife science and that the Board of Game doesn’t have accurate numbers to support their claims.

Tom Remington

A continued drought in Wyoming has led wildlife officials there to declare that hunting propects will be diminished for some species. The persistent conditions are forcing game animals like pronghorn, big horn sheep, moose and mule deer to change their habits. The drought has also caused fewer new fawns in some cases that will have an effect in coming seasons not necessarily this year.

The Billings Gazette covers the story and gives readers a break down of how each hunted species is being affected.

Tom Remington