May 19, 2012 – LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Farmers and ranchers are characteristically self-sufficient, freedom-loving, ruggedly independent, hard-working individuals. In addition their industry leaders possess the awareness and stamina required to cope with increasing threats to rural life. Deceptively designed long-range goals reveal demise of private property and food production industries. Feds and environmentalists dream of “open space” free-roaming wildlife devoid of humans; concentrating severely reduced populations into high-density production centers with top-down control. Government ownership and management would replace free enterprise, profit-motivated capitalism and privately owned lands.

Government Agency and NGO Activities:

l. Agencies performing land grabs and resource lock-downs: Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, BLM; Wildlands Y2Y, dam removal, free-flowing rivers, wetlands, wilderness designations, endangered species. Simply by Presidential signature Obama is able, through Antiquities Act, to declare millions of acres National Monument.

2. The Nature Conservancy and American Farmland Trust trick owners into contracts forever relinquishing control over land use while committing owners to all costs, ultimately assuring government ownership/control.

3. EPA disguised as “protection” controls land, water, air, animals and humans (deemed a blight on the earth).

4. Power-hungry elite aspire to complete take-over and UN world domination.

America is the last bastion of freedom and private property. Ranchers and farmers now battle for rights to water, land and air. Example: EPA is sensitive to dust. Farms are made of dirt. It forms dust. Environmentalists should return to their polluted cities allowing farmers to use their dirt to produce food essential to life. This is what farmers do. . . their job, their livelihood, their business. THIS IS AMERICA. Private property is the foundation of our Constitution.

Bob Fanning/Joel Boniek, Tim Fox and Brad Johnson would be the strong Montana team defending property rights and state sovereignty; utilizing nullification, coordination and collaborative strength with other states facing similar problems.

Respectfully submitted,

Clarice Ryan

Here’s a thought for this glorious Monday! I figure the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and the original 10 Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights might contain perhaps 12 or 13 pages of modern day text in a computer-generated word processor. And, I would approximate the number of words necessary to lay out to the American people the country’s intentions to separate from the King of England, to script the constitution that would guide the actions of government and to reaffirm the rights all men are endowed with, to be about 6,700.

While men have, since the beginning of time, done everything they can to take away and limit the God-given rights of humans, it has been only since 1936, when the government began keeping a journal of all its actions (called the Federal Register), that the United States Government has compiled nearly 82,000 pages and millions upon millions of words in order to destroy the original 12 or 13 pages that scripted our path.

Why would anybody think the government is looking out for them? Seriously.

It has been 222 years since the original Bill of Rights were ratified. Since then, men from every walk of life, have done all that they could to abort, annihilate, annul, axe, blot out, break down, butcher, consume, crush, damage, deface, desolate, despoil, dismantle, dispatch, end, eradicate, erase, exterminate, extinguish, extirpate, gut, impair, kill, lay waste, level, liquidate, maim, mar, maraud, mutilate, nuke, nullify, overturn, quash, quell, ravage, ravish, raze, ruin, sabotage, shatter, slay, smash, snuff out, spoliate, stamp out, suppress, swallow up, tear down, torpedo, total, trash, vaporize, waste, wax, wipe out, wreck, and zap our inalienable rights. We only have a formal written record of that destruction found within our Federal Register. It has only been around for 76 years of those 222 and it alone contains 82,000 pages. How many more pages before it will be completely gone? Or is it already?

This is not a session for bashing Facebook for all the terrible things that it is. For those with brains enough to care, they understand the issues of privacy, manipulation, censorship, invasion of privacy, intrusion by government and non governmental agencies of recording every entry all of us have made on the giant scroll. As to the words of the Egyptian Pharaoh, “So shall it be written, so shall it be done.”

Facebook has a purpose, however, for myself coming from an older generation, I fail to see any useful design in Facebook other than it swindles the mind, preys on our addictive dispositions and can control nearly every aspect of our lives, when we allow it. Nothing that does that to a human being can be good.

And yet with all the enslaving power of Facebook, for the lack of what is found, it is a malnourishment that degrades creative and independent thought while humans are unknowingly cheated from the pleasure and excitement of learning truth.

Facebook is fun. It has some aspects that can actually, in a positive way, contribute to a productive society. I’ll not stretch the limits of my own honesty to enable what I perceive as a wretched curse.

One dynamic of Facebook is that it tends to “group” together people of similar interests, i.e. political, social, intellectual ideals, etc.. This, in and of itself, may not necessarily be a bad thing, it becomes so when people become like leeches sucking off the blood of each other, eventually resulting in malnourishment and death by starvation.

Beyond responsible use of Facebook for entertainment purposes, it becomes a harbinger of intellectual laziness. Members who have had the lifeblood extracted from their minds report faithfully to their “groups” to receive marching orders. Unwilling or unable to disseminate truth from fiction, verbose rhetoric is ingested by the parasitic minions believing they are finding sustenance when in reality they are devouring the defecation of the deceitful.

Group think and support is not a bad thing. Being obsessed by it is. My challenge to readers is to get off Facebook. If you can’t use it responsibly as a “social networking” tool, you have no life. You’re among the walking dead. Stop regurgitating someone else’s ideas. Get truth for yourself. It’s worth the effort and it’s much more rewarding than Facebook.

Tom Remington

Yesterday in the Missoulian, republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill stated, “One of the things I’ve heard everywhere that I go is that the relationship today between Fish, Wildlife and Parks and landowners and sportsmen is at an all-time low.”

Should this come as a surprise to anyone? Do people think that this is something that has happened overnight? No and no! And this seemingly newly discovered phenomenon isn’t relegated to Montana. It’s an epidemic that reaches every state in this Union. Sportsmen and landowners have almost as bad an opinion of their fish and game departments as Americans do of their Congress or the presidency. And why is that?

There once was a day when fish and game departments were constructed with the idea to devise plans that would perpetuate game species so that everyone had a chance to stock up on food and/or sell animal furs to supplement or provide income. These fish and game departments originally were a direct extension of the outdoor sportsmen.

Not anymore! Fish and game departments have become giant government agencies with too many powers and a focus that caters to environmentalism and animal rights and animal protection. Along with this demented change in direction and overreaching power grab, landowners are not only losing rights to use their land as is necessary but in some cases they lose their land altogether. And with this do we really need to doubt what Hill says, that this relationship between sportsmen/landowners and fish and game is at an all-time low?

When fish and game departments functioned as a supporting entity of the sportsmen, there was also a certain degree of ownership and pride in that ownership. Are any readers old enough to remember the day when you could actually talk with a representative from a fish and game department and be treated as an equal, one with respect and an understanding of who paid whose salary? That pride of ownership kept sportsmen involved in the process. They knew their voice would be heard and when it wasn’t, fish and game personnel were out of a job.

Today, fish and game departments pretend they are interested in the sportsmen. Some even masquerade as humans who understand their role and function as that of serving the public. But don’t be fooled. They are a government organization. Governments are not any friend of the people and they certainly are not friends of sportsmen or landowners. This is because sportsmen and landowners are what stand in their way to fulfill their agendas of protecting wildlife, ridding human presence from the forests and fields, relegating us all to concrete jungles and levying control over us all. Get rid of us and they get what they want, or at least think they do.

But the problem that perpetuates this insanity is that government attempts to fix government with more government. It’s what keeps them collecting a salary. Talk is cheap. Words in this case are nothing more than campaign rhetoric, meaningless drivel to placate the masses in order to steal your vote.

Until states regain control over their environmentalism-strangled fish and game departments and change the direction and goals back to game management combined with an understanding and respect for landowners, nothing will change. Actually look for it to get worse.

The people are lazy, brainwashed robots who want government to do their bidding. Why do you think we are where we are now? Government is not the answer to government.

Tom Remington

Guest post by Barry Coe

*Editor’s Note* Mr. Coe had posted a comment on another article posted at the Black Bear Blog about the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the legality of Congress attaching a rider to a budget bill that effectively removed grey wolves from the Endangered Species Act list in Idaho and Montana, while at the same time shielding that rider from legal scrutiny. I contacted Mr. Coe and asked him if he would take the time and put his thoughts together in a more formal format in order to present them as a guest post on this blog. Below is his work.

Winning the Battle, Losing the War
By Barry Coe

Last week everyone in the wolf wars, were either delighted or disappointed in the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals returned a verdict on yet another wolf lawsuit, upholding the delisting budget bill rider for wolves in Idaho and Montana.

The truth of the matter is, no one should be surprised, as the courts rarely ever side with the constitution, and this speaks to a much larger problem we face in this country. Collusion among the three branches of government is exactly what our constitution was supposed to avoid, and what this lawsuit was actually about. Now, there are many reasons this has come about, and those I will not delve into here, but I would hope that both sides step back and realize none of this is about wolves or endangered species in general.

The entire Endangered Species Act(ESA) is truly unconstitutional, yet it too has held court muster to fulfill a bigger agenda, it is the foundation of collusion, the animals are just the tools.

Wolves are one tool that have seriously worn out their welcome, both in the states they were dumped in and in government where they are tired of this animal not moving along the conveyor belt of corruption. It has been so diligently and thoroughly abused by environmental “gang green”, that it has threatened the entire program. People are now waking up to the reality of the ESA and demanding changes. That demand has very serious threats to the larger agenda, so the wolves have been cast aside to protect the agenda, much to the dismay of gang green and to the delight of the people who actually have to live with this species.

But, I have to ask. At what cost? Do we really want to sell our souls and allow precedence to be set that permits congress, with a simple rider, to remove active cases from the courts that are supposed to hold congress in check? Of all the wolf lawsuits that were based and won on an unconstitutional law, this one was based on the constitution itself. In every case, the court rulings went against the foundations of personal freedoms and liberties, supporting the unconstitutional ESA and now directly undermining the constitution itself.

My belief is, they’ll let us have this battle, because it sets up a situation that will allow bigger crushing blows down the road. Do not be surprised when you see a rider to a budget or other bill that makes the personal mandate in Obamacare exempt from judicial review.

And people actually think this is about wolves.

A guest blog by Barry Coe

Once again, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) has shown its agenda of manipulation and distraction. It leaves no other choice but to step back and question their agenda and intent. To believe that IDFG is forthcoming and honest can no longer even be argued as the evidence of what I see as outright corruption becomes more and more obvious.

In our recent meetings concerning the new proposals over hunting season changes, our panhandle game manager, Jim Hayden, presented quite a lot of data relating to most of our wildlife species, although moose were never mentioned at all. In his data concerning wolves, he presented numbers that showed at least 150 resident wolves and about 100 wolves that he called border packs; wolves that crossed back and forth across state lines. To be honest, everyone, including Jim Hayden, made statements that they felt these numbers were conservative, but Mr. Hayden felt we could safely say that at any given time we had 200 wolves in the 9 northern units of Idaho that made up the panhandle zone.

Now, the corruption. In a report made from IDFG to the USFWS that outlined Idaho’s wolf population. See it here: http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/wolf/annualrpt11/FINAL_2011_Idaho_wolf_monitoring_progress_report.pdf
You will see that the wolf pimps inside IDFG made an official claim that the entire northern 9 units of Idaho that make up the panhandle of Idaho only contains 26 wolves. Yes, that is not a typo, 26 wolves. I am not usually surprised by anything this group of wolf lovers inside IDFG does, but such a discrepancy further exposes the huge problems that lay inside our game department.

So, who is lying? It is impossible to support the number of 26 wolves. No one who has any knowledge in this situation would have any other reaction but disgust and laughter at the obvious misinformation put forth by Jason Husseman, Jennifer Struthers, Brent Thomas, Craig White and Jon Racheal. It is so outrageous that I would contend that it borders on intentional fraud. A quick check into the background of most of these people will quickly expose they are long time wolf pimps, many came directly to the department via Ed Bangs and the USFWS wolf program. They have been long time exonerators of all things wolf and it seems they will continue to push that agenda. I really have to question the person who promoted Jon Racheal to the position of State Big Game Manager.

If the hunters of Idaho and the nonresidents who used to hunt here really want to know why we are where we are, you really need to look no further that IDFG itself. As long as people like these are employed with the department and allowed their way, our hunting is doomed to be nothing more than a memory of the past. Gone are the days of traditional biology and sound science, instead it has been replaced by conservation biology based on opinion and agenda of anti-hunters and wolf pimps.

When I presented a copy of the USFWS report to Mr. Hayden and the others at the meeting from IDFG, they pretty much just hung their heads as these types of issues are not defensible. While I will admit there are some really good people inside IDFG, I think it is more than obvious that the department is also infected with people who do not support their fiduciary responsibilities and legal mandates. It is time for those people to be removed and removed now.

Barry Coe

Imagine, if you can, that you will take the family to visit Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. You’ve gleaned the brochures, read about the park, contacted the Office of Tourism to get information about lodging, meals, etc. and have been convinced that a trip to Downeast Maine in mid July would be a great investment and a wonderful experience for everyone.

Summer comes, final plans are made and the car is packed. The drive takes about 12 hours but the anticipation is great. Everything the family has read and heard and even pictures viewed attributes to the building anticipation.

Finally, on the first day, you drive the wife and kids to the park and you visit the Welcome Center, once again picking up brochures and looking at maps, all that touristy stuff. You even take the time to view the movie in the theater. But when you and your family emerge from the darkness of the theater, it is only then that you discover that’s it. This is all there is to see and do in Acadia National Park. You question an information employee and they tell you that having attractions in the park is part of a long-term plan that hopefully funding will become available so that eventually they can build roads and put out picnic tables, etc.

As inane as this all seems, it appears this is what the recommendations will be like when the Maine Legislative Task Force, commissioned to figure out why Maine has seen such a drastic decline in game license sales, presents its findings.

The minutes to the final officially scheduled Task Force meeting of November 20, 2011 have become public information now and these minutes gives us a glimpse at what the Task Force will recommend to the Maine Legislature. Oddly, those recommendations were due on December 1, 2011. (Note: At the time of this writing, those minutes had not been posted on the MDIFW website. Check this link to see if they have.)

It is no secret that the overwhelming attraction for hunters to Maine has been the opportunity to hunt whitetail deer. One can argue that perhaps the state hasn’t done a good enough job promoting the resources available to hunt other game species, however, you just can’t ignore that fact.

If the majority of people visit Acadia National Park because their main focus is to see Thunder Hole or drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain and either or both of those elements of the park disappeared, who would still want to come? Yes, the National Park Service can mount a campaign to get visitors to come because there are other things to do and see, but it would remain a major obstacle to overcome and pretending the Mountain or Hole is still there and the Park Service is doing all it can to get them back, will do little to bring visitors until it actually happens.

This is how I see the Task Force attempting to address a problem with lack of hunting license sales. There are no deer to speak of in Maine. The herd is in trouble, and while the vast majority of hunting license buyers want to hunt deer, expending nonexistent money and resources to convince them to come to Maine anyway and hunt other things and do other activities besides hunt whitetail deer is nothing more than a huge denial. Hey, here’s an idea. Let’s use the same resources and money to build the deer herd and THEN go invite participants! Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) complains they can’t do this or that to help the deer herd because there is no money, then why, if this Task Force thinks it can find money to promote other things to do with hunting, funds can’t be found to kill more coyotes and improve habitat?

In the final meeting minutes, of which comprises 14 pages, the ONLY mention of the major attraction gets two and one half lines:

7. We need to educate people on what DIF&W is doing to increase the deer herd. Stop sending the negative messages and send the positive messages of what we are doing to address the problem.

I’m afraid that’s it! And then the next page and a half is spent addressing how to market all the other things Maine has to offer. I’m not saying that this Task Force hasn’t come up with ideas and suggestions that probably would help attract visitors IF THERE WERE DEER TO HUNT! Get it? DEER – DEER – DEER – DEER! That’s what it’s all about. A nonresident hunter might want a hot tub to play in at night or Wi-Fi but it’s still all about deer! Have you ever seen a ski resort draw a crowd when there is no snow? Didn’t think so.

As I illustrated at the very beginning, people are drawn to certain things. Whether it’s Magic Kingdom at Disney, Thunder Hole in Acadia or Old Faithful in Yellowstone, if those attractions comprise an overwhelming majority of what the people want to see and those are taken away, these attractions will suffer greatly until they are brought back or something better to replace them.

It appears, for whatever the reasons, this Task Force is either unable or unwilling to see clearly that having no deer to hunt is a problem. If you want to open a theme park, it is strongly recommended that the first thing you do is develop a theme. There must be a focus of what the attraction will be. Whitetail deer are the focus of attraction for hunting in Maine. Yes, the turkey hunting, grouse hunting and bear hunting might be some of the best around but it does little when the majority want deer to hunt. It’s a simple concept really.

I understand the complexity of resolving the lack of deer problem. What I don’t understand is the skirting of the issue by this task force. Because the Legislature decided who would be able to sit on this task force, perhaps the make up is too heavily empowered by governmental agencies and representatives that most participants fear addressing this issue. I just don’t know.

There are no “regular sportsmen” on this panel; only guides and outfitters. While I understand the focus of this task force is to determine why nonresidents aren’t coming to Maine to hunt, don’t Maine resident hunters/sportsmen have something to say about it?

It makes little sense to me and has positioned itself to become nothing more than just another governmental bureaucratic waste of time and resources to say and recommend things that sound good and make our hearts beat a bit faster for a moment.

I think it would be a reasonable recommendation to make that Maine first built the roller coaster ride and then sell tickets for the ride. Doesn’t that really make sense?

Tom Remington

*Editor’s Note* Archived newspaper clippings that I used in compiling this report, were all accomplished and given to me by my good friend and part-time contributor to the Black Bear Blog, Richard Paradis of Maine. We owe him a bit of gratitude for his compassionate caring and his willingness to dig this stuff up. Thank you!

Technology is supposed to speed things up, isn’t it? And, one would guess better technology would make for more precise things, and maybe even make “forecasting” even better. It has become obvious that this certainly isn’t the case for some things.

Consider the efforts by William Gray and Phil Klotzbach from the University of Colorado, who for twenty years and with some the finest and most advanced technology available to them, have decided to give up trying to predict how many hurricanes the United States will have to deal with in the next upcoming hurricane season. Why? Because their method stinks and the results are worse.

Of course, most of the sane world now understands that high tech computer models used for predicting climate changes are only as good as the biased information fed into a software model designed to create desired outcomes. While the modeling for climate change fails miserably, perhaps the technology isn’t all that bad. But when used and abused in the wrong way, it spoils the whole bunch.

For those of us deeply involved in wildlife management, we’ve come to also understand that computer modeling for wildlife predictions about mirrors the fraud behind climate change modeling.

Looking for better data and information derived from this kind of technology, seems to be worthless because of the influence of man’s greed and lack of any kind of moral backbone. So let’s discard any thoughts that high technology is worth a bag of dirt when it comes to using it to better manage our wildlife and conserve our species and habitat.

But certainly one would suspect that from the days gone by when fish and game personnel would have to hand count deer harvests, it must have taken an eternity. Are we also to be grateful now because technology provides for anxious hunters’ harvest figures for the deer seasons just ending? Let’s take a look at Maine.

In the year 1913, the Boston Evening Transcript printed a story on Nov. 29th, two weeks before the end of the deer hunting season in Maine, stating that as of that date 1,900 deer had been harvested, compared to 2,561 for the same time period the previous year.

As well in 1913, the New York Times reported on Dec. 1, again two weeks before the end of the deer hunting season in Maine, that Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts had combined killed 5,180 deer. Now it must have taken some pretty advanced technology to be able to get a count on deer that quickly and from four states as well.

Evidently this lack of high technology didn’t prevent news reporters from getting all kinds of data on Maine’s deer herd. On Nov. 28, 1956, the Lewiston Daily Sun filed a report about what happened after the 1955 season. Not only did they provide Maine hunters with the deer harvest numbers, they also got: average number of deer killed per square mile statewide – 1.17; of the 35,591 deer killed, non-resident hunters attributed to taking 23%, along with a representation of where the non resident hunters came from; what percentage of the harvest was taken on Saturdays and holidays; when the peak killing time was; buck and doe ratio of the harvest; weather breakdown and how it may have effected harvest; kills by county; and others. All done by hand.

On Nov. 21, 1972, just 4 days prior to the end of a shortened deer season in Maine, the Bangor Daily News was able to report that 20,506 deer had been shot and tagged as of sunset on Nov. 18th. It appears it took a long stretch of 3 days to compile that information for the press. And Maine was still hand counting the deer harvest.

Laughingly, in 1974, Bud Leavitt takes Maine fish and game commissioner Maynard J. Marsh to task asking him why he is hiding information about the deer harvest for that year. Mind you the article, published in the Bangor Daily News on Nov. 21, 1974, I’m guessing with a week left to go in the deer hunting season, is asking for specific information about harvest data. Leavitt facetiously writes that this information must be a secret and that, “Through 4 p.m. Wednesday, a preliminary count indicated hunters had tagged 14,251 whitetails.” Mr. Leavitt wants, what I can only presume was the norm back then, information and data on the hunt to date, other than just a preliminary kill count.

In Leavitt’s frustration he writes:

Why shouldn’t the Maine citizenry be afforded the latest, up-to-the-minute information with respect to the cropping of one of the state’s most valuable game animal[s]?

Why should Maine citizens be spoon-fed information dealing with one of the state’s best known sporting traditions, the matter of deer hunting? We say, if a network television computer can predict the winner of a state governorship with the scantest kind of information, certainly Maine citizens ought to be apprised of how their deer are being killed in a season that began in the early days of November.

Leavitt makes more than one point here. Not only is he looking for deer harvest information but he brings into question two things. One, he wants to know what it is the commissioner is trying to hide, which of course is normal when information and communication from any state fish and game office is lacking. Second, Leavitt questions the commissioner, vis a viz the governor and entire state of Maine’s serious commitment to “one of the state’s most valuable game animals” as well as “one of the state’s best known sporting traditions”. Obviously Leavitt held these two in high regard and he was considering the commissioner did not.

And so, from years ago, when fish and game personnel used to manually collect and count harvest data it appears that it took, on average, about 3 or 4 days for the fish and game to come up with at least a preliminary count, when they had the mind to do it.

In Bud Leavitt’s case, he expected and demanded more information than that. Did he get it? This may have been the beginning of the end so to speak.

It appears, and I have to admit I didn’t spend hours researching old newspaper archives, that with the onset of the computer as a high technology tool to assist biologists and fish and game personnel, the free flow of information dried up. Most would consider that trend to be the opposite.

At a time when sportsmen would think availability of harvest data would be a mouse click away, Maine hunters have to wait for several months to get a “preliminary” deer harvest count and a few weeks later to get the extremely limited “deer harvest data”, a “full” report, that hunting license buyers pay dearly to be collected and compiled.

The “official” Deer Harvest Report from Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (example here) is two pages in length. The first page is a map of the state that shows deer harvest for that year by town. The second page is a generalized written report of harvest numbers compared to the year previous, with summations of how some Wildlife Management Districts may have fared compared to others. You’ll find harvest numbers for archery, etc.

It becomes a bit subjective from one hunter to the next as to what is considered valuable and useful information in a deer harvest report. Obviously, the number one issue is total numbers compared with other years and how many hunters bought licenses compared to other years so some general comparisons could be made.

For me personally, I would prefer to see data that tells me more important things like age structure and buck to doe ratios. Toss in a fawn recruitment figure or two and while your at it tell hunters if these numbers are high, low or normal.

But this is wishing and wanting I guess. It’s extremely difficult to get this information by asking for it directly but that isn’t really the premise of this article though.

The beef here is why does it take Maine hunters 4 months or longer after the deer season closes before any of this information is made available? Bud Leavitt was angry that he didn’t have preliminary information, not just harvest counts, one week BEFORE the season closed. Today, with all the advanced technology available and at the disposal of our MDIFW personnel, we have to wait 4 or more months.

If we can’t do better than this, then I strongly suggest the fish and game department could save bundles of money by selling off and getting rid of their computers. They are obviously worthless when it comes to getting data out in a timely fashion.

And, have the Maine sportsmen become so desensitized to this kind of abuse and disrespect that they have just come to accept it? I would guess. Recall what I wrote above about the points Bud Leavitt was trying to make 27 years ago. He was questioning the serious commitment by the then commissioner of fish and game because of the blatant disregard of the sportsmen and one of the state’s most prized animals and traditions. What I took away from that piece was that Bud Leavitt felt like he was being kicked in the guts, that there wasn’t enough care from fish and game to give the hunters and the fine citizens of the state of Maine what they DESERVED to have.

How do you feel?

Tom Remington

Growing up, my father was forever angering me with his platitudes in hopes of proving his point or putting you into a context of uselessness. Growing up poor we spent many hours of many days doing physical work around home, such as firewood, weeding gardens, mowing lawns, etc. I recall sometimes being told to do things I didn’t think possible and my first and repeated reply was, “I can’t”. His scripted retort was always, “Can’t never did anything!”

Is it me and my expectations of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) are too high or has the passage and implementation of the Maine Game Plan for Deer, become a useless instrument supported by “I can’t”?

Some say I’m not fair in my criticism of MDIFW but frankly what criticism is ever considered fair when you are the target of the criticism? Criticism should always be followed by suggested remedies, which I usually try to do.

Maine sportsmen held out hope going into the last election of governor, thinking that an administration change at both the Blaine House and regime change at MDIFW, that resources and attention would shift back toward actual game management, particularly deer, addressing a decades-long downward spiral in the state’s deer population.

When all the changes took place, personnel went to work to draft an official plan to rebuild the deer herd. George Smith, former executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and now writer and outdoor/environmental pundit, attended a long meeting with members of the MDIFW to update the progress of the Game Plan for Deer. George files an initial report on the meeting.

I did not attend the meeting so I can only comment on Smith’s perspective of what he took away from the event. In essence, Smith relates that there was little optimism for the future and little had been accomplished and little projected to take place. Perhaps he puts it best when he wrote:

expectations are now high and his [MDIFW Commissioner Chandler Woodcock] ability to deliver is low

In reference to the content of the meeting, Smith says: “A lot of time was consumed with a discussion of deer feeding problems, predator controls, and deer/vehicle collisions.”

I’m not sure that I agree, as Smith writes that the number one issue facing a depleted deer herd is habitat, it appears nothing is even being done to address that problem.

But very little time was devoted to habitat protection and enhancement – the key problem and the major reason for the state’s diminished deer population according to the agency’s wildlife staff. Surprisingly little is actually being done on this.

I guess the catch phrase here might as well be, “I can’t!” After reading this assessment, once again my blood pressure spiked and I began breaking pencils and tossing them across my office. One stuck into the screen to the side door. What I sputtered about for the next 20 minutes sort of came out something like this:

It’s all about habitat! I’m so sick and tired about hearing how everything must be blamed on habitat. Well, you know, habitat is important but nobody has ever answered my question about why if there just isn’t any deer wintering areas left there are many acres of deer wintering areas where there are no deer. I could better understand this excuse if the deer herd was near the state’s carrying capacity, but it’s not. And yet, according to George Smith nothing is planned to deal with that so………

We can’t do anything about the weather and MDIFW is not going to do anything about habitat, so………

Then logic would force a sane individual to ask, what CAN we do? Let’s take what we CAN do and prioritize it into what has the biggest negative impact on down to the least and begin there.

So once MDIFW gets done forming more task forces, putting up more signs of deer crossings, paying to fly around and count deer, reduce Any-Deer Permits, shorten the deer season, close it in some areas, raise the license fees, pray for more global warming, take the dog for a walk, go out to lunch, form another task force, walk the dog again, investigate how many deer are being killed by farmers, then perhaps they could get down to predator control or does that have any negative effect at all? Maybe they see coyotes and other predators as positive effects on the deer. I mean take the wolf. They are like the wonder drug, geritol, spandex and lycra, WD-40. I think the presence of wolves cures cancer. Can coyotes be that much different?

And I still haven’t calmed down yet!

I can’t! MDIFW doesn’t have the resources. I can’t! The demands are too high. I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!

CAN’T NEVER DID ANYTHING!

Where’s the effort here? Who’s on board with this effort to rebuild Maine’s deer herd? Has the state really made a commitment to rebuild the deer herd? Does Maine honestly see and understand the economic as well as cultural impact the loss of a deer herd and ultimately a hunting season would have on the state?

I have to seriously question that commitment.

Recently I received an email from a gentleman who is head of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife in Utah. I shared that email with a few select recipients on my email list, including the MDIFW Commissioner Chandler Woodcock.

The email was a call to arms for Utah and other sportsmen from the Western regions of the United States, to come together in a united effort to rebuild a depleted mule deer herd. The email begins by clarifying what efforts had been done to date to fix the problem.

While more than 750,000 acres of habitat has been restored, cougar populations have been reduced, and $650,000 a year in coyote control is spent, $50 Million has been invested to fence highways with underpass crossings, still not enough has been done. It is the feeling that 80% of Utah’s deer herds are still in decline, and only 20% or so are doing well.

How many acres of this much needed habitat restoration has been done in Maine? Oh, that’s right. I can’t. What concerted efforts are underway in Maine to reduce predators, including black bears, bobcats and coyotes, even if only temporarily until the herd rebuilds? Oh, that’s right. I can’t. How much money has been put toward coyote control in Maine? Oh, that’s right. I can’t. How much has been invested in other projects around the state to protect and build the deer herd? Oh, that’s right. I can’t.

WE already know Senator Hatch has helped get tens of millions in habitat restoration money, personally toured Habitat restoration areas, won the wolf war for sportsmen etc.

In Maine, it appears the Governor has promised to do everything he can do, but when was the last time Sen. Snowe, Sen. Collins, Rep. Michaud, Rep. Pingree attended one of any meetings on the issue of rebuilding Maine’s deer herd? Or toured any deer yard? Oh, that’s right. I can’t. How about the last time one of these elected officials sent a key staff member to assist? Oh, that’s right. I can’t. When was the last United States senator or representative who “helped gets tens of millions” to help do anything with wildlife management in Maine? Oh, that’s right. I can’t.

As was written about in this email, there is an election coming up again next November. Maine sportsmen should be looking at every candidate and demanding that they have an agenda to actually do everything they can to save Maine’s deer herd or they won’t get your vote.

The overall effort here is just coming across as pathetic. Certainly there are pockets of positive accomplishes and isolated individuals doing what they can, but Maine’s overall effort is poor. The Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, once the backbone of lobbying for the sportsmen is in disarray with a sinking membership and disunity among those members still hanging on. Perhaps David Trahan can right the ship. It is imperative for Maine’s future for sportsmen. The governor makes promises to “do what he can” but is he? Isn’t it time to rattle the cages of the 4 Congressional delegates and tell them it’s time for them to get involved. If Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah can “find” millions of dollars to help with restoring habitat and mule deer there, isn’t it reasonable to expect the same might be available somewhere for Maine?

Can’t never did anything. As long as the current administration in Augusta insists that there’s nothing they can do or they are doing all they can, what hope is there? To exclaim that “expectations are now high and his ability to deliver is low” is a loser attitude. There is no room for this when a state is faced with such a serious problem. But, then again, maybe the real problem is that those in high places don’t really view a lost Maine deer herd as a serious problem or even a small problem.

The Maine Game Plan for Deer is a worthless document until a strong and united effort is undertaken. It has to be more than task force creations, meetings, talk and rhetoric, while fractured small groups or individuals practice futility. It appears Maine has to learn how to build a coalition that brings everybody onto the same page. Until that happens the only rebuilding of any deer herds will be happenstance.

Maybe David Trahan, if he were to successfully pull all this together in a united and powerful force to reckon with, this would, at the same time, resolve the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine’s membership problems. Just a thought! Let me know when you are ready to fight.

Tom Remington