audsley

I saw the list for the first 25. Wouldn't have been my list, although The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris would definitely be on my list. It was an excellent read and offered some insight into what it used to mean to be a Republican. I like to think of myself as having been a fairly hip sort of guy in my earlier years, but Jack Kerouac is a waste of time in my opinion. Maybe he was a hip sort of guy in his own time, but those of who were young in the 60s and 70s are way past him.

Here's a quote from the Republic's story on the wildfire at Saratoga Springs, Utah: "BLM officials say they believe the blaze was caused when a bullet hit a rock and sparked the fire. This is the 20th target-shooting related fire this year in Utah, they said." Hmmm... Can a bullet striking a rock cause a spark that will ignite a brush fire? I really don't know. But here's what I do know. For the past several years, federal land managers have been trying to restrict or eliminate target shooting on BLM and national forest lands. During lengthy discussions, focus groups and so on, I've heard the agencies' litany of complaints about target shooting including litter, damage to plants and trees, safety concerns and noise. But not once did I ever hear anyone suggest that a bullet striking a rock could start a wild fire. At least not until about a year ago when the Forest Service started talking about it. It seems strange that people could shoot at targets for several decades without their bullets causing fires, at least not as far as anyone knew, and then suddenly federal land managers in Utah discover they've had 20 shooting-caused fires in a single year. If target shooting is setting the range on fire all over Utah, what's it been doing in Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas and other dry places where shooting on federal lands is popular? I have no doubt that a bullet striking a rock will cause a spark, same as a horseshoe striking a rock. Or somebody tossing a rock that hits another rock. But would sparks like these be sufficient to ignite tinder? I googled the subject and found nothing in the way of government reports or scientific data. Makes me wonder what Utah's BLM is basing its judgment on. Maybe it's time one of us got out there with some ammo and a video camera and tried to find out if this is possible. Right now would be the time while humidity is still fairly low and there's dead grass around. I have my doubts that I can actually ignite a fire with a bullet and suspect the exercise might result in some good youtube material. But I'll be sure to clear the immediate area of tinder and keep some water close by just in case I'm wrong.

For me the issue is really about whether the forest service or BLM is fabricating a bogus rationale for closing public lands to all types of target shooting. I believe they are. Whether more controls are needed for safety and litter is an entirely separate question.

I have no doubt tracer ammo can start fires, not to mention burning patches from muzzleloaders. But the news reports aren't specifying those kinds of things, and national forests are invoking seasonal bans on target shooting of all kinds.

Oops! Looks like somebody beat me to it. http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-295776.html

Considering what's going on in California, how smart would it be to pursue a high-profile, large scale predator control effort right now? This is exactly what some have been urging AGFD to do. I'm skeptical that any aerial gunning of coyotes or intensified lion removal using hounds could have a significant effect on deer populations unless conducted at a level that would be prohibitively expensive and politically impossible. What has been shown to work are localized removals right before the fawning season. After a couple months, coyotes and lions from adjacent areas migrate in to fill the vacuum and you're back where you started except that fawns and lambs are a couple of months along and have a much better chance of survival. Research from actual experience has shown that localized removals have been proven effective for jump-starting low populations of ungulates. We would be wise to keep predator control efforts limited to what research has shown is effective. Otherwise we risk losing one of the few effective tools we have at our disposal while our wildlife continues struggling in this drought. Given that the public does not - and maybe never will - fully appreciate the role hunting plays in maintaining a successful wildlife program, a major predator removal campaign would just be asking to get a ballot iniitiave for predator protection down our throats. (It's been said that as California goes, so goes the nation - eventually.) And if the legislature tips Democratic, as it has before, that would become even easier to do. If such a proposition ever reached the ballot, I have no doubt it would pass with the help of a press sympathetic to what they'd see as a "reform" measure. Demanding large-scale predator control to restore hunting opportunities to what they were 25 years ago works well for demagogues looking to rally hunters around a cause or an organization, but it isn't playing our cards very smartly. I hope certain people are paying attention to what's going on in California and using their heads. Arizona isn't California, at least not yet, but it isn't Utah either.

Same thing happened to me. Took me five times to get through my deer application. Worst of it was it usually happened near the end of the process. I would have applied for buffalo but was sick of the whole thing by the time I finished deer and sheep.

I still remember that column from when I read it in the Citizen. Thanks for bringing it back.

Elkhunter, if we had a dozen guys like you in southern Arizona, we'd make some headway on this problem. Unfortunately, too many hunters just find some other place to go because they don't have the time or inclination to fight for what should be ours. Thanks for your effort, and thanks to those others who have provided good factual information on the subject of state trust lands access.

Hey Amanda.... would you also be fixing the forum clock while you're in there? Not something we can't live with, but post times are always several hours different from when the actual post was submitted. I'm posting this one at 7:58 a.m. Let's see what time goes on it.

You might be a redneck.

If you've seen HSUS's TV commercials, the ones with the sad-faced dogs mugging for the camera at the dog pound, you'll appreciate this.

I'll speak up for ADA on this one. They've been pretty good about agreeing to HPC funding allocations to southern Arizona.

I missed BPJ's appearance, but the ASU professor's spiel was a real piece of work. About half the statements he made were wrong,irrelevant or based on false assumptions. I had expected the commissioners and biologists on hand to hammer him with a point-by-point rebuttal, but they just thanked him and let him walk out as ignorant and confused as when he came in. I feel that could be dangerous because judges and the news media, which is where he's apt to go next, probably won't have the background to realize he's full of it. What's most amazing about the good professor is that he raises domestic sheep in an area inhabited by bighorn sheep and doesn't seem to find anything wrong with that. Apparently his wildlife expertise does not include the common knowledge that domestic sheep can safely carry diseases and parasites that are fatal to bighorn sheep, and that many bighorn sheep have died throughout the West from being infected by domestic sheep.

Elkaholic, I'm mystified by your statement that "Gowan is out." Did you mean to say Weiers? Gowan is running for re-election as far as I know.

The governor can remove an appointment board member due to conflict of interest, but that member's replacement must be from the same organization as the member. The law fails to recognize the possibility that an organization can have a conflict of interest.

I'd say the horse is out of the barn. Thursday's Senate Natural Resources & Transportation Committee meeting is to confirm Don Johnson to the commission apptmnt board. I don't know Don Johnson or very much about him, but the commission appointment board is currently operational and will remain so until the legislature is persuaded to change it. This committee is chaired by Sen. John Nelson. This past Monday morning I received his legislative assistant's guarantee that son of HB2072 will not be resurrected in this legislative session. I asked her if those of us who are opposed to the concept could start going about our business again without having to keep one eye on the legislature, and she said yes, although there might be stakeholder meetings on the subject this summer. If so, she promised we would receive plenty of advance notice. Before pursuing any action aimed at the commission appointment board, I'd suggest we all get more acquainted with the facts and history. Elkaholic gave us a great start. When SB1200 was drafted by AZSFW a couple of years ago, I was opposed to it chiefly for the reasons Jennifer Martin articulated in Elkaholic's narrative. However, it might have some elements that should be preserved. Someone in the Napolitano administration, either the governor herself or her environmental policy advisor, said as they were leaving the office that the G&F commission appointments were among the top two most difficult, time-consuming and painful of all the board and commission appointments. But by planting our flag on the commission and saying it belongs to us, we relinquish broader citizen support for the commission system. Given a shift in power at the legislature and/or the governor's office, we could lose not only the appointment board but also a lot of other things when liberals go in to "fix" things. The commission appointment board will probably be one of the first things to go when Dems get the upper hand in the legislature, as they surely will some day, and while they're in there they can do us a lot more damage. The wise sportsmen will keep his hands off the commission system and insist others do the same. Here's the law for the appointment board. http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/17/00202.htm&Title=17&DocType=ARS Like HB2072. it was narrowly crafted by AZSFW to put them in a powerful position. After some bad experiences with Napolitano appointments, sportsmen were all too ready to jump at this deal. Maybe we should re-visit that decision now.

From Bonus Pt. John: "The bigger picture that a lot of sportsmen are not seeing is the marketing ploy by some very bright outfitters who will approach a rancher, offer to pay him say $20,000 per year and then guarantee that only his supervised hunters will be on the checkerboard land.... and not the great unwashed masses that will litter, cut fences, create their own roads and generally cause havoc. That said outfitter will then bring in 10 -15 hunters who each pay a $5,000 access fee as well as the going guiding fee. Everyone comes out happy... The rancher has a source to go to if there are problems, he gets his cash. The outfitter has a clear open area for his clients and the hunter has little if any competition on some public / private land. This has been going on for a few years and it appears to work well. How do those who claim to be "joe average" plan on competing against that in the future?..... " Many of us sportsmen are indeed seeing it John. Now you ask US how WE plan on competing against it in the future. My question would be how does AZSFW, which claims to represents the interests of the state's sportsmen, plan on competing with it? Or is the situation you describe exactly the arrangement AZSFW seeks to promote? You say it's working well. For who? Does AZSFW exist to support the state's sportsmen or to exploit us? AZSFW's persistent narrative that wildlife and hunting can be turned into big business with profits for lots of people wore thin with us a long time ago. When AZSFW first started, sportsmen were reluctant to support it because its organizers had shown what appeared to be sympathy for ranchers' demands for landowner tags. AZSFW denied that and even printed on their brochures that they do not support landowner tags. But when HB2072 was introduced, it contained a provision that would allow our license and tag fees to pay ranchers big bucks to allow only a few hunters through their gates to the public lands beyond. With that kind of arrangement, what rancher would need landowner tags? What HB2072 provided was perfectly tailored for Arizona landowners, whose main leverage is access to public lands: trespass fees instead of landowner tags. Since AZSFW started, I haven't seen them make any serious effort to improve sportsmen's access to public lands, at least not by means that would be acceptable to folks without tens of thousands in disposable income, nor have I seen any effort to support Game & Fish in its struggles with federal land and wildlife agencies or environmentalists. What I've mainly seen is AZSFW working the state capitol to get control of Game & Fish. If you look at the web sites for SFWs in other Western states, you'll see the same message on every one: predator control. Wildlife biologists do not support landscape-level predator eradication because it is not practical and would be prohibitively expensive to do at a level that would be effective, but it makes for good demagoguery to energize a movement of the weak-minded or under-informed. This brings me to Don Peay, who writes the scripts for all these unimaginative but persistent groups including Arizona's: Don Peay says public ownership of wildlife is "socialism" and that wildlife should belong to the landowner. (Do you suppose that in Arizona that would mean the Forest Service, BLM and USFWS?) Don Peay is AZSFW's intellectual leader. Enough said.

If I had anything useful to add that hasn't already been said, I'd speak up. I think you guys are getting it just about right. Revenue from the current auction tags offered through Game & Fish is controlled by Game & Fish and goes straight to habitat work. That's how it needs to stay. Keep up the good work Donnie Dent, Muskrat, KRP, Desert Bull and others. I only wish we had a statewide sportsmen's group led by guys like you.

This is a complex subject. AGFD is the lead agency for opening and closing roads on state trust land. Lands in a private/state trust checkerboard pattern are especially frustrating because they enable landowners to tie up several square miles of state trust land just by locking a gate on their own private square. Every hunter should own a colored map showing what is private, BLM, state trust or national forest land. Hunters who encounter locked gates on non-private land should contact the regional AGFD office. Have a good description of the location (GPS coordinates can be helpful) and any sign that might be posted. A picture is not be a bad idea. You might not get an immediate response, but someone at AGFD will eventually call you back. The best experts on public lands access in Arizona are Matt Walton at Region V Game & Fish and George McKay at Coronado National Forest in Tucson. Many of the roads we've used for years to reach state trust and federal lands go across private lands at some point. The courts have ruled that county funds can be expended to maintain the private road sections as long as the public is allowed to use them. If the landowner decides to stop letting the public use his section of road, he then becomes responsible for the maintenance. But that's something to look into because county officials can illegally grant special favors to landowners by continuing to maintain roads that are not generally open to the public. As for earning our way through private property by offering labor and materials or other good deeds, for more than 20 years now AGFD has been operating a landowner relations program to help ranchers while also benefiting wildlife. The Habitat Partnership program provides funding for projects that benefit both livestock and wildlife. One of the program's principal aims was to earn hunter access. Sadly, ranchers have come to view these efforts as just more entitlement programs for them, and some ranchers are receiving benefits while denying the public access. (AGFD does not make public access a firm requirement for receiving the benefits.) In other words, what you're suggesting has been in place for a long time. While I have no doubt that landowner relations/habitat partnerships have done some good for access, there isn't much left to gain from this approach. Many ranchers simply aren't interested, and some, especially those with antelope on or behind their property, are able to extract benefits without giving access because AGFD and sportsmen's conservation groups feel the future of the wildlife is too important to let them vanish even if they can't be hunted by the general public, at least for now. Someone mentioned sheep. In Unit 32 this last fall, there were 3 permits for sheep that are basically concentrated in two general areas. A rancher whose private land blocks one of these areas wanted $500 to allow a hunter to drive over the road across her property to reach the sheep on federal lands. All 3 hunters declined and went to the other area instead, and all 3 managed to take nice rams. But that might not be the case next year. Someone mentioned Unit 29. I listened to an antelope hunter tell me about his Unit 29 hunt this past fall. He asked three different ranchers for permission to cross through their locked gates. One said sure, no problem. Another said absolutely not. The third said he would allow three hunters through and no more, and since this fellow was among the first to ask, the rancher wrote down his name and said he could come through on opening day but not until then. There would be no pre-season scouting. On opening day, the hunter wanted to access the area he hadn't been able to scout. But when he called asking the rancher to unlock the gate, the rancher told him he had since learned that the ex-Mayor of Douglas and his son had antelope tags for 29, and the rancher wanted to reserve his ranch for their exclusive use in case they wanted to hunt there. And we all know about the Chino Valley ranch that caused 65 antelope hunts to be cancelled because ranch management decided to lock off the road crossing its private lands, which resulted in locking the general public out of several square miles of state trust land as well. Anybody mad yet? Finally, AZSFW and the lure of access money has been mentioned. In my dealings with AZSFW, I've formed the opinion that Suzanne Gilstrap truly understands the issues as she has put in considerable time and effort getting a handle on it. But she is only a contract employee with AZSFW and prioritizes what the money men want prioritized. At the same time, I've formed the strong impression that the money men couldn't care less about access for the average sportsman. To the contrary, they seem to be lining up behind SFW guru Don Peay, who openly and explicitly lobbies for the privatization of wildlife. Peay recently called public ownership of wildlife "socialism" and said wildlife should belong to landowners, not the public. Similarly, Jerry Weiers, AZSFW's go-to guy at the legislature, posted on this forum that landowners are locking out hunters because we trash their lands and act irresponsibly. All this tells me that AZSFW has not pressed the case for sportsmen's access in the most important discussions, probably because public access isn't a problem for the money men behind AZSFW. Their interests lie elsewhere.

I felt the meeting was unproductive. Given the announced agenda, I was expecting to see progress toward forming an alternative voice for sportsmen. Maybe Kurt Davis can take what they heard last night and make something of it, but I have my doubts. I felt the meeting lacked focus. I didn't expect discussion about habitat work or programs for youth. Those are worthwhile activities but have nothing to do with the events and forces that filled the room last night. Bruce Johnson tried to call for the question: Do the people in this room support HB2072 or its purposes? The facilitator wouldn't allow us tackle that question head on. There were some potshots taken, but most of the evening was wasted in avoiding the fundamental issues.

I've also heard the 75% figure for coyote reductions to be helpful. Another issue is timing. Coyotes do the most damage to deer and antelope May through July when fawns are being born and just getting on their legs. Here in southern Arizona, ranchers get the most bang for their buck by hiring aerial shooters in March when calves are being born. I've heard it said that the ranchers' efforts don't provide much benefit to deer or antelope because by the time the fawns are dropping, other coyotes have migrated into the area. In-migration of predators is a factor the Three-Bar study didn't reckon with. To be effective you'd have to do it over a wide area or else concentrate it heavily during May-July. Also, there are some years when there's almost no recruitment due to winter drought. It doesn't do much good to shoot coyotes if does aren't dropping fawns. I wonder if they'll suspend the bounty in Utah if they get a dry winter and spring.

Now I'm really confused. Who is this "Pete" who Coueshunter hopes got support to kill the bill last night? Wetmule is exactly right. If revenue from tag sales ends up in the hands of one group for lobbying and public relations purposes, you're open to having to do it for everyone. All it takes is a change in the legislature's makeup or possibly a judge's ruling. You don't want to establish a precedent you wouldn't want your enemies to follow.

Terry, I hope you're at tomorrow night's meeting. You always grasp the salient points of the issue. One of the chief proponents of HB 2072 once told me that I need to forget about the average hunter. He'll abandon hunting as soon as the going gets tough and find something else to do. It's the serious trophy hunter and the professional guide who hold the key to the future of hunting, and only they will save it. Was he right? Tomorrow night's meeting is not about HB 2072. Rather it is about what non-governmental entity should speak for the interests of sportsmen and wildlife. Should it be a group that is funded by a combination of private money and tag revenues from the state's wildlife and entirely self-directed without government oversight, while claiming to represent YOU? Currently the legislature is being told that AZSFW represents the state's sportsmen and sportsmen's conservation groups. Their guru is Don Peay, who says public ownership of wildlife is "socialism" and that wildlife should belong to landowners. Is that the future we want for hunting? Read tomorrow night's meeting agenda carefully: http://azgfd.net/artman/publish/NewsMedia/Agenda-is-set-for-March-22-meeting-of-Sportsmen-s-Constituent-Group.shtml

I just learned from a reliable source that AZSFW supporters will be presenting their case for HB2072 to Governor Brewer today. With only one side of the story being presented, and the governor probably believing AZSFW is a legitimate voice for the state's sportsmen, there's a chance this bill could meet with the approval of the governor and her staff. Any measure that promises revenue by means other than a tax will have a certain level of appeal. Those who agree with me that HB2072 is wrong should contact the governor's office as soon as possible. I wish I had an inside track to email addresses and phone numbers for the governor's staff, but I don't at the present time, so the best I can do is urge you to call or write today using the generic contact info at this link: http://www.azgovernor.gov/Contact.asp