Message #282004

[hank]

In my county and surrounding, between the county, swiftmud and the state park there is over 100 thousand acres of preserves with no hunting allowed. The same guy is the trapper for all of them. He makes his living off of trapping hogs. If it was private land I say good for him. Since my tax dollars paid for the land thats not my stance. Why not allow regular hunters who pay for that property to harvest those hogs? He has so much property that he can't keep up with it, and what is his incentive to? As long as there are hogs he has a job. I was in one of them the other day and every road and manicured area was tore up by hogs. I'd sure be happy to help out. Even if I couldn't take dogs. I'd love to take my boy out there and shoot a couple. If it's guns that the problem just allow bow. If its poaching thats their worried about, they are dillusional if they don't think its happening already.  I'm with Noah on this one and the fisheries management.

 Quick story
 My brother in law was out on a local river recently with his northern cousin. I was supposed to go but my boat broke. They went out at night to show him some gators and stuff. No laws were broken or intended to be broken. The helicopter flew over him for over and hr. On his way home. 6 deputies jumped out of the bushes with night vision goggles, guns drawn, put your hands in the air, full cop routine. Now his 10yr old cousin has a bright headlamp on and obviously looks right at the cops. They start yelling and stuff, kid doesn't realize what he is doing. Cops detain and harrass them for 30 mins before letting them go because they did not do anything wrong. How many tax dollars did that little stunt cost?
  A yr ago I was bowfishing with same brother in law. Someone calls cops on us. We were 100% legal. Cops pull up on us and draw guns. Again full cop, hands in the air drop your weapons stuff.  I was standing on a bridge and tried to explain that I didn't want to drop my bow 5'. They wouldn't hear it and had guns pointed so I dropped it. Detained us and 3 teenage bow that were just watching for 45min before telling us to carry on because what we were doing was legal.
 Sorry about my rant!