Public Hunting Lands and Bad Schools

by JIM BEERS

Yesterday, Mothers’ Day, I wrote about how federal and state bureaucrats are burning the nesting cover and winter cover vital for game animals on lands purchased with and maintained with Duck Stamp and Pittman Robertson funds. I used Iowa as a prime current example of productive farm country where quite often most, if not all, nesting and wintering habitat for wildlife is found on these government areas paid for by hunters. The article, “A Burning Paradox”, went out yesterday evening after my wife and I went to a movie.

Just before turning in last night, I checked my computer one last time. A long-time reader and commenter in Florida had read the article and made the following comment: “These taxes are illegal. They violate the 2nd amendment by placing a restriction, the availability to pay taxes, on the ownership of firearms. All the taxes on fire arms, ammo and reloading supplies should be stopped.”

Being tired and assuming he had missed the point I was trying to make that our public hunting lands were being converted into “no-available-hunting” lands by the public agencies we founded using funds generated by hunting; I rather curtly dismissed his comment before retiring. As I went to sleep and as I woke up early this morning, I found myself thinking about what he said and how it was saying something to me. That old gator was on to something.

Are we stupid, or what? Why do we continue to support mandatory Duck Stamps for duck hunting? If the funds are going to anti-hunter bureaucrats to burn nesting and wintering habitat on lands purchased with Duck Stamp funds and to hire experts to help state bureaucrats paid with Pittman Robertson funds to burn state areas purchased mainly with Pittman Robertson funds and State Hunting License Revenue: what are we thinking? If the Duck Stamp funds are going to buy and ease more private property to be burned by federal bureaucrats and to be kept closed to any hunting: why should we pay for the demise of what this was and truly is, all about?

The same thing applies to Pittman Robertson funds. Why do we continue to support taxing ourselves and all gun owners and ammunition customers to pay for anti-gun and anti-hunting bureaucrats and programs? In all seriousness, the way the state and federal bureaucrats are converting our Pittman-Robertson & Hunting License – purchased hunting lands into no-hunting-available parks-without-facilities: do not be surprised when they soon become no-taking islands of cover for wolves and cougars as they are being spread far and wide. The radicals and their nutsy-government enablers probably envision some of these Pittman-Robertson hunting lands as ideal prairie sites for re-introducing (like wolves) the vaunted “free-roaming buffalo” that are next on the Endangered Trainwrecks List just as soon as they list the newly-classified Texas lizard that will reputedly shut down Texas oil wells.

These prairie (especially) federal refuges and state wildlife management areas are products of the concerns and self-interest of hunters that put lots of sweat and dollars into saving the habitat so important nationally and locally in those productive and intensively-farmed states. In a very real sense they are like children of the hunting community that we have entrusted to state and federal bureaucrats that are no longer to be trusted. Consider:

When children are mistreated by teachers in a public school and you are unable to control the school; you take your kids out of that school. Likewise when state and federal bureaucrats mistreat the hunting and wildlife habitats entrusted to them and you can’t control them; you put those lands elsewhere.

When tenure and counterproductive bureaucracy allows bad teachers to fail to teach; you change the rules and get rid of the teachers or take your kids out of the school. Likewise, when state and federal bureaucrats set anti-hunting agendas for the money and lands entrusted to their care and have no fear of any accountability; you either make them accountable, and replace them or you put those lands elsewhere.

When teachers give your kids condoms or tell them about sexual perversions or encourage the kids to ignore parents about everything from abortions to religious beliefs; you either stop that stuff and fire those teachers pronto or take your kids out of that school. Likewise, when state and federal bureaucrats “give” public hunting and wildlife lands to radicals and extremists (these lands are for “Native Ecosystems”) and then tell the public that burning them to “Restore Pre-Colonial Species” is the highest and best use of these lands; you get rid of those bureaucrats, change those policies, and explain how public hunting lands are available for all other uses and that the habitats are for the wildlife of most interest and benefit to Local, State, and the National economies and communities.

In all three of the foregoing analogies, you would never just keep funding the offending bureaucrats or teachers while “negotiating”. Those bureaucrats work for the public purposes for which they are employed, in this case in large measure the hunters that “brung them to the dance”: just like the teachers work in large measure for the parents of the children entrusted to them. In both cases, if the teachers or the bureaucrats want to be advocates for causes inimical to the interests of those employing them, then they should do the honorable thing and devote their life to such purposes and not to destroying them from within.

Each state and federal agency should review their land management policies in light or the Authorization wording in Congressional and State Legislature Authorizations as well as the strict wording in federal legislation regarding the uses and purposes of funds such as Pittman-Robertson and Hunting License Revenue. Hunters need to understand and oversee the routine review of these things periodically to prevent the sort of out-of-control government we are now experiencing.

For all of the above reasons I suggest we consider seeking federal legislation to prohibit making the Duck Stamp mandatory for waterfowl hunting. Let the Duck Stamp be a voluntary item for hunter and non-hunter alike since it is supporting anti-hunting activities like burning nesting and wintering habitat.

Additionally, I suggest we consider legislation eliminating the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration excise taxes since increasingly more states are increasingly using the public hunting land acquisition and maintenance as tools of anti-hunting agendas to the detriment of hunting, hunters, and the gun owners that pay those taxes.

This burning/bureaucrats/government-agencies two-step and their hidden agendas has gone on long enough. Like government-forced wolf populations, Wilderness Areas, Roadless Areas, Critical Habitats, timber management elimination, grazing allotment closures, Native Species, Invasive (pheasant, brown trout, etc.) Species, closure of all non-renewable natural resource extraction from mining to energy development, and the closure of all renewable natural resource management and use; burning is one more arrow in the rural body, rural economy and the culture and traditions that have helped make America great.

Speaking of arrows, given the current state of affairs, what with the Debt and Joblessness and a collapsing economy; hunters and gun owners might well welcome an 11 % drop in the price of shotguns, rifles, pistols, and ammunition. Archers might welcome an 11-12% drop in archery products and components. Manufacturers and gun companies might see an increase in sales with concomitant increases in taxes-paid and people-hired. Hunter Education could be handled just like Concealed Carry Requirements wherein states dictate the things necessary to buy a hunting license and private contractors provide the training. All in all, the bureaucrats and radicals, have never imagined that we would “cut off our nose to spite our face” and stop paying them to eliminate us but the time for considering this is here.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have unwittingly been acting like V. I. Lenin’s stereotype of capitalists. Lenin once observed that the “capitalists” would sell us (the communists) the rope that we will hang them with. We have been giving money and support for too long now to bureaucrats and government agencies devoted to eliminating us and our traditions and culture: continuing to pay them to do this, like selling ropes to the communists, makes no sense whatsoever.

Jim Beers

9 May 2011

If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.

This article and other articles written by Jim Beers since January 2009 can
be found at http://jimbeers7.blogster.com (Jim Beers Uncommon Sense)

Articles by Jim Beers written from March 2006 to January 2009 can be found
at http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at jimbeers7@comcast.net