[This message has been edited by John S (edited 05-04-2002).]

You can curse and slander anybody you want to on this thread any way you want to, including me (you're really shakin' everybody up with that erudite diction of yours), but legally you don't have a leg to stand on. It's like John said: As American's, we're guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms, but we are NOT guaranteed the right to hunt, and we are certainly not guaranteed the right to hunt for free any ol' place we want to pitch a tent. You can remain in denial and fly into a tizzy over this set of realities until hell won't have it, but it just happens to be the truth, like it or not.

AD

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Originally posted by JAG:

Still it comes back to the dollar. Like I have said, I have no problem paying some farmer to hunt his land, its his, but when a huge corperation comes in and buys hundreds of thousands of acres, or guides snag all of the tags and double the price, thats abit harder to swallow.

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JAG,

How are the outfitters getting ahold of those tags? Is there a set aside program whereby guides and outfitters are guaranteed tags and the average citizen has to wait for a tag in a random drawing?

H. C.

358 Mark,
I understand your situation (Sask boy myself)
and can sympathize. Perhaps if you went to SERM depredation tags could be issued??

A close friend of mine had similar problems with elk in his hay, and under pressure, SERM put out bales in the travel routes to intercept the elk before they got to his stacks.

[This message has been edited by Johnny Ringo (edited 05-04-2002).]

I've been to most of the other countries and I kinda like this country and I have not forfeited any rights as yet.

there is no such thing as complete freedom, your rights stop where my nose begins.

America, Love it or leave it.

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

How much do you think it costs to own your own business? How about a restaurant? 50,000 minimum? 200,000 more likely? Is that too much, Mom? Pop? Why don't you log onto Scottrade and buy McDonalds then? If you did that today, you could be in business for $29.80. You don't have to be a "douche bag" to scrape that kind of cash together, and every time someone needs a Big Mac, he's got to come to you. Want a bigger piece of the pie? Buy ten or a hundred shares, or heck, $50,000 worth. Who do you think made out better, the guy who put $10,000 of his own money into a restaurant and worked his ass off for the last thirty years running his wonderful restaurant or the guy who put $10,000 of his own money into McDonalds shares thirty years ago? (Hint, well over half of small businesses fail, and you'd be able to buy yourself around $300,000 worth of land to hunt on, plus whatever money you accumulated working your regular job, if you'd bought McDonalds.)

Don't like the restaurant business? How about retail? Go to any small town, and ask people how easy it is to start or run a small business. Their answer will usually include the phrase "Wal Mart". Listen to the ones who said they saw the writing on the wall back in '90 and hedged their bets by putting, say, $20,000 into "Wal Mart" stock. They've got $220,000 to show for it. What other small business could you have started in 1990 for $20,000 and been ahead 11-fold today, without even having to take inventories on days you'd rather be fishing? What if they only had $2000? Today they've got $22,000, and they're only 12 years older than they were. Plenty of time and money to invest in your other small businesses ($2000 worth of Phillip Morris in '91, $2000 worth of GE in '92... these wouldn't have been bad moves, and by now you can see that not every one of these companies has to do well for you to end up doing well. If all your money is tied up in one little store, that store darned well does have to do well if you don't fancy losing it all.). And don't tell me you can't scrape together $2000 to invest. There are lots of guys who make $2000 less a year than you do, and they didn't starve to death. Why don't you get started now?

I really can't sympathise with people who sit back and whine about how much money "corporations" are making and how these "corporations" are driving out the the "little guy" (people with hundreds of thousands or millions in their "small business")*. All these whiners have to do is buy a few shares and cash in on these huge corporate profits. Really, honest, they're almost all under $60 a share.

Sincerely,

H. C.

*not that there's anything wrong with that

Who gives a shit if corporations are owned by stockholders,the majority are still governed by a owner with 51% of the stock who calls the shots and the rest are run by a board. None of this prevents a corporation from entering the market of public lands and grazing,to show a profit loss. Which is exactly what happens.

[This message has been edited by HenryC470 (edited 05-12-2002).]

I certainly wouldn't want to "help get the market back up to where it was". With the declines in prices lately, I'm inclined to believe it is easier to find companies worth buying.

I'm not sure what a profit loss is, but as an owner of, say, Amalgamated Wood Products Inc., I didn't put my money there so my management could use it to pay taxes for the support of midnight basketball and Robert Maplethorpe exhibits. I also didn't put it there so the local idiots could ride around on four wheelers, break their necks rolling over in my ditch, and then try to get rich at my expense in civil court. If people would have taken responsibility for their own actions, instead of foisting the responsibility on "corporations" with "deep pockets" (and most of those pockets are in the pants of people who are not millionaires), you'd see a lot more corporate land open for hunting.

H. C.

Sheephunter,
You may be correct, but I'm not ready to accept that, and I think that apathy is our biggest danger.

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

Of course, then you'd be one of the "douche bags" you've been complaining about, wouldn't you?

George

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Shoot straight, shoot often, but by all means, use enough gun!

[This message has been edited by John S (edited 05-12-2002).]

What percentage of game tags are set aside for outfitters and guides in your state?

H. C.

[This message has been edited by RMK (edited 05-12-2002).]

regards
sheephunter

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Don Nelson
Sw. PA.

I think part of the reason for peoples' views to vary so widely is we are all from different backgrounds...but mainly we all live in different places. The rules are different from state to state!

Here's my family's situation (Montana):

Ranchers get tags somehow? I wish! My family's place has probably 50-100 "surplus" whitetails eating all our feed and yet my dad can only shoot one buck a year. He can't get anybody from out of state a tag. All he can do is "sponsor" people to increase their chances in a drawing slightly. I got one this year, my brother didn't. Yes, I'll be paying more than $300 just to shoot one deer in my own backyard.

Crop damage reimburstment? Yeah, right. Since my great grandfather homesteaded the place in the late 1800's, we haven't gotten a penny. The state did give us a roll of woven wire once to help protect our haystacks during the winter but that's all. The deer eat thousands worth of feed every year and we pay for it. We don't complain, that's just the way it is. We like having lots of deer...you can't have it both ways. But yes, we feed those deer, the taxpayers most certainly do not.

That's enough for now....

[This message has been edited by jeremy w (edited 05-16-2002).]

It's nothing less than ironic when some rancher cries about having to support wildlife and being over run by them. Yet they could let hunters in and be done with the problem and not even have to look far, for enough people to gratefully do the job.

Then there was part about how I'm a rancher or farmer and I didn't get a red cent in welfare from the goverment. Well to get to the bottom of who has and hasn't got a welfare check. Just go to www.ewg.org and enter the name of your favorite rancher or farmer and find out just how much welfare they have recieved.

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Originally posted by RMK:
Well Jon A with so many surplus deer,has it ever occured to your old man that maybe letting the public kill off that mystical 50 - 100 deer might result in less animal damages. Probably not,he more then likely just pisses and moans.The thought of letting someone hunt his place for a reasonable price or as a last resort and I stress "last resort" for free,just makes him sick.

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You're really good at talking out of your ass. My dad DOES let a ton of people hunt on our land for FREE! It isn't like we own half the state, it's only a small ranch. There's a fine line between letting more people hunt and turning your home into a war zone. Just last year we had the thrill of hearing the "snap" of bullets passing over our heads as we stood on our front porch--courtesy of some hunters blasting away at a spike buck from about 700 yds away--on our neighbor's property!

If it was your house, your buildings, your horses and your cattle, your wife, your children dodging those bullets you might understand the need to choose people we let hunt very wisely. I'd bet most on this board are well above this type of behavior, but let's face it most on this board are a serious cut above the average hunter. We all know how many "slob hunters" there are out there and it saddens us. It gives all of us a bad name. It only takes a few bad apples to spoil it for the rest of us. Many land owners have made the mistake of giving a "slob hunter" permission to hunt on his land, lived to regret it and now turn away all hunters.

Even if he did turn the place into a war zone, the dent in the population would pale in comparison with how many deer get killed on the highway that runs through our place for less than 1/2 mile.

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It's nothing less than ironic when some rancher cries about having to support wildlife and being over run by them. Yet they could let hunters in and be done with the problem and not even have to look far, for enough people to gratefully do the job.

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See above.

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Then there was part about how I'm a rancher or farmer and I didn't get a red cent in welfare from the goverment. Well to get to the bottom of who has and hasn't got a welfare check. Just go to www.ewg.org and enter the name of your favorite rancher or farmer and find out just how much welfare they have recieved.

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Go type "Aadland" into your website (Stillwater County, Mt).

Maybe you missed this fact from your site:

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Ten percent of the biggest (and most profitable) subsidized crop producers absorbed two-thirds of all subsidies, averaging $41,500 in annual payments. The bottom 80 percent of those eligible saw only $1,132 on average per year. Sixty percent of all farmers and ranchers were completely ineligible for program crop subsidies.

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Just like any other industry, the big money guys with the big money accountants and big money laywers can milk the system for all it's worth and get away with it. The average honest Joe gets dick.

But you are villainizing all farmers and ranchers because of the acts of a few. That's just as bad as a land owner not allowing hunting because of a bad experience with one slob hunter.

Let's stick to the facts.

[This message has been edited by Jon A (edited 05-16-2002).]

So you didn't have to take my word for it, I provided you with our name as well as the county and state in which the ranch is located. This was so you could find out for yourself from the website you posted. Did you run into some sort of problem working the keyboard?

We aren't on the list. If you search our county, you'll find the guy at the end of the list (that actually got a positive check) made a grand total of $3.24 over the last six years. That's a whopping $0.58 a year! Call your congressman! He's getting rich by stealing from the government! In case you can't find it yourself, here it is:

http://www.ewg.org/farm/top_recips.php?submitted=true&county=30095&page=27

An intelligent person might have inferred since we aren't on the list at all, our "welfare check" had to be less than Fifty-eight cents a year.

What's wrong? Get an answer from your beloved website that you don't want to believe and the website is no longer valid? It's only valid when it says what you want it too?

Again, from the website YOU posted:

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Sixty percent of all farmers and ranchers were completely ineligible for program crop subsidies.

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Which word did you not understand? Would you like m e t o t y p e m o r e s l o w l y ???

[This message has been edited by Jon A (edited 05-18-2002).]