IDNR deer management out of step??

I don't understand how shorter gun seasons will stop tresspassing, are you saying that NO BOWHUNTERS tresspass?

I think there are just as many cases of tresspassing during the archery seasons, it's just not as many landowners are out checking for tresspassers during bow season.

ENFORCEMENT is the only way to stop tresspassing, why isn't Don pushing for stiffer fines and such for tresspassers.....instead of taking away hunting opportunity from legal hunters?

If it's deer management thats really the issue, why isn't he proposing taking away a week of M/L in December and adding a week of M/L in October?

What I think is Don probabaly hunts more than most of us, he travels the WORLD hunting and writing about his adventures. It's also my guess that his adventures are TAX DEDUCTABLE......as it's considered a business expense. So loosing a few days of gun hunting in Indiana will have no affect on him personally, as he will just replace those days with a hunt in another state/location, with tax free dollars.

When you add it up, I probabaly spend $7,000.00 - $10,000.00 a year on hunting related expenses....fuel, equipment, food, ammo, clothes so on and so on. Thats more than my mortgage interest, I would love to be able to deduct it off my taxable income!

My comment is on there now... below is Don's response and my original comment post...

don Mulligan wrote on Feb 25, 2008 12:00 PM:

" Mr Demaree:
The surveys you use to justify Indiana's long gun season did not include everyone affected by the season. Though I am happy nonhunting landowners (most) let us hunters choose the season, it is a skewed survey. I wrote that column after letters from readers here that asked for solutions to their problems during our gun season. There was a woman whose dogs keep getting killed, a farmer who was told by law enforcement he wasn't allowed to drive his ATV on his own property because he was harassing hunters on another property,another farmer who had his fence run over by ATV hunters and many more.

And I appreciate that you believe your interpretation of internet data is more credible than quotes from the people who compiled and published that data, but that doesn't make sense to me. Readers here should know I never rely solely internet information. As a reporter, I always interview the people who allegedly made the statements. You'd be stunned how wrong the internet and the interpretation thereof often is.

In the article, I did not call for less deer season in Indiana, just a shift. In fact, our deer season has been repeatedly liberized over the past two decades, with almost no roll back. And that is fine with me, to a point. All some of my readers are asking, is if we can back off of gun season some, because whether people opposed to the notion like it or not, law enforcement in every state I talked to, confirm, there are more violations/confrontations during gun season than in all other seasons combined.

"



Kirk Demaree wrote on Feb 25, 2008 3:07 AM:

" Mr. Mulligan's recent column accused Indiana's DNR of being "out of step", yet he saw fit to not even consult IDNR for either recent survey data or to allow them to respond to his assertions.

In point of fact, Indiana's deer seasons were lengthened in the past several years in direct response to overwhelming response to hunter surveys for longer, not shorter, hunting seasons.

Statements made by Ohio's chief deer manager to the effect that they are able to have both short seasons and adequate herd population control is, in fact, not born out by ODNR's own data contained in a 20 page statistical report and readily available on their website. Ohio's deer/vehicle accident rates and crop damage complaints have in fact been rising every year for the past 5 or more years, indicating an increasing herd population.

Mr. Mulligan's claims that landowners want shorter seasons due to trespassing complaints is simply wrong. As a landowner and farmer, I can tell you that those with agricultural interests desire that the deer herd be controlled, first and foremost. Furthermore, Mulligan singles out the gun season in making this argument, when in fact poaching and trespassing goes on in bow season as well, which runs for over three months in Indiana.

This column did a dis-service to the Indiana DNR, and misrepresents the true wishes of Indiana deer hunters relative to their season lengths, which has been well documented. "

Let's see....

Don does not rely on "Internet data" that is published from the DNRs - both Indiana and Ohio, but he believes that 20 or so emails from disgruntled landowners is representative of the thousands upon thousands of Indiana landowners. Gee, I wonder how he got those emails? Why, over the Internet, of course.

Does he really believe that the DNRS are publishing false information?



Don, in previous posts, said that we could tack on extra days for bowhunters that were taken away from the gun season. He must feel that deer hunting is deer hunting.

Don,

You need to look at the breakdown of who hunts with what. Of course that is another published report by the IDNR. There is a very large number of deer hunters that hunt with a firearm ONLY. Let's just say 50,000. You are proposing a lot less season for these hunters just because there are a few bad apples among us.

By that rationale maybe the gun grabbers are right - If we eliminate half the guns in private ownership the crime rate will be cut in half.

What a fallacy....

I think the majority (not all) of us agree he was trying to push an agenda of a minority of hunters - and this kind of an article was the inevitable result.