For three generations we have had liberals, anti-hunters and anti -gun people slowly educating our kids that guns are evil and hunting is no longer needed and cruel. It is a wonder that any kids these days want to hunt. For 40 years, going on 50 years the schools have been slowly working to educate our kids that hunting and shooting are throwbacks to days before civilazation came to the US. Frontiersmen and settlers hunted for food. We hunt to be rednecks and to be cruel to animals is the constant message.
Then you add the urban sprawl and many places which use to be easy to hunt have been built up. Like many here I can show you many places which use to hold a covey of quail which now have a house built up on it. Whole farms are now hundreds of houses. Or large scale farming and large scale chicken raising take entire farms out of game production. One farm, across from my fathers farm, now has 18 or 19 chicken houses on it and they raise just under 750,000 at a time. That is one farm which use to have three coveys of quail which can never be hunted again.
On top of that people are afraid of letting you hunt for fear that you will get hurt and sue them. Peopel are sue crazy. You have to feel for people who have freinds who have hunted on their farms for years and are told that they can not any longer because the farm owner is afraid that if the hunter gets hurt or hurts someone else that they will get sued.
I have boys I grew up with, who have hunted on my land for 30 years and I tell them to go ahead but I do not give them written permision. My lawyer says that way I might have a leg to stand on if I get sued since they did not have written permsion like the Game laws require. Several have been stoped, but the Gmae wardens know me and have accepted either my word on the phone or the hunters word that they had permission. Failing that I will give them written permision for any court that wants it, to get them off.
There was a case a few years ago where one hunter was walking in the woods, tripped over a fallen wire fenece and shot his buddy in the leg. The land owner got sued and lost because he did not warn them of the fence. The fact the he did not know about the long ago abandoned fence was no defense. I have land that I have walked a hundred times and am sure has many things, hazards maybe, that I have never spotted.
Many farmers lease their lands to deer hunters to get someone else to manage and monitor the hunting. It is far easier to say sorry you can not go hunting because those deer hunters have it all tied up than say no to a long time friend. Most of us are not real good at saying no. Makes us feel like we are not being nice. But if you have 90% of you retirement tied up in land and do not want to take a chance you just have to say no. I do not blame the farmer.
The AP story from last week did note that several Game departments are getting a financial squeeze because they are funded from ever decreasing hunting lisc. sales. truth is most states are more worried aobut decreased incoming money than the loss of hunters, habitat or loss of hunting in general. Maybe it is time for the tree huggers to have to buy a tree hugging lisc..
