Voodoo Game Management

Mr. Williams,
As someone who attended a good number (but not all) of the meetings of this group. Let me assure you that the discussions were frank. If you actually took a moment to read the report you would see that habitat work was recognized as the a key component. Which is made difficult by the fact that we do not own the land. Predator control while a componet is not the entire ball of wax. There are also reccomendations for limiting the take of deer especially does in these regions.
I do object to your inference that I am an idiot and am incapable of understanding a simple situation. Please take better care not to insult those of us who take the time to think through these important issues because you disagree with a part of the reccomendations.
Best,
Don Kleiner

Gee, Don how could I infer that you are an idiot when I have never heard of you until this moment? If you are a member of one or more of the three outfits I mentioned, please know that I have worked with some (a very few) intelligent and thoughtful members of each. That said, these outfits--the Maine Professional Guides Association, the Maine Trapper’s Association, and the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine--are, as I reported, dominated by and speak for “the most ignorant and backward elements of the state’s me-first, meat-on-the-table, bar-room game gluttons.” As I also reported, these outfits “fraudulently claim to speak for the state’s hunters and anglers.” As for “habitat work,” the report calls for land-owner cooperation instead of regulation. Where have you been these last three decades? Do you imagine that “land-owner cooperation” has worked in protecting habitat? I have no reason to doubt that the discussions among these mostly eminently unqualified advisors to professional wildlife managers were “frank.” And your point is…? It’s not just I who “disagrees” with the notion that game abundance can be had by knocking off predators (esp. coyotes which aren’t even obligate deer predators). The rest of the wildlife-management community figured this out circa 1950. Finally, may we please have a cogent defense of spring bear hunting over bait (“garbaging for bears”) in which lactating females are killed and cubs orphaned?
Best,
Ted

Don

I believe you have come up against a formidable enemy one who does not understand the problem, has not been in the affected woods, and likes to create a spin for his job and cushy seat at home. Ted, for Gods sake man get out into the woods with Don and the rest of the professionals in the North Woods.

I have very little respect for armchair experts from away. I get a kick out of them believing they know more than a doctor of Biology who has spent 30 years studying these animals in Maine.

Just another idiot (and I guess proud of it)

Dear “just another idiot”: I regret that folks like you perceive people who question 19th-century-style predator control as the “enemy” and wrongly assume that none of them “get into woods.” (I’ll venture that I have left more boot prints in New England and Canada than you and this alleged “doctor of biology” combined.) The only “enemies” here are greed, ignorance, and stupidity (which may be found in profusion in the “advisory committee”) and cowardice (with which the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is, alas, rife). I’m not sure what “doctor of biology” you are referring to. But if he works for the state, why aren’t he and his colleagues making management decisions? Why are they ducking their legal and moral responsibilities and turning the job over to people who, in many cases, don’t even have college degrees and who, in almost all cases, are eminently unqualified to manage wildlife? Does this “doctor of biology” really believe that killing lactating sow bears over garbage in spring and thereby orphaning cubs is an appropriate deer-management technique? Does he believe that it is deemed acceptable or even effective by the public, the wildlife management community or the majority of sportsmen? As someone who has worked for a state fish and wildlife agency, I can assure you that if he does, he is virtually alone among all his peers.
Best,
Ted

Ted,
You are eloquent in your criticism of game management in Maine. Please keep it up because you are so right.
J. DuBois

Ted,
Thank you for calling attention to this barbaric report that came out of the "loaded" task group convened by our Fish and Wildlife Department's Commissioner. This will certainly give another much-deserved black eye to Maine's fish and wildlife department and those organizations who contributed to this report. Given our State's budget problems, the Governor is considering legislation that will combine our natural resource departments. Many of us outdoor sportsmen are in support of this merger as we believe it will bring a more balanced, scientific, ethical approach to managing our fish and wildlife. Sorry, but unfortunately I cannot sign my name for fear of reprisal.
anonymous

Don Kleiner is, in my opinion, one of a handful of outdoors extremists who control Maine's fish and wildlife agenda and who are unwilling to give even a single inch of ground. One of his more extreme moments was getting up in front of the IFW legislative committee during the bear trapping hearing and telling the committee and audience that anyone who thinks wildlife watching/ecotourism is going to bring in any money is living in a fantasyland. It's Mr. Kleiner who is living in a fantasyland. In case he hasn't read the 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation put out by the USFWS, in Maine in 2006, 833,000 people spent $818 million on wildlife watching, while only 177,000 people spent $240 million on hunting. The future isn't in killing animals, it's in co-existing with them.

Ted, your anti-hunting bias is showing again.

Because they are incapable of mounting any cogent defense, the most backward, brainless and ecologically illiterate elements of the meat-monger set invariably and instinctively respond to any questioning of their personal fantasies by painting everyone else in the room with the “anti-hunting” brush. (Not that it is relevant, but I have hunted passionately all over the East for 40 years. I have edited a hunting magazine and defended hunting in dozens of magazine articles.) In your paranoid view of society the Izaak Walton League and the National Wildlife Federation, which also object to the 19th-century-style predator control you advocate, also have “anti-hunting bias.”
Best,
Ted

Hi Ted,

Ted, it's a tough time here in Maine. Folks are having huge trouble dealing with the changing times. When it comes to coyotes, Maine was probably the last state to get them and we'll be the last state to "get" them.

I live outside the second most populated community in Maine. I have Deer and I have Coyotes. Got plenty of Deer as a matter of fact. I hunt 100 yards from my home. I have a ton of Turkey. Coyotes too. Had 'em for years...still have plenty of Deer.

My brother has a camp in the heart of Plum Creek land around Greenville. I fish and hike like a madman. Except for the public lands...all the yards are gone. It's hard to find trees over 20 years old...no big pine cathedrals like down this way.

Well...as this winter is proving to all Mainer's....you can't have Deer if you don't have winter cover. The reports for even the Southern Maine Deer Herd is sobering. Still, Mainer's have been lead to believe it's the Coyotes by our Biologists. It's pretty embarrassing that our guys are so far behind.

Unfortunately, that's a hard case to make when the supposed leader of Maine's Sporting Community, George Smith, comes out and calls the state's most fined Deer Yard Liquidator, Plum Creek, the "Gift that Keeps on Giving!" and fails to hold his sponsor accountable.

I even like George, but you're killing us buddy.

It's 2008...stop wasting my money on something that is proven not to work...geesch.

Jeffus