HB 1175

[brocksw]

HB 1175 will be heard Tomorrow afternoon in front of the Senate Energy and Natural resources committee.

Because this bill has been converted to a study that will tie the departments hands for two years and focuses only on big game seasons, our Chapter plans to oppose this bill on the Senate side in an effort to accelerate a conversation with the ND Department of Trust lands about a hunter friendly solution moving forward. The department has agreed to a meeting after session to begin looking at solutions.

 

[brocksw]

1175 leaves the Senate committee with a Do Not Pass recommendation (5-0). We look forward to discussions with the Department of Trust lands in the coming weeks to work towards a solution.

 

[brocksw]

1175 vote on the Senate floor = 5 - 42

Dead

 

[GST]

That's an awesome graphic. What is the thought on the divergence the last few years with tags #s steadily increasing and harvest totals steadily decreasing?

As said EHD hit much of the southern half of ND hard two different times in the last few years

Prior to that in 08-9 was the winter we had over 650 deer in our hay yard…. 3 times the normal number

The NDGF population plan called for a deer herd 75,000 tag could control…. They were giving out 147,000 tag trying to catch up

After 7 years of mismanagement Mother Nature stepped in and did what NDGF could not and dropped the deer population in the ways she does

Coincidentally that next season of 09 was the first case of CWD discovered in ND

The NDGF have proven time and again they are reactionary instead of proactive to respond they knew CRP acres were coming out because they had been told repeatedly at advisory meetings and still grew the deer herd instead of proactively putting out more doe tags earlier

Sometimes graphs don’t tell the whole story

 

[rogerthat]

I knew the North Dakota knowledge would show up eventually. Just needed to get the corn piles restocked first. Sometimes a little perspective might help. Consider moving to Montana from North Dakota if you want that. Just saying

 

[GST]

I knew the North Dakota knowledge would show up eventually. Just needed to get the corn piles restocked first. Sometimes a little perspective might help. Consider moving to Montana from North Dakota if you want that. Just saying

Actually I just shared a little factual perspective to a question that was asked.

No mention of corn or personal comments

Mt is a beautiful state with tremendous hunting opportunities that make awesome memories and I have loved my time hunting there but despite that I wouldn’t trade any of that for the time I spend in a hunting blind or out of one with my kids here in ND

Im pretty content taking what I do from those experiences and not worrying about not living up to what someone else decrees hunting must be for me and my family

To me it seems a bit arrogant and presumptuous to determine what someone else must take from THEIR hunting experIence to meet your standard … but then thats just me

 

[rogerthat]

Actually I just shared a little factual perspective to a question that was asked.

No mention of corn or personal comments

Mt is a beautiful state with tremendous hunting opportunities that make awesome memories and I have loved my time hunting there but despite that I wouldn’t trade any of that for the time I spend in a hunting blind or out of one with my kids here in ND

Im pretty content taking what I do from those experiences and not worrying about not living up to what someone else decrees hunting must be for me and my family

To me it seems a bit arrogant and presumptuous to determine what someone else must take from THEIR hunting experIence to meet your standard … but then thats just me

I was referring to how crappy MFWP is ran and how ND F&G seems like a dream come true in comparison. I’m not sure you realize how good you have it…that’s my perspective from just across the border

 

[GST]

I can’t speak to how mtfp is ran I can only tell you many of us that are directly impacted by the NDGF for more than just our recreational opportunities are repeatedly dismissed at meetings specifically designed and meant to allow input

When the NDGF puts on a public meeting and starts off telling the sportsmen and women there that there will be no opportunity to ask questions in an open public forum setting even after the presentation was done…..you know the NDGF doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks outside their circle

For decades the Director of the NDGF has been appointed ….I will bet a steak supper in two years Brock will be here complaining about a bill to make the directors position elected……and it will have traction

Being tone deaf and dismissive of a large portion of the people you work for is not going to gain you much support

I know the job of the NDGF is not an easy one and you never make everyone happy but when you are streaming live an advisory meeting that is being attended by adaptive sports orgs and the kids and adults the help and some arrogant ass takes the mike and belittles them as not being real hunters because they use the tool of baiting and your NDGF director stands 3 feet away and doesn’t step in and shut that down and say hey maybe as hunters we should not be tearing each other down…..the arrogance of their position is pretty obvious

I hope after this legis session people can take a step back from that kind of rhetoric and the NDGF stops to realize giving groups of people the finger doesn’t work

 

[Wind Gypsy]

As said EHD hit much of the southern half of ND hard two different times in the last few years

Prior to that in 08-9 was the winter we had over 650 deer in our hay yard…. 3 times the normal number

The NDGF population plan called for a deer herd 75,000 tag could control…. They were giving out 147,000 tag trying to catch up

After 7 years of mismanagement Mother Nature stepped in and did what NDGF could not and dropped the deer population in the ways she does

Coincidentally that next season of 09 was the first case of CWD discovered in ND

The NDGF have proven time and again they are reactionary instead of proactive to respond they knew CRP acres were coming out because they had been told repeatedly at advisory meetings and still grew the deer herd instead of proactively putting out more doe tags earlier

Sometimes graphs don’t tell the whole story

The fact that you repeatedly reference NDGF dramatically increasing tag numbers to get the herd within their stated objective AS A CRITICISM comes off as grasping at straws to criticize the NDGF. There's a lot of people on this site in neighboring states where our wildlife agencies do next to nothing to change tags based on health of deer populations. To see a dramatic change in tag allocations based on actual herd health and habitat conditions to us paints a positive picture of NDGF so when you treat it like a negative and a way to justify baiting, it sounds silly. I know it wasn't hard for me to get doe tags in the mid-late 2000's when i was at NDSU. Maybe NDGF waited too long to react, i can't say. It just sounds odd to say aggressive issuing of tags to get #'s down as a criticism of them not managing.

 

[Hunting Wife]

I can’t speak to how mtfp is ran I can only tell you many of us that are directly impacted by the NDGF for more than just our recreational opportunities are repeatedly dismissed at meetings specifically designed and meant to allow input

When the NDGF puts on a public meeting and starts off telling the sportsmen and women there that there will be no opportunity to ask questions in an open public forum setting even after the presentation was done…..you know the NDGF doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks outside their circle

For decades the Director of the NDGF has been appointed ….I will bet a steak supper in two years Brock will be here complaining about a bill to make the directors position elected……and it will have traction

Being tone deaf and dismissive of a large portion of the people you work for is not going to gain you much support

I know the job of the NDGF is not an easy one and you never make everyone happy but when you are streaming live an advisory meeting that is being attended by adaptive sports orgs and the kids and adults the help and some arrogant ass takes the mike and belittles them as not being real hunters because they use the tool of baiting and your NDGF director stands 3 feet away and doesn’t step in and shut that down and say hey maybe as hunters we should not be tearing each other down…..the arrogance of their position is pretty obvious

I hope after this legis session people can take a step back from that kind of rhetoric and the NDGF stops to realize giving groups of people the finger doesn’t work

Sooo…..you don’t like the public not being able to provide comment, but you don’t like members of the public commenting when you don’t like the comments, and you want the Director to censor those comments you don’t like.

But everyone else is the arrogant one…

 

[rogerthat]

I can’t speak to how mtfp is ran I can only tell you many of us that are directly impacted by the NDGF for more than just our recreational opportunities are repeatedly dismissed at meetings specifically designed and meant to allow input

When the NDGF puts on a public meeting and starts off telling the sportsmen and women there that there will be no opportunity to ask questions in an open public forum setting even after the presentation was done…..you know the NDGF doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks outside their circle

For decades the Director of the NDGF has been appointed ….I will bet a steak supper in two years Brock will be here complaining about a bill to make the directors position elected……and it will have traction

Being tone deaf and dismissive of a large portion of the people you work for is not going to gain you much support

I know the job of the NDGF is not an easy one and you never make everyone happy but when you are streaming live an advisory meeting that is being attended by adaptive sports orgs and the kids and adults the help and some arrogant ass takes the mike and belittles them as not being real hunters because they use the tool of baiting and your NDGF director stands 3 feet away and doesn’t step in and shut that down and say hey maybe as hunters we should not be tearing each other down…..the arrogance of their position is pretty obvious

I hope after this legis session people can take a step back from that kind of rhetoric and the NDGF stops to realize giving groups of people the finger doesn’t work

In Montana we have literally not changed virtually anything in 40 years regarding deer management. Meanwhile our resident population has doubled, the age of the hardcore traveling nr was ushered in, technology in hunting is a big issue, so on and so forth. The fact that your game agency reacts at all is what you are taking for granted. I will be picking up another archery tag in your state. It’s amazing what crossing an invisible line from a state that has virtually no management to one that at least tries does for the hunting. But carry on with your ranting…just saying to some on here, you come across as a whiny landowner that is really out of touch.

 

[GST]

The fact that you repeatedly reference NDGF dramatically increasing tag numbers to get the herd within their stated objective AS A CRITICISM comes off as grasping at straws to criticize the NDGF. There's a lot of people on this site in neighboring states where our wildlife agencies do next to nothing to change tags based on health of deer populations. To see a dramatic change in tag allocations based on actual herd health and habitat conditions to us paints a positive picture of NDGF so when you treat it like a negative and a way to justify baiting, it sounds silly. I know it wasn't hard for me to get doe tags in the mid-late 2000's when i was at NDSU. Maybe NDGF waited too long to react, i can't say. It just sounds odd to say aggressive issuing of tags to get #'s down as a criticism of them not managing.

The point I am trying to make is they were 2-3 years to late i

In the early 2000s if you asked for a deer herd management plan it didn’t exist

Farmers and ranchers came to the advisory meetings and told the NDGF that deer herd numbers were exploding and CRP acres in much of ND were going to disappear

They were told that CRP is GREAT fawning cover that adds to fawn success but it sucked for winter habitat in most cases

They were told by many people without letters behind their names they had to find a balance and they ignored everyone

At an advisory board meeting in Bowbells when the numbers were taking off I sat with Randy Kriel the chief big game biologist after the meeting discussing the sharp rise in deer numbers we were seeing in our unit

He pulled out a large 3 ring binder flipped to our unit of hunter success surveys and condescendingly said see Gabe our data shows a drop in success from an average the last couple years so that tells us the population is declining so we are cutting back tags in your unit

I shook my head and told him what it should have told you is the major snow storms we had the last week of Oct blocked every road that wasn’t a bus route and no one was able to get back to where the deer are ( we have prairie roads virtually every mile and thats how people hunt here)


So after season all those deer no one could get to traveled down the roads that were plowed out and ended up in our hay yards and survived the winter just fine

So there was actually MORE deer the following spring having MORE fawns while the NDGf thought there was less deer and cut tags …. This happened across most of the state and ranchers kept trying to tell them we were seeing 20% more deer in our hay yards those years

We were patted on the head a d told yhe experts had it handled 6-7 years later they had a deer management plan and they were giving out twice as many tags as it called for to get the herd in check ….and ultimately mother nature had to do it for them

We personally hauled out over 130 dead deer that spring after giving them full access to our hay and feed cause we were watching them starve right in front of us

As rancher it is our nature to care for and save animals …. It sucks to go out every day and watch 500 deer dying off from starvation

Every tree on our ranch was pruned as high as they could reach the weak died every day .. and when the weather broke we hailed out 25% of the deer that was in our yard for 5 1/2 months

There was 2 inches of deer shit carpeting 15 acres of trees and hay yard

i had called the NDGF ( Randy Kriel) 3 times that winter to come and see the shape those deer were in and they never came finally when I threatened to take care of it myself after being told the GF did not own the deer they had their biologist and a warden out the very next morning

They checked the 30 dead deer we had piled up for bullet holes found none and left a month later I had a warden stop in and check the 40 more piled up finding nothing … i quit calling the NDGF

You watch 500 deer starving to death every day for 5 months and then watch the deer herd collapse knowing it coukd have been prevented… you don’t put much faith in those “ managing” the wildlife

But hey … in the years tags were above the management goal of 75,000 ….. the additional revenues for EXTRA tags above that 75,000 mark was $12,600,000.00

 

[GST]

Sooo…..you don’t like the public not being able to provide comment, but you don’t like members of the public commenting when you don’t like the comments, and you want the Director to censor those comments you don’t like.

But everyone else is the arrogant one…

So if you are trying to equate asking questions to learn at a public meeting to someone insulting handicapped folks in front of all of ND live streaming telling them they are not hunters because of how they hunt…..with our NDGF director standing there…. That might be a hard sell to most people

 

[GST]

In Montana we have literally not changed virtually anything in 40 years regarding deer management. Meanwhile our resident population has doubled, the age of the hardcore traveling nr was ushered in, technology in hunting is a big issue, so on and so forth. The fact that your game agency reacts at all is what you are taking for granted. I will be picking up another archery tag in your state. It’s amazing what crossing an invisible line from a state that has virtually no management to one that at least tries does for the hunting. But carry on with your ranting…just saying to some on here, you come across as a whiny landowner that is really out of touch

Perhaps here in ND we expect to hold these govt agencies accountable a bit more …

You can look at my comments as being a whiney land owner if you wish but in a state where 91% of all land is private a tremendous amount of the wildlife is on those private lands The months outside of when people are hunting …. So it would make sense to develop positive relationships with those folks … treating them like they know little because they do not have a degree is not the best way to go about that

Hunting is changing in ND and access is as well … that just the reality and like I said the NDGF does not have an easy job …. But they make it harder themselves many times

 

[Wind Gypsy]

The point I am trying to make is they were 2-3 years to late i

In the early 2000s if you asked for a deer herd management plan it didn’t exist

Farmers and ranchers came to the advisory meetings and told the NDGF that deer herd numbers were exploding and CRP acres in much of ND were going to disappear

They were told that CRP is GREAT fawning cover that adds to fawn success but it sucked for winter habitat in most cases

They were told by many people without letters behind their names they had to find a balance and they ignored everyone

At an advisory board meeting in Bowbells when the numbers were taking off I sat with Randy Kriel the chief big game biologist after the meeting discussing the sharp rise in deer numbers we were seeing in our unit

He pulled out a large 3 ring binder flipped to our unit of hunter success surveys and condescendingly said see Gabe our data shows a drop in success from an average the last couple years so that tells us the population is declining so we are cutting back tags in your unit

I shook my head and told him what it should have told you is the major snow storms we had the last week of Oct blocked every road that wasn’t a bus route and no one was able to get back to where the deer are ( we have prairie roads virtually every mile and thats how people hunt here)


So after season all those deer no one could get to traveled down the roads that were plowed out and ended up in our hay yards and survived the winter just fine

So there was actually MORE deer the following spring having MORE fawns while the NDGf thought there was less deer and cut tags …. This happened across most of the state and ranchers kept trying to tell them we were seeing 20% more deer in our hay yards those years

We were patted on the head a d told yhe experts had it handled 6-7 years later they had a deer management plan and they were giving out twice as many tags as it called for to get the herd in check ….and ultimately mother nature had to do it for them

We personally hauled out over 130 dead deer that spring after giving them full access to our hay and feed cause we were watching them starve right in front of us

As rancher it is our nature to care for and save animals …. It sucks to go out every day and watch 500 deer dying off from starvation

Every tree on our ranch was pruned as high as they could reach the weak died every day .. and when the weather broke we hailed out 25% of the deer that was in our yard for 5 1/2 months

There was 2 inches of deer shit carpeting 15 acres of trees and hay yard

i had called the NDGF ( Randy Kriel) 3 times that winter to come and see the shape those deer were in and they never came finally when I threatened to take care of it myself after being told the GF did not own the deer they had their biologist and a warden out the very next morning

They checked the 30 dead deer we had piled up for bullet holes found none and left a month later I had a warden stop in and check the 40 more piled up finding nothing … i quit calling the NDGF

You watch 500 deer starving to death every day for 5 months and then watch the deer herd collapse knowing it coukd have been prevented… you don’t put much faith in those “ managing” the wildlife

But hey … in the years tags were above the management goal of 75,000 ….. the additional revenues for EXTRA tags above that 75,000 mark was $12,600,000.00

The above supports criticism of poor management decisions being made at a given time in your area OR an agency not flexible enough in what info/data it uses to make decisions. That they eventually did something (issued more tags) is a poor way to paint the picture of bad management. To me it suggests they saw error in their ways and corrected it. That is my point.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

So if you are trying to equate asking questions to learn at a public meeting to someone insulting handicapped folks in front of all of ND live streaming telling them they are not hunters because of how they hunt…..with our NDGF director standing there…. That might be a hard sell to most people

After seeing pro-baiting advocates hide behind handicapped/kids/veterans as a means of justification for their desires when kids/handicapped/veterans hunt successfully in non-baiting states all the time, it's hard to take this claim at face value. Maybe it's an accurate representation but the pro-baiting crowd has burned their credibility in that regard.

 

[GST]

In Montana we have literally not changed virtually anything in 40 years regarding deer management. Meanwhile our resident population has doubled, the age of the hardcore traveling nr was ushered in, technology in hunting is a big issue, so on and so forth. The fact that your game agency reacts at all is what you are taking for granted. I will be picking up another archery tag in your state. It’s amazing what crossing an invisible line from a state that has virtually no management to one that at least tries does for the hunting. But carry on with your ranting…just saying to some on here, you come across as a whiny landowner that is really out of touch.

If you have never watched 650 deer congregate at a silage and chopped hay pile to be told by a biologist watching those 650 deer that the 3 bushels of corn we put out hunting is what is spreading CWD you might be out of touch with that persons perspective

If you have never watched 500 deer starving to death every single day for 5 months than piled up 130 dead carcasses to bury you might be out of touch with that person's perspective

I would guess most on this site have never had those experiences to form a perspective from

When you watch deer so weak they are unable to move when it is -3O and you know if you do what is right and put them out of their misery someone will turn you in so you drive off in the tractor knowing what the next few hours will be and you come out the next morning to that deer half ate and two more in the same shape …. And that is your daily routine for 5 months … You tend to stop caring what someone on some internet hunting site that has never dealt with that might think

Good luck with holding your state's agencies accountable

 

[GST]

The above supports criticism of poor management decisions being made at a given time in your area OR an agency not flexible enough in what info/data it uses to make decisions. That they eventually did something (issued more tags) is a poor way to paint the picture of bad management. To me it suggests they saw error in their ways and corrected it. That is my point.

My point is perhaps if the attitude of listening to the people living every day outside hunting seasons on these lands even if they fo not have a degree was a part of their management plans there might have been less of a problem to correct

 

[Wind Gypsy]

My point is perhaps if the attitude of listening to the people living every day outside hunting seasons on these lands even if they fo not have a degree was a part of their management plans there might have been less of a problem to correct

I think that's something most here will find agreeable.

 

[GST]

After seeing pro-baiting advocates hide behind handicapped/kids/veterans as a means of justification for their desires when kids/handicapped/veterans hunt successfully in non-baiting states all the time, it's hard to take this claim at face value. Maybe it's an accurate representation but the pro-baiting crowd has burned their credibility in that regard.

You completely missed the context of that discussion …. If you are good with some hunters demeaning other hunters because of a choice they make in how they hunt… maybe we need to stop and think a bit about where that leads

Everyone hunts for their own different reason and how they can or choose … if we as hunters start belittling and decreeing others have to make the same choices we do in order to be a real hunter …….. thats not a road I travel