Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 15:15:44 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Huy Subject: Re: Sunday Hunting bill hearing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for the replies to my comments. I still think we should allow some Sundays. I'm not a deer hunter myself, but would sure like to see some increase in deer harvest. There are far too many of those oversized forest rats. Mike & Gail are correct that the extension would probably not increase harvest all that much. But hunting needs to be increased and encouraged (as a source of antlerless food and not a trophy sport is also a good point). Be careful that by fighting a few Sundays that you are not also setting a precedent to discourage or ban hunting. I never once suggested that these public lands should only be used for hunting. And I have never met a hunter that felt this way either. I'm sure there are some out there. But some of these areas were designed to increase game amounts for hunting. Not harvesting will lead to problems, perhaps affecting bird populations, as these areas exceed their carrying capacity. Maybe that Sunday hunting could be limited to such areas. What percentage of public lands are open to hunting? What percentage of that non-consumptive wildlife based recreation actually goes to support and purchase public lands? It seems to me that public lands are usually underfunded in upkeep and staff. As far as the MOS board, I was once on it, but that was several years ago and I do not recall any of this being an issue at the time. But my opinion is here to be ignored for what its worth. Would be better if we could bring back large predators and set aside the land necessary for them. But then that wouldn't happen because MOS would fight that as being dangerous to birders. Can you imagine losing a counter to a mountain lion? Would make for some good stories at a tally rally. Steve ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================