Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

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Garrison
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Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Garrison » Mon Jan 30, 2017 11:44 am


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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by NDHans » Wed Feb 01, 2017 12:17 pm

Hope this doesn't happen. However, I am less worried about it now considering Trump's choice for Interior Secretary. He is a former Navy Seal and avid outdoorsman from Montana, and is against the sale of public land.

Also, Donald Trump Jr. is a hunter and against the sale of public also.

Still, something to keep an eye on always.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Garrison » Thu Feb 02, 2017 3:32 pm

I guess it's hard to get re-elected in Utah if you piss off hunters.
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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by fishvik » Sat Feb 04, 2017 9:53 am

As a retired BLM biologist I think the best way to protect hunting and fishing access on public lands is to get involved in the public land planning process or support organizations that are involved like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. From what I could tell the lands in HR621 had been designated in BLM Resource Management Plans (RMP's) as lands identified for disposal.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Leeza » Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:37 pm

+1

Get to know the public land managers in your communities, go to meetings, do your homework, get involved. The parcels that were proposed for sale have no public access, they are called "land-locked". No management, no access, no nothing, squares on a map. I don't advocate selling public lands. There is a lot at stake here. I won't say it's right or wrong to sell these parcels as they are owned by taxpayers and the taxpayers should decide. It's important for the public to have the whole picture and Men's Journal ain't it.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by fishvik » Mon Feb 06, 2017 9:33 am

Leeza wrote:+1

Get to know the public land managers in your communities, go to meetings, do your homework, get involved. The parcels that were proposed for sale have no public access, they are called "land-locked". No management, no access, no nothing, squares on a map. I don't advocate selling public lands. There is a lot at stake here. I won't say it's right or wrong to sell these parcels as they are owned by taxpayers and the taxpayers should decide. It's important for the public to have the whole picture and Men's Journal ain't it.
Leeza was right on. Those of you that do not live with access to a public lands agency in your immediate area contact the agency, get on their interested publics list, and monitor their website for upcoming issues. Most importantly let your congressional delegation know your feelings on resource issues. Remember these are federal lands so your voice is important.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by twistedoak » Mon Dec 04, 2017 11:01 pm

we just had 2 million acres stolen from us.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Mountaineer » Wed Dec 06, 2017 9:22 am

No, to the question.
But the government is mismanaging the spot(s) due to a low appreciation for habitat diversity and a high fear of obstructionist lawsuits.
Which is worst, sale or mismanagement, depends upon the spot(s), the particulars of each and the often fickle nature of people.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by ezzy333 » Wed Dec 06, 2017 11:59 am

twistedoak wrote:we just had 2 million acres stolen from us.
Well I guess we came out even then as we just had 2 millions acres given back to us.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by cjhills » Wed Dec 06, 2017 1:12 pm

ezzy333 wrote:
twistedoak wrote:we just had 2 million acres stolen from us.
Well I guess we came out even then as we just had 2 millions acres given back to us.
Really, How did that work.........Cj

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by fishvik » Wed Dec 06, 2017 1:48 pm

Having been involved while I worked for the BLM, most of the land that sited for possible disposal in the article at the beginning of this post were not manageable by the BLM due to lack of access or small plot size surrounded by other ownerships.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by gonehuntin' » Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:03 pm

Personally, I trust the state far more to manage lands than the Feds.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by ezzy333 » Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:39 pm

gonehuntin' wrote:Personally, I trust the state far more to manage lands than the Feds.
I agree and it is their land. Too often, like every time, once the feds get hold of it all they do is tell the states and the public what they can't do instead of acquiring it so we can do.

Ezzy

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by twistedoak » Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:14 pm

the states can't afford to manage it.they couldn't before and still can't
and that will be the excuse to sell it off for mining.
if your lucky maybe some rancher will sell you a hunting lease on the unprofitable parts

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by isonychia » Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:56 pm

Utah sells state land every year. Recently they sold a nice parcel with public access near Bear's Ears. They can't afford to manage it so it often gets sold to support something else that is going under, for Utah, this is the public school system. Some of the state land has trails, roads, or otherwise provide public access to federal land. Being from a state with little public land and now living in a state and hunting in other states that are largely public land, I just can't imagine going back. I grew up without private land to hunt back in North Carolina. The NF land there was pretty far away and was a terribly managed habitat due to multiple generations of logging and then the sudden stop of management all together (yes the FS makes bad decisions, mostly when scientists get ignored due to politics). I didn't start hunting successfully until I met my current wife, her parents had some acreage up in the mountains.

So many people talk about states managing lands, but then they flock to western states to hunt because their home states don't have any public land. Chew on that.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Grange » Wed Dec 06, 2017 6:05 pm

Leeza wrote:+1

Get to know the public land managers in your communities, go to meetings, do your homework, get involved. The parcels that were proposed for sale have no public access, they are called "land-locked". No management, no access, no nothing, squares on a map. I don't advocate selling public lands. There is a lot at stake here. I won't say it's right or wrong to sell these parcels as they are owned by taxpayers and the taxpayers should decide. It's important for the public to have the whole picture and Men's Journal ain't it.
Here in WI the State government mandated that the WI Department of Natural Resources sell 10,000 acres of public lands in the last 6 years or so. The first phase was basically much like what you say, land locked parcels and parcels with little habitat value. However in phase 2 and phase 3 the lands got much more difficult. There are parcels that are definitely not land locked and have great wildlife value. So getting the "easy" parcels out of the way first is not difficult, however it almost certainly get more difficult.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by mask » Wed Dec 06, 2017 7:36 pm

We went through this in the 80's in Idaho. If the State gets a hold on public land they will sell it.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Garrison » Wed Dec 06, 2017 10:20 pm

twistedoak wrote:the states can't afford to manage it.they couldn't before and still can't
and that will be the excuse to sell it off for mining.
if your lucky maybe some rancher will sell you a hunting lease on the unprofitable parts

Nope, just no trespassing signs from Canadian mining companies in my experience. The definition of mismanaged is going to look much different to everyone. Easy to say leave it be when your family doesnt live off of what’s being extracted from under the ground. But the states are always going to want to collect once it’s on their books. And when it’s gone it’s gone for good.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by twistedoak » Thu Dec 07, 2017 3:44 pm

of the 2 monuments that were just given away
the bear ears deal was put together in co operation with the big 4 Indian trial nations.
they were to be in charge of its care.
just another treaty in a long line our gov has broken with them

as for the grand staircase.
well that's that barren area that you see in all them classic westerns .
minimal value for ranching, but full of raw uranium.

this was not the selling off of landlocked parcels.
its the opposite this is the fragmenting of a large area

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Vision » Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:43 pm

Not one acre of the land that was taken out of Bears Ear and Grand Staircase was given to the state of Utah. It is still under federal ownership.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Vision » Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:47 pm

twistedoak wrote:we just had 2 million acres stolen from us.

My Nephew lost his deer hunting spot when Bears Ear was turned into a National monument. You live in Pennsylvania you have not lost a thing.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by oldbeek » Thu Dec 07, 2017 10:54 pm

Feds just screw up everything under monument designation. You can hunt the entire million acres but they close all the roads and you can't get to it.OR In Feinsteins mojave monument or Death Valley monument, Guzzlers( man made desert water collection basins) that were maintained by sportsmen and BLM were put off limits till a monument EIR could be done on each of them. Monument had no money for the EIR, so they are left in disrepair and wildlife dies of thirst. No wildlife, = no hunters. All managers BLM, USFS and Monuments are liberal environmentalists. The want hunters off all govt ground. BLM is the lesser of the evils. They have less reasons to keep you out. PLANNING and planners, screw them.... IN 1966 4 wheel drive groupes were asked to send maps of all the desert roads that we used. Maps to be at BLM by Aug 30. Their new maps with none of our desert roads came out of printing office on Sept1 of 1966. Then they said roads were not roads unless they were maintained by equipment ( graders). There went all our desert roads that had been there for 100 years. Sorry for the long post, you hit a nerve.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by ezzy333 » Fri Dec 08, 2017 12:55 am

cjhills wrote:
ezzy333 wrote:
twistedoak wrote:we just had 2 million acres stolen from us.
Well I guess we came out even then as we just had 2 millions acres given back to us.
Really, How did that work.........Cj
Hope these later post explained it to you.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by cjhills » Fri Dec 08, 2017 7:07 am

Ezzy
Actually, they don't. I assumed you meant the people of Illinoise.
While I do not know anything about the situation in Utah, I suspect that the big winners will be the mining companies.
Money to manage huge tracts of public land is pretty much nonexistent...........Cj

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by Vision » Fri Dec 08, 2017 8:12 am

If you truly want to preserve land the best thing to do is nothing, no designations, no national parks, nothing.

https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46213313&nid=1 ... g-concerns

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by ezzy333 » Fri Dec 08, 2017 8:37 am

Vision wrote:If you truly want to preserve land the best thing to do is nothing, no designations, no national parks, nothing.

https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46213313&nid=1 ... g-concerns
Have to admit I am not in the preservation camp of natural resources but rather the conservation camp. They are here to be used wisely.

Ezzy

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by gonehuntin' » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:42 am

ezzy333 wrote:
Vision wrote:If you truly want to preserve land the best thing to do is nothing, no designations, no national parks, nothing.

https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46213313&nid=1 ... g-concerns
Have to admit I am not in the preservation camp of natural resources but rather the conservation camp. They are here to be used wisely.

Ezzy
+1. Nothing wrong with utilizing areas. There are many success stories with that. Lumbering produces terrific wildlife habitat; an uncut, mature forest, produces little but wildfire. Kentucky is a great example of reclaimed mining land benefiting the sportsman in increased fishing and hunting opportunity. I look at N. Wi. where the counties manage their land. They let timber contracts out on it, it's cut and great grouse and deer habitat results. Everyone benefits because all county owned land is open to hunting and fishing.

I admit that abuse can happen but closing roads to sportsmen, hikers and sight seers with no management plan is also abuse of a resource. It's beautiful to look out over an uncut, unmolested wilderness area problem being, they only support a very low animal population.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by isonychia » Sat Dec 09, 2017 1:03 pm

True that cutting produces habitat. True also that old growth forests (500+ years) do not need nor benefit from cutting. Gaps are a natural aspect of ancient trees dying and falling, producing the habitat we mimic by doing cuts. Many Eastern forests need to be cut in pockets for habitat but are now left alone, with no seed bank of good mast producing trees left and only large swaths of tulip poplar. Cutting is necessary but only because we have cut! There again, politics gets in the way of science's progress. I do not think Aldo Leopold or Michael Soule were against preservation. It isn't a line in the sand for partisanship but rather oranges make better orange juice than apples. They both have their place.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by fishvik » Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:27 pm

isonychia wrote: True also that old growth forests (500+ years) do not need nor benefit from cutting. Gaps are a natural aspect of ancient trees dying and falling, producing the habitat we mimic by doing cuts.
There are very few stands, much less forests, that are 500+ years old. The gaps you find from dead falls are very small. Regeneration is accomplished "naturally" by insect, disease or fire. We have modified things so much that some human intervention is needed to mimic something that resembles natural succession. Carefully implemented timber removal and prescribed fire can be a solution. The days of timber management that followed the "cut it flat, burn it black, let someone else grow it back" mantra are long gone in federally managed lands.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by isonychia » Sat Dec 09, 2017 5:50 pm

fishvik wrote:
isonychia wrote: True also that old growth forests (500+ years) do not need nor benefit from cutting. Gaps are a natural aspect of ancient trees dying and falling, producing the habitat we mimic by doing cuts.
There are very few stands, much less forests, that are 500+ years old. The gaps you find from dead falls are very small. Regeneration is accomplished "naturally" by insect, disease or fire. We have modified things so much that some human intervention is needed to mimic something that resembles natural succession. Carefully implemented timber removal and prescribed fire can be a solution. The days of timber management that followed the "cut it flat, burn it black, let someone else grow it back" mantra are long gone in federally managed lands.
True about very few old growths. But the gaps created by those trees are huge. Check out Hidden Forest, a book about Andrew's experimental forest up in the PNW.

I agree, we have to do active management in 99% of our forests now in the lower 48. Otherwise it is like taking an addict off cold turkey.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by gonehuntin' » Sat Dec 09, 2017 6:47 pm

The only forest that produce a wealth of game animals are managed forests. No new growth, no new animals.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by jetjockey » Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:03 pm

Anyone who thinks the states manage their land well has their head in the sand. The states can’t afford to manage the land so it either gets sold, or leased out to be exploited. I Elk hunted “state” land this year knowing full well some of it had been leased out for mining. What I didn’t know is that I’d hit a fence 3 miles from the mine with no trespassing signs. Pretty much all the areas I planed to hunt were behind those signs, and there was no mines within several miles. It was all leased up however, keeping me out. Thanks Colorado for leasing out our land to the highest bidder.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by gonehuntin' » Sun Dec 10, 2017 5:23 pm

You have to look at these things long term and not short term. Yes, the state leases and no trespassing signs go up. You can't have hunting vehicles challenging mining trucks for road right of way. The land is mined for several years or many years, the state makes money, the mines and the people they employ make money then when the veins are depleted the mines close, land is reclaimed and re-opened for hunting. It is a long term venture, not a thing of instant gratification. There are many, many, examples of this around the country.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by oldbeek » Mon Dec 11, 2017 12:11 am

Anyone can post a no trespassing sign. Is it legal?? In my area the govt is allowing Wind generators on BLM land. The whole project is fenced with signs every 600 ft, But curiously the gates are all open. Upon reading the sign closely they read. LARGE PRINT. NO TRESPASSING, NO HUNTING, NO CAMPING. In very SMALL print on the bottom of the sign;;;" within 50 ft of the towers, access allowed for property owners only." I am the property owners of public BLM land. We hunt this area regularly and see power co employees all the time. No one hassles us. In the past I have had the same experience with gold mines. They lease the mineral rights but can not keep you off the land unless they can prove it is unsafe for you to be there.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by jetjockey » Mon Dec 11, 2017 9:12 am

gonehuntin' wrote:You have to look at these things long term and not short term. Yes, the state leases and no trespassing signs go up. You can't have hunting vehicles challenging mining trucks for road right of way. The land is mined for several years or many years, the state makes money, the mines and the people they employ make money then when the veins are depleted the mines close, land is reclaimed and re-opened for hunting. It is a long term venture, not a thing of instant gratification. There are many, many, examples of this around the country.
You mean that we the taxpayers are left to clean up after the mess the mining companies make?

No, this is not “long term”. This is STATE land owned by the people of the state who are not allowed on the land they own. The taxpayers own that land! I think I you should google Gold King mine. Hunting and fishing is a “BILLION” dollar industry in Colorado that affects everyone, not just the few people associated with the individual mines. Money comes into hotels, restaurants, gas stations, sporting good stores, grocery stores, and from the purchase of hunting and fishing licenses. It helps everyone, unlike the mines.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by gonehuntin' » Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:52 pm

No, I mean the mining companies. That is or should be part of every lease agreement. Allowing them to mine or timber on select parcels won't affect Colorado's hunting industry one cent. That is a foolish statement. Plenty of great land to hunt on in Co.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by jetjockey » Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:04 pm

gonehuntin' wrote:No, I mean the mining companies. That is or should be part of every lease agreement. Allowing them to mine or timber on select parcels won't affect Colorado's hunting industry one cent. That is a foolish statement. Plenty of great land to hunt on in Co.
It affected Colorado’s hunting industry from me this year. I elk hunted two days, and threw in the towel. Cutting timber and mining are two totally different things. Cutting timber can actually help habitat, while mining only destroys habitat. When you spot elk you can’t hunt because they are behind a fence you didn’t know existed, it’s pretty disheartening.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by isonychia » Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:59 pm

One of the greatest risks to our sage grouse right now is natural gas extraction. Numerous studies, ranchers, and land managers agree. Furthermore, the broken habitat produced by natural gas extraction absolutely has a negative affect on the mule deer, which are in a heavy and steady decline due primarily to habitat loss (though this is mostly from residential development). Where you may be correct that modern mining of select minerals isn't going to affect the mountains adjacent in terms of hunting; you ask some of our local fly shops how much "opportunity" was lost fly fishing the Animas the year of the Gold King spill.

We have learned a lot about timber management, some of that is too late however. We have to cut to produce habitat now which is well understood, but there is a reason the Appalachians have lost so many of their mast producing trees and the animals that rely on them. That reason is back to back harvesting for 3 or more generations leaving a sub par understory of late stage successional trees because acorns just don't last 100 years in the seed bank.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by ezzy333 » Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:21 pm

The Appalachians lost there trees due in large part to disease of the Chestnut. When ever we let a single specie take over a large percentage of the trees in an area due to preservation as well as other reasons we get in trouble. Chestnuts, Elms, nor Ash and Blue Spruce as well as some of the Oaks are in trouble and not a one of them was due to over harvest.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by isonychia » Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:44 pm

I actually studied forest management in college in the Southern Appalachians. Yes diseases are bad news and certainly responsible for a lot of wipe outs, but the fact that three sequential generations of trees were harvested in some areas (the Appalachians have actually spent a lot of time "bald" as it were, completely bald too) paired with fire suppression and other nuance factors has given us our "oak problem". The tulip poplar seas would be a natural successional response, the problem is that there isn't much in the understory that should be next in line. When I left NC they were starting to cut poplar and plant oaks, but unfortunately too many ignorantly blind folks had too big of an impact on the politics of forest management in the east after all of the years of clear cutting that now the management politics has swayed too far in the opposite direction, making cutting very difficult to get approved even when all of the science says it is the correct thing to do.

Check it out:
https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/201 ... ey_002.pdf

"Since
the 1950s, it has been increasingly observed that clearcutting Eastern
oak forests was resulting in stands being dominated by, in particular,
yellow-poplar and red maple (Lorimer 1984, Clark 1993).
The decline of oaks across eastern North America and succession to
other species was being noted (e.g., Abrams 1998, Fei and Steiner
2007)"

The deer and turkey making a comeback didn't help either, but that is a catch 22, because, well, good luck finding a deer in the middle of Pisgah National Forest. Even squirrel hunting can become difficult. Not only is habitat lacking in the form of regenerative growth, but even the trees supply very little food. Difficult to find hickories, cherries oaks, etc.

Then I moved and stopped worrying about it so much. The point is, management isn't clear cut and if we would follow the science, it wouldn't be perfect, but we would be much better off than to go completely one way or the other. The only hope we'll ever have of following the science in management is in the hands of the public, that hope is slim, but it is still a lot more than that state property that was just sold (not leased) to a private owner.

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Re: Is the government selling your hunting spot too?

Post by fishvik » Mon Dec 11, 2017 8:18 pm

gonehuntin' wrote:No, I mean the mining companies. That is or should be part of every lease agreement. Allowing them to mine or timber on select parcels won't affect Colorado's hunting industry one cent. That is a foolish statement. Plenty of great land to hunt on in Co.
Mining sure has effected hunting in Nevada. Gold is a locatable mineral which means, in accordance with the 1872 Mining Act, mining companies pay no royalties for the gold they extract. They are also very hesitant about full rehab because it is costly and they don't want to rebury the waste rock in case future technology allows them to get more gold out of it. In addition the ability to store the thin layer of topsoil and the lack of precipitation makes vegetation rehabilitation far more difficult than in the east or upper Midwest. I have lots of experience dealing with upland and pit lake rehab in Nevada where Mine Environmental folks (that is a real oxymoron) blew smoke up our butts about how they would fix things.

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