Deer-pen owner silenced at District 5 meeting
Attendance varied wildly at nine public hearings held by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission to consider proposed changes in 2013-14 fishing, hunting and trapping laws.
After Commission staff compiles sportsmen’s comments from meetings and on-line comments, commissioners will vote on implementing or rejecting proposals at a meeting in Raleigh on Nov. 8.
Individuals can visit the Commission’s web page, www.ncwildlife.org, go to the bottom banner and click on the “Submit Comments.” On-line comments will be accepted until October 15, 2012.
A crowd of 131 sportsmen came to a hearing at Wilkes Community College to be updated about the effects of a massive, local hemorrhagic disease that has wiped out 30 to 50 percent of the deer herd in Surry, Wilkes and Caldewell counties, but only 89 remained for the District 7 public hearing that followed.
In Morganton, only 32 sportsmen attended the District 8 meeting, mostly interested in changes in trout-fishing regulations. More than 100 attended the District 9 meeting in Murphy, again, mostly interested in trout. Only 11 people attended the District 6 hearing in Norwood, while just four people showed up at District 1 in Edenton. Eight attended the District 2 meeting in New Bern, while just 15 showed up for the District 3 hearing in Rocky Mount.
About the only fireworks at any district hearing took place in Graham, where 22 sportsman showed up for the District 5 hearing.
Wayne Kindley, a Randolph County landowner, tried to turn the meeting into a discussion of his legal issues with the agency. Assistant director Mallory Martin shut off Kindley’s comments, saying the Commission had been advised that Kindley had hired a lawyer, possibly to pursue legal action against the Commission because it ordered the euthanizing of several whitetail and fallow deer that Kindley had in pens on his farm on 2011. The Commission said at the time that Kindley didn’t have the proper paperwork to keep the deer, a requirement that has been in place for years to prevent deer with Chronic Wasting Disease to enter North Carolina.
“You barnstormed my farm and killed all the deer,” Kindley said. “What (the Commission) did was a shame and disgrace and should be against the law, and all y’all should be put in jail.”
Kindley denied he had a lawyer, but Martin said, “It’s our information that you have (a lawyer).”’
One proposal that was expected to draw fire – the liberalization of regulations allowing landowners to take wildlife, especially deer and feral hogs, because of crop depredation – was largely ignored in most meetings. So was an accompanying proposal allowing landowners more latitude in donating depredation-harvested wildlife to food banks and local organizations without requiring such a donation.
Sportsmen at several meetings spoke generally with different concerns about a proposed week-long youth-only turkey season that would precede the month-long spring turkey season in April and May.
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