Come to a WRC hearing for a change

My original intent this month was to write a Christmas column, but, as one national political candidate said, gosh darn it, wink, wink, more pressing topics have arisen.

North Carolina’s sportsmen have a month before the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s January public hearings begin, meetings to hear comments about proposed changes of 2009-10 fishing, hunting and trapping laws. That’s happened for years, and we’ve been to plenty of these meetings. But this one will be decidedly different.

It appears we’ll have two sets of hunting regulation changes to ponder — one by the WRC’s trained biologists and one by the appointed commissioners (see Newsbreaker and Ramon Bell’s column in this issue). We don’t know if they’ll be marked so sportsmen will know where each proposal originated. But we thought our readers ought to know the main ideas of the commissioners. Why? Well apparently, the Division of Wildlife Management felt it important to let sportsmen know their proposals should be distinguished from those of the commissioners.

Why? Well, all it takes is a glance at the Big Game Committee’s (commissioners) ideas and those of the agency’s staff. Most of the commissioners’ proposals deal with white-tailed deer. They want N.C. hunters to kill a lot more deer, which is OK. But they don’t care whether they’re does or bucks, which isn’t OK.

How do they propose to accomplish that goal? The commissioners want to open deer gun season at the same time in and east of Yancey, McDowell and Rutherford counties to match the current Eastern deer season. Archery season — instead of the current two months in the Piedmont, in the Northwest and in the west — would last four weeks, from the Saturday nearest Sept. 10 to the fourth Friday thereafter. Muzzleloader season would last six days (the Saturday nearest Oct. 8 to the following Friday). All lawful weapons season would begin the Saturday nearest Oct. 15 and end Jan. 1, the bulk of the season.

Scott Osborne, the WRC’s now-retired big-game coordinator, once told us his major fear for N.C. whitetails was “that one day people would come to see deer as vermin.” Well, Scott, that day has come, and the WRC commissioners have approved or, shall we say, are complicit in that viewpoint.
Why? We’re informed N.C. insurance companies asked one commissioner to set up seasons to kill more deer because of increased numbers of deer-car collisions. That commissioner gave an unprecedented preview of his idea last July, just after the WRC decided, then rejected a “special” hearing to push Moore County into the eastern deer zone (and extend its gun season).

Then there’s another commissioner’s third attempt to open wild turkey season a week earlier than usual. That idea has been run up the flag pole so many times the pole has ruts. But again, this commissioner apparently is determined to have his way — against the advice of the WRC’s former wild turkey project leader and its professional staff. What makes both proposals disturbing is no biological evidence has been presented as justification.

But as they say, money talks, and everything else walks. It used to not be that way for wildlife in North Carolina, but “change” is the catch-all phrase these days, isn’t it?
You want change you can believe in? Come to the hearings.