As I’ve gotten older, I’ve watched many of the treasured qualities of youth erode. Can’t turn on a fastball; takes me longer to read the newspaper; can’t play hoops at the YMCA for two hours and skip lunch.
As the time-honored tune has it, the old grey mare ain’t what she used to be.
So I’m more inclined to cut people some slack when it comes to what they said or what they think they remember they said. But memory (or lack of it) is perhaps the oddest trait of humans.
I can remember where I was Oct. 13, 1960, about 4:15 p.m. I stood in front of a black-and-white television in the audio-visual room at Alexander Wilson Elementary School and watched Bill Mazeroski hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth that stunned the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series.
But I can’t recall what I ate for lunch yesterday.
That said, I mostly can remember things that have to do with my job. And I think people who deal with big-ticket issues probably have fairly sharp memories. But sometimes, apparently, they don’t.
Take the District 5 Wildlife Hearing Jan. 7 in Graham. Dr. David Cobb, the WRC’s Division of Wildlife Management chief, said in answer to a question that it wasn’t true 100-percent of his biologists disagreed with matching the Central deer season to the Eastern deer season.
However, the minutes of the April 2-3, 2007, WRC Deer Committee meeting state: Polling of all private lands and land management biologists and supervisory staff in the Piedmont region indicated there is 100 percent lack of support for this season change.
Now Dr. Cobb isn’t listed as attending at Deer Committee meetings, but we figure he saw its report. Maybe he just forgot.
Executive director Gordon Myers, in remarks at the D5 hearing, said the proposals for changes in fish, game and trapping rules for 2009-10 were “not staff or Commissioners’ proposals, but agency proposals.”
Well, OK. But we have the printouts of the October 3, 2008, meeting of the WRC’s Big Game Committee (which determined which proposals would go to the hearings) and there’s two sets, one labeled EXHIBIT
F-2, Proposed Changes in Hunting and Trapping Regulations for 2009-2010- by Agency Staff for Notice and Nine Public Hearings. The other is labeled EXHIBIT F-4, Proposed Changes in Hunting and Trapping Regulations for 2009-2010 Recommended by WRC Big Game Committee for Notice and Comment.
And they’re different, especially when it comes to deer and wild turkey proposals (see Newsbreaker in this issue). Both are in the proposal booklet sportsmen received, although unlabeled as to source of origin.
Not only that, the 2008 Wild Turkey Brood Survey recommends the season opening date for spring gobbler season not be moved up a week because it would threaten gobbler numbers — which is directly opposite the WRC’s justification of a regulation change that addresses “agency goals for hunter satisfaction and has been requested by some turkey hunters.” So where did this proposal originate? For the fourth time?
In light of overwhelming opposition to many of the WRC’s proposals, we hope the commissioners don’t ignore hunters’ and anglers’ wishes.
If they do, we know the sportsmen of North Carolina won’t forget.
Be the first to comment