Bad Precident in Bitterroot Valley (lease, live, eat)

[outnabout]

I wonder how many are following this 'incident'.
Huey Lewis, others bait ducks to end hunting along Bitterroot's Mitchell Slough

Sure has stirred up a stink...one that will most likely reach from - sea to shining sea.
What's your take?
Overall, looks like sour grapes to me. Montanans (as well as the rest of us) value our rights, both traditional and given to us by law.
That's why I feel the landowners are in the wrong.

[Haakon]

It's not very nice of them, but I have to side with the property owners on this one. You can't campaign for property rights only when it benefits you, I bet many of the people in the discussion on that article have argued for property rights in other cases, but now when it's limiting them they think they should get to do whatever they want.

Is there so little public land left in MT that not being able to hunt this one slough is this big a deal? I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't know. I know in some states like Texas it's just about impossible to hunt without paying for a hunting lease from one land owner or another.

I'd rather not have huge flocks of ducks or geese pooping all over the place, which is what Lewis and others is going to end up with after feeding them. They may find their "solution" is worse than their perceived problem.

[cedar_bluff_tree_farm]

Whether the property rights question is a legimete one or not, individual citizens should not have the right to take away state granted privileges of others. By feeding the birds, they are denying the state granted rights of others to hunt. That's wrong.

If this concept was spread to other things in life (that a private citizen could prevent another private citizen from doing a particular action), it would be very, very bad. I'll let you think about the potential consequences if your neighbors or non-neighbors were allowed to stop you from doing a particular thing.

[Reziac]

It disturbs me that someone can behave like this AND claim to be a rancher. Ranchers generally understand that wildlife management doesn't mean just making sure they all stay alive no matter what. It also means hunting as may be desirable to keep numbers in check and populations at a healthy level (witness what happens when deer are not hunted).

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by Haakon

I'd rather not have huge flocks of ducks or geese pooping all over the place, which is what Lewis and others is going to end up with after feeding them. They may find their "solution" is worse than their perceived problem.

Occurs to me that they may be setting up the sort of crowding (especially with gluttonous birds like waterfowl) that leads to epidemic disease and a huge die-off, too. How is that to the birds' benefit??

[Mt-7]

Great point Rez.

[Reziac]

Another thing... when you have an intensive congregation of waterfowl, they tend to outright destroy their environment. Geese are the worst, but ducks will do it too -- eat everything down to the mud and poop on what's left, and now you've set it up for invasive weeds to take over.

This isn't healthy for anything that has to use that water downstream either, as it'll have more than the natural amount of giardia and coccidia (and nitrogen compounds) from all that bird poop -- kinda like running it through a feedlot.

[Mt-7]

giardia Nasty, had a bout with it once after an extended duck hunt, and I was basically the cook!
Division of Parasitic Diseases - Giardiasis Fact Sheet

[ElkHunter]

I'll bet that he's not on that Ranch more then 30 days total in a year. It's sad that they do that. They are completely undermining the entire Game Management program.

[rangerider]

Got a friend who has a farm, 3rd generation, grows nothing but grass hay the old way - flood irrigation and old equipment. Usually takes just one cutting a year, sometimes two if the year's just right. His place is overrun with whitetails due so many new neighbors this past 20 years who think of them as pets.

FWP won't help him with damage hunts; he lets as many people on his place every hunting season as possible to try and thin the lot out. Like Reziac said, there is more disease than average, and he has seen more than one population crash. Whities can overpopulate quickly.

I was sorry to see that happen over in the Bitterroot; that sort of situation is what adds fuel to the fire on Montanans' attitudes towards newcomers.