mike rossi

Start right here Mr VJP and sign this... Its not "bear,lions, etc", - it just right here in New York state... http://nydovehunting.weebly.com/mute-swans.html

This would be another "program"; which will not only cost money to administer, it might also require legislative approval and/or budget approval, which is just more opportunity for politicians; outdoor magazines, and sportsmen's organizations to grandstand and give a big illusion of action while failing to address more important things and use the conservation fund more wisely.... Come to think of it, considering all of that, I wouldn't be surprised if we see this proposed at some point...

. See what I bolded above that you said, well if I take a hunter out with bird dogs, I am not greatly increasing that persons chances of killing game? Or if I guide him on a waterfowl hunt? I would say I certainly would be contributing to the taking of game. Tags, what are they?

Nothing wrong with an agreement from time to time... Now please sign our petition and like our face book page before another big blow hits your area...

Why are "accompanists" required to have a current hunting license? Maybe to prevent people who lost their hunting privileges from being accompanists and/or they figure if you are assisting in the taking of game, you should hold a current license?

Hopefully I can express my opinion without delving into this with you or others. Bipartisan support is what is needed to preserve what hunting opportunities are remaining and/or to expand them. Most politically-charged sportsmen are very eager to attack people who disagree with them, but very few do what actually makes a difference by forming partnerships emphasizing common ground. This was important decades ago, when the sporting community had a louder voice, and presently more important then ever, now that we are one of the smallest minorities on planet Earth, yet many of you carry on like sportsmen have all this political strength. When non hunters who are neither pro or anti hunting encounter hunting issues, they most often ignore them. However, depending on how much media coverage an issue is given, a percentage of these neutral people become interested and engaged in the issue. These are often somewhat intelligent people, and the most rational arguments usually persuade them. Sportsmen (think) they always have science on their side, but they often do not. Or, they misrepresent science. Either scenario costs us friends and potential new friends; and hunters have very few friends in the world. The only better way to lose friends is to stereotype and criticize others, especially on the occasions when they have the more factual argument. Going off on partisan rants does nothing conductive and everything non-conducive to a pro hunting agenda.

Incumbent George Maziarz drops out of 62nd Senate District race. Apparently Gia Arnold gathered enough petitions to run in the primary, however the republican party is not endorsing her, they are endorsing Rob Ortt, the current mayor of N. Tonawanda. Arnold says she is still going to run in the primary against the republican endorsee. So, we need to send questionnaires/surveys to Arnold; Ortt; and any democrats who are also running for the state senate 62nd district... Here is an article about Ortts announcement he is running: http://rochester.twcnews.com/content/politics/753135/north-tonawanda-mayor-announces-run-for-state-senate/

When I submitted public comment on the DEC's draft mute swan management plan, one of my recommendations pertained to the handling of captive mute swans by people who keep them as pets or whatever they keep them for "ornaments"... I postulated that pinioning mute swans and/or allowing persons to own flocks only consisting of one gender was not adequate assurance against recruitment into feral populations because of the potential of hybridization with native swans. North America has two native swan species and both of them do not have robust populations. One very well-known mechanism of extinction is hybridization. Well, it just turns out recently, that Arkansas Fish and Game not only discovered a mute swan paired with a trumpeter swan with a brood of cygnets, but that the mute swan, though not sterilized obviously, was in fact pinioned. I rest my case that pinioning and/or gender segregation alone are not sufficient to prevent captive mute swans from recruiting into free-ranging populations and/or hybridizing with native swans. Read about the Arkansas story and watch a short news video about it: http://archive.thv11.com/outdoors/article/268873/276/Mute-swan-hybrid-offspring-removed-because-of-threats-to-wildlife

I think what people are talking about is not so much an objection to seeing them, but them covering up other stuff and not seeing THAT. I tend to agree with that, but don't feel perfectly at ease voting on this because I think the context of politics is being used too broadly here. That is no distinction between hunting policy; conservation; second amendment issues, and party politics. Half of you are more interested in party politics than you are in conservation, and I am not sure that is conducive to a hunting site. Then almost half don't want to hear anything about conservation, which also is non-conducive.

Just who do you mean by "we"? Because I have been suspecting there are people or robots on here just drudging up the same bull over and over again so someone can make a penny a click or something like that. If that is the case, I want nothing to do with this forum or any forum. That is exploiting controversy, ignorance, and people while damaging our sport and conservation. I know for a fact at least one person on here has two profiles, and its not me or DH either.

You have the resources.

Broads killing zoo animals is important, eh? The antis think it is too and they are using the same petition as us, yet they have over 50,000 signatures. Sign and share our petition asap! Here is the anti's petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/881/547/687/shut-down-aaron-neilsons-facebook-kill-page-of-endangered-animals/?z00m=21291141&redirectID=1409131671

Send questionnaires to the CANDIDATES which survey their attitudes towards guns, hunting, and wildlife policy. Don't worry about the incumbents, as their voting record is public. Post the responses to questionnaires on the internet and assign an A,B,C, D, F grade to these political hopefuls. Any candidate that disses the survey is assigned an F grade. Partially completed surveys with certain questions unanswered or answered in ambiguous terms should consider those answers as hostile, not neutral in assigning a grade. Survey questions need to be date relevant, state relevant, issue relevant, the NRA's survey does not focus on grass roots issues, we need our own survey... Are you the guy for the job Doc? First step is to identify who is running in the primary September 9....

What the OP is getting at is not 100% without merit. Many sportsmen, including some on here, are very active in "Party Politics" that have nothing to do with hunting and/or assign every socio-political issue pertaining to hunting/wildlife policy to partisan-ism. It would be wise for this site to reconstruct the forum dedicated to politics and gun law issues so that it is divided up instead of lumping everything under the sun together.

How many of you are aware of the participation in the New York mute swan issue by two major animal rights organizations from JERSEY? If you read, one of them has the main objective of taking management authority away from state wildlife agencies. We need you guys to sign this petition - right away, the legislation can be sent to the governor any day now. http://susanrussellreport.blogspot.com/ http://www.aplnj.org/Legislation.php

I agree Doc, 100% victory across the board is not needed and is too lofty of a goal. But we need to attack the problem with a better strategy. Venting and/or making fun of people does nothing at best and hurts at worst... This issue there was enough time and it had the interest and attention of the sporting community. As you said yourself, this is one way to confirm being a "paper tiger". Despite not optimizing this campaign, do you think sportsmen have learned or are in a better position to do better next time, because I don't see that as having occurred. I think if another class of firearm was banned tomorrow, little more would be done than making the word "liberal" the most used on the internet for a few more months.

Even some self pollinated and wind pollinated crops and/or wild plants that otherwise do not depend on bees, still benefit from a little extra help from bees. Very few people are aware that farmers often keep bees (primarily)to pollinate crops and honey production is only a secondary motive. Other farmers do not invest in bee hives themselves, but "rent" bees from established bee keepers. As a matter of fact, many bee keepers actually travel across the country to different states under agreement with crop farmers. The honey be was introduced to the USA in 1622. Some of the honey bees you see around may be feral and others may belong to a bee keeper. Both the free-ranging wild/feral populations and the colonies kept by bee keepers have been suffering population losses. Off course, both also play a role in pollination of crops and wild plants. I have seen videos of third world countries using people with Q-tips to painstakingly pollinate crops. Those people are probably slaves, at best minimum wage workers. Pretty ridiculous in some parts of the world people are needed to manually pollinate plants to feed themselves and their employers probably eat a lot better than they do... I am sure this topic is going to evolve into a discussion about Monsanto and GM crops...

Honey bees are a beneficial introduced species, which along with native bees are declining. Without pollinators our food production will be harder to keep at current/future production levels and low costs needed to feed all the people in the world, perhaps not so much with grains, but more so in regard to fruits and vegetables. There are a million reasons and theories as to why the population decline. The obvious first line defense is to increase and maintain bee habitat. Luckily bee habitat provides co-benefits to other species, including economically important ones, like game species. The attacks on pheasant stocking and dove hunting has not helped bee populations, ditto for ignorance about grassland management. Its not all about grasslands and flowers either. Bees use the flowering trees and shrubs in hedgerows, shelter belts, and riparian areas as they do other flowers and additionally use them for shelter from wind. Wind storms can be stochastic events that deplete many bees at one time. Generally, bees need wind breaks as a component of their habitat. Hedgerows, shelter belts and riparian areas not only are prime habitat features for bees and a variety of wildlife, but are also important for erosion control, flood control, ground water recharge, carbon sequestration, noise control, reducing homeowner energy bills, block wind and wind blown pesticides/herbicides, the list goes on and on. And on and on... Those habitat attributes (hedgerows, shelterbelts, and riparian areas) also happen to be prime game habitat features as well - think "co-benefits"... Couple of articles here: http://nydovehunting.weebly.com/about.html

This is a petition to block a new law which will force the DEC to burn conservation funds (your license money) by requiring them to use the most expensive and least effective ways to manage an invasive species thereby reducing the license money available to the DEC for traditional management and sportsmen's programs. The law has passed both houses but has not yet been signed into law. If sportsmen back the DEC on this issue, the governor will very likely VETO the law and that is what this petition is about.

Here are a few more info tidbits: There are 65 (state) senate districts in NY, of which two or three are vacant. Each state senate district covers a land area containing 312,550 people. The denser the population of people, the smaller the land area of each district and vice versa. NY has 800,000 licensed hunters, which do not necessarily represent all gun owners. That number also includes some nonresident hunters , however. If the hunting community was distributed evenly throughout the state, and it is NOT, each state senate district would represent about 12,698 hunters or 9.8% of the districts population. The NY state assembly districts represent 128,652 people, so they are more (well over 100 versus 65) assembly districts than senate districts. The community of hunters and/or gun owners off course, is not evenly distributed across the assembly districts either, but since the people represented in each assembly district is less than half of a senate district, fewer sportsman/gun owners may have more teeth as a voting force. Then again they may not, as the population cluster downstate means the assembly is therefore clustered there as well. Problem is, if there is one thing these politician lawmakers do know or pay attention to, its their constituency. If they vote anti-gun they likely know they can get a way with it in their district. The sporting community has been carrying on like a mob the past two years or so and little effort has been put into scoping out our voting power on a district level and using that info in every possible way, go list them, I am not doing it. Are there all these non voting sportsmen / gun owners exist who are angered by the safe act and will come out in droves nest election as claimed? We will see. But what should have been done was find candidates to run who not only represent the interests of hunters, but also represent most of the interests of most of the people, people who actually can win elections by defeating incumbents. A little late now? Tell me about it, you all tell me everything I am wrong about lol... What can I say, You get what you sow, so I guess you got food plots....

Yesterday July 9, or today July 10; is the deadline for candidates trying to get on the primary ballot to submit their petitions with the required number of signatures... I assume the candidates will be announced very soon? Somebody post them up. Then the primary will be September 9. Everyone registered to vote? I have been informed that Denver Jones has collected enough petition signatures to be eligible to run; but was still working right up to the deadline collecting more signatures for a buffer because they are certain his opponent, incumbent (State) Senator Tom Libious, will contest some of the signatures, ie. they are not legible, etc... If your candidate is collecting buffers, their might be a few hours to get people over to their campaign headquarters to sign buffer signatures and/or collect enough to put someone on the ballot.

We missed the deadline to get an advertisement in this years NY Hunting and Trapping Official Guide to Laws & Regulations, but will send the printing company a check for next year as soon as they send us an invoice. That is a shame because it would have got the word around in a major way, but I think waiting a year to build up a hardcore base of people and tuning our online presences and collecting more and more information will provide a much more pungent message to the 800,000 sportsmen who buy NY hunting licenses and read the regulation handbook.

bump.

DEC Waterfowl Identification and Hunting Courses Open Now A certificate from this course is required to get an access permit for select National Wildlife Refuges and state lands open to waterfowl hunting. While this course is not required for waterfowl hunting in general, it is recommended and of value to attend. http://nydovehunting.weebly.com/hunter-education-class-waterfowl-identification-class.html

We give succinct answers to all the comments we assume are legitimate "questions" and this thread gets like 50 views in half a week.... For what its worth, here is our latest article: http://nydovehunting.weebly.com/ldquobecoming-a-hunterrdquo---ldquolocavores-and-others-entering-the-world-of-huntingrdquo---ldquothe-new-diverse-hunting-communityrdquo.html