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mike rossi

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Everything posted by mike rossi

  1. This is addressed in a 1950 era ammendment by congress: 16USC 669 sec. 669a. Briefly, that United States Code says the state must use its license money for wildlife and fisheries conservation and recreation. Since our state conservation fund has accumulated to 38 million which is 53% greater than the federal matching funds (20 million), the state has nothing to lose; if it does not value wildife/fisheries conservation and recreation. This situation also begs the question of why the condervation advisory board, a citizens group entrusted with stewardship, allowed the fund to inflate to 38 million? All the while NY sportsmen have heard nothing except that the DEC is underfunded and understaffed. If the CF was not 53% larger than the federal funding there would be less motivation for a diversion of funds. To my knowledge, only a Non-Shooting Conservation Organization - Audobon NY has asked its members to voice their concern. That is interesting because the organization is mostly non-hunters. That is significant because THEY are informed and concerned about a program SPORTSMEN pay into. A little trivia. The USFWS have shown that the money spent on bird seed is greater then the money spent on items under the excise tax which is the source of federal restoration funds. Congress rejected an amendment to include bird seed and binoculors into the items under the excise tax. I think our focus has been on the wrong issues. It really is up the the younger generation of hunters to be wiser and take a different path.
  2. You got a good point. It shows both their integrety and their concern for conservation.
  3. I love, I love it, I love it !!!!! That is awesome! We are going to send what we can!
  4. Where can we send donations? Be nice if hunters or this forum could send something as a group. Lets send her money and show these rats behinds and their spawn how we band together...
  5. If we did that when & where I grew up, every adult in the town would let us know what kind of knotheads we where. Our parents would be humiliated and they would remind us of that for a LONG time.
  6. There are cameras, the bus companies and the school systems just dont care. But those cameras come in real handy... When one of the "athletes" cocks off, you hang your jacket right over it and ask him to repeat what he said...
  7. Hate to get personal here... But I once took a survival job as a bus monitor. The bus companies and the school principals do not go by their own rules - they train you certain procedures then act like huh?. As long as they have a body on the bus, they are in compliance and that is all that they care about as far as I can determine. These are minimum wage jobs and they are short of help and as a result hire unsuitable people, including decent persons like this lady who just cannot assert authority over the bus load of demons. Funny, cause I bet any number of those punks would say hunting is cruel...
  8. About field dressing waterfowl you have to leave a full wing and/or the head intact for identification. You can ussually get the waterfowl regulation pamplet at the same places that sell duck stamps. I say usually because they seem to get thrown out or the clerks dont know what you are talking about. Although you can buy your stamp in june, the reg pamplet wont be out until September, sometimes after early canadian geese season started... You are overlooking something else- you cannot comply with the law unless you can identify waterfowl. So learn your birds. As a matter of fact, if you are going to hunt on any of the federal refuges in NY, you must take a waterfowl identification course and carry proof of completion when hunting there. Besides the regs about shooting under power of a motor, you wont have a long waterfowling career if your into opportunistic shots. Its about setting up and duping the birds, with or without decoys.
  9. Maybe fans of the Jerry Springer show can't get it... But lawmakers should... The range of maturity between children of the same age is miles wide... What this law is (really) saying - is that the parent doesnt have enough sense to gauge the maturity of his/her own child...
  10. That all changes hunting and scouting... But all this the gov had for years... It all begs the question if they are trying to keep us in our homes? Its working... At least with youth and future gens.
  11. I cant seem to be able to draw it up right now. They have own several drones, and some type of hang glider that they harrass goose hunters with ... They flew drones over state pheasant farms, ect, ect... There is 1 or 2 videos of people shooting down their drones too. They taped several police encounters too. Look it up.
  12. In Reply to Post # 61 by Elmer Fudd... Thanks for this post. Its great that some of the larger pro-hunting lobbys are acknowledging NY's Dove Bill... But it is local sportsmen at the grassroots level that have the ability to make this happen... The key is that interested hunters educate themselves about this issue, stay updated, and write letters throughout the entire process. We have create an online presence to interest, organize,educate, update, and mobilize sportsmen. I urge everyone who is interested in a dove season to read the info posted on this and other boards, and to follow our facebook page. Ask other interested hunters to do the same. We need to get those letters in to the senate en-con committee. We also need to write the assembly and get somebody to sponsor a companion bill in the assembly branch. Its also not to early to let the DEC you are interested in a dove season. The DEC has been banding doves to help the USFWS manage them since 2009. DEC under went training for this and there are already DEC staff responsible for the dove project There are tenative plans for every state; including non-hunting states, to develop a permenant dove banding program. Information about this is on our facebook page.
  13. We been getting this question over & over. NY is in the East Management Unit for Doves. Here is the USFWS data for this unit during 2009 and 2010. The top dove populations within this unit by state are: SC, NC, Ill., Ind., Oh., Kentucky, MS., Al., Ga.. The second highest dove abundance tier is the states of: NY , Florida, Lousianna, Tenn, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, WI, MI, PA, NJ, Conn., RI, Mass., VT, NH, MA. The lowest population tier contains one state, West Virginia. You might also find it interesting that the NY DEC has been banding doves since 2009. Please visit our facebook page for more information.
  14. I don't know who Fred Neff is, but I wish he would call me... http://www.outdoorne...enate/index.php?
  15. Not terribly hard for a few like-minded people to start their own club and make their own policies. There may even be grants available. Just saying, Im not interested.
  16. If someone wants to volunteer their time, in addition to paying dues or a daily fee, thats great, there might be more of that (and more recruitment) if some of the clubs where less stand-offish. Anyone who has enough conservation ethic to heed ethics rather than law; and use a range instead of poorer options, should be praised & encouraged.
  17. Yeah really. Though I agree about the smoking, I just stay outside.
  18. For the price of a membership you get parking; trash pick up, premeasured target ranges with a safe backstop, ussually a dry place to shoot from, shooting benches. Shotgunners instead of using a hand trap or hand thrower, can shoot an ever growing variety of clay sports like trap, international bunker trap, skeet, sporting clays, FISTCA, wobble trap, 5-stand, ect.... A lot of the clubs require a membership for the rifle/pistol,archery ranges, but allow "free lancing" pay as you go for the shotgun sports. Whether you join or freelance, you will benefit from shooting at a range.
  19. Here is our direct response to that; tell your elected officials the humane society doesnt know what they are talking about. Also, please follow us on facebook and others are encouraged to paste stuff off of it, use it, or post links - we set up facebook so hunters can go to it and they can post it out on these boards etc.. We just cant do everything and need your help. The Humane Society says they are songbirds, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service says they are migratory gamebirds. Doves help farmers by allowing them to apply for conservation grants to reestablish bird-seed-bearing native plant communiti...es. The subsequent decrease in herbicide & pesticide use far outwieghs the impact of lead shot. This advocacy group will not contest a lead shot ban however. Species are not hunted only because they are overpopulated and what constitutes "a good reason to .... is an emotion-based opinion the humane society wants everyone to adopt. There will be some unrecovered birds, but they will be recycled as food for predators and scavengers. Since dogs are a great aid in recovering shot game; demand for retrievers such as labradors, goldens, and chesapeakes will help empty out the shelters, municipal dog pounds, and resque kennels.
  20. http://www.facebook.com/pages/NY-Dove-Hunting/365031743546569 NY Dove Hunting is now on facebook! Log in and "like" today :-)
  21. The attorney for the US Sportsmen’s Alliance spent considerable time on the phone with me answering some questions. The USSA has the best person there is in place as their attorney and I urge hunters to purchase individual memberships and urge their clubs to invest in a club membership. I relayed the notion that state wildlife agencies, for example NJ Fish, game and wildlife and NY DEC; are too broke to fight anti-hunting lawsuits in court and that is a reason for NEW JERSEY’S hesitation to pursue a dove season while concurrently defending the black bear season. Being well aware that going to court is deep inside the territory of any natural resource agency; I did not find this credible. Frustrated that what seemed like false rumors where permeating across state lines; I contacted the attorney for the USSA. I was informed the following: Most states can handle the majority of court cases internally, that is they have an attorney on staff within the agency, often within the wildlife department. Furthermore; since this is considered to be a lawsuit against a state, the Attorney General’s Office of the state is mandated to defend the department. States occasionally hire outside law firms for complicated issues and/or when they are aware of a lawyer with experience in the exact issue. That probably is more likely with issues such as hydrofracking than the classification of Mourning Doves. The bottom line is most wildlife departments have at least one attorney on staff, as a salaried state employee and is also represented by attorneys from its Attorney General’s Office. On the federal level; the antis have, in some instances, recouped their own legal fees at the expense of tax payers in litigation against the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This is maneuvered in two ways: If the court finds that the USFWS did what pretty much amounts to breaking its own laws; for example making an exception to the Endangered Species Act of Congress; the antis are entitled to the government repaying their legal fees. The Equal Access to Justice Act, which was designed to remove barriers to allow veterans and poor persons from suing the federal government; has some way been allowed to apply to wealthy anti-hunting lobby organizations pursuing opinion-based agendas not protected by number 1 above. There is discussion about reforming this act to its original intent of helping veterans and indigents with legitimate actions against the federal government obtain justice. Sportsmen and all Americans should follow and support this reform. The next logical question is: Why are the anti-hunting plaintiff’s that bring bogus law suits which are defeated not held responsible for paying back the defendant’s legal expenses? The answer is that the complaint has to be entirely meritless and that seldom occurs because the antis are not that stupid. I interjected that is why hunters should not contest anything we could live with that even resembles being legitimate, for example a lead shot ban. We then discussed the tactics used by the antis. It was explained that during the legislative phase the antis will use a propaganda campaign to either persuade politicians or threaten to vote them out of office. The content of their letters can be as unsophisticated as mentioning the “dove of peace” and that hunters do not eat doves. If sportsmen win this “public opinion battle”, the antis sometimes file a lawsuit. The antis basically use three legal approaches: If state law requires an environmental impact statement; the antis will sue if one was not done. Even if one was completed, the antis may try to invalidate it. There are very specific legal guidelines a state must follow when a law is created, changed, or repealed. The antis will make sure that the legal procedure was followed perfectly. Typically antis complain that there was not sufficient notice to public and/or the public comment period was faulty in some way or another. Dispute the biological data, sometimes bringing their own biologist as an expert witness. We then discussed the failed dove bills of the 1980s. It is believed that the urban politicians feared retaliation from their constituents. I questioned the reality that hunters are the world’s biggest minority; if this was entirely a numbers game, we would have lost all a long time ago. It was pointed out that it is not the total population of voters against hunters; but rather the number of passionate supporters (hunters) vs. the number of passionate opponents (anti-hunters). I was advised that hunters do write a lot of letters and politicians, even urban ones, know that hunters are active voters. The bottom line is, the attorney for the USSA is convinced that the letters to politicians from hunters, without a doubt influence the success or failure of legislation. His belief the reason the 1980 NY Dove Bills failed was because NY hunters “are not connected” to doves and did not write to members of the legislature. Fast Forward to 2012: NY has a new “dove bill”. The bill is “gathering dust” in committee, and it is not on the agenda as far as the scheduled meetings are posted online. If the committee does not put s6968 on its agenda by November, the bill will be dropped, to the delight of the antis. The lawyer for the USSA told me that political pressure in the form of letters to the chairman and members of the senate environmental conservation committee is what is required to get it on the agenda. Otherwise the bill will expire (that’s what the antis want) and it will not move forward for the legislature to consider. Politicians are in their comfort zone when the opposition floods them with letters and there is few letters of supports. All they have to do is do nothing, the bill expires and they didn’t have to do their job and make (another) divisive decision. So get those letters, e-mails, or faxes flowing. Be prepared to keep doing it if the committee moves this bill along; which means we need to then contact other members of the legislature, especially those in your own voting district. I also ask everyone to thank the USSA and become an individual member of the USSA and ask their club to become an organization member.
  22. Here's the video Mike Kirby did for me. Please Distribute this everywhere. Also get those letters mailed, the antis probably are flooding the legislature with letters, faxes, e-mails, and phone calls! https://vimeo.com/42166019
  23. Might do that. I got other things going on related to this. Nice if someone else would launch the facebook. But like I said, I am concerned about educating people I would rather remain uneducated. They are ussually there own worst enemy. Not closed minded to facebook, just not there on the list.
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