Antis pick fight on Facebook with DEC Pheasant stocking / hunting

[mike rossi]

From the DEC Facebook page: we replied as The Bird Hunting Society. Please read our response and help us tell the antis how it is. For those that do not follow the DEC on Facebook, please start, the hunting community is outnumbered on the DEC page. Please don't be rude, just read the article we refered to, take one or two talking points from it for use in your own comment. Please like our two replies and our pages. Thank you!

 

https://www.facebook.com/NYSDEC/photos/a.10150117710380956.294616.65102420955/10153749772060956/?type=3&theater

[mike rossi]

LOL, looks like we told them off so they deleted their comment taking ours with it. No problem, will just repost our link, then only us or the dec can delete it.....

[mike rossi]

I found the first two posts (buried), oh well,  added three more post/repliesanyway. Don't let the anti hunters dictate the DEC Facebook page, get on there!

[mike rossi]

We got a few people to get on this, but the response is not sufficient to carry a dove bill. Sent this out today as a reminder:

 

Fire Drill

 

What do these words mean to you: Paul Revere, the midnight ride, the liberty bell, the boy who cried wolf, fire drill, emergency plan, contingency plan, readiness, defense, counter punch, rebuttal, rebuke, debunk, refute, push-back?
Do bullies stop bullying if they are not subject to a consequence? Do bullies test their victims to find their weaknesses? Do bullies try to alienate their victims so that they have no friends? National anti-hunting organizations have tested the NY hunting community and they think the bird hunters are the weak link. That is the form of hunting think they can take away. Like bullies they tested, they alienated bird hunters from other hunters, and they have not suffered any consequences for their actions.

 

NY Dove Hunting keeps making and breaking the same promise: That we will stick to only the matter of dove hunting and we will reduce our contacts to one a month, and through our newsletter, and that newsletter would replace our email messages. The exception being Facebook subscribers who will receive soundbite size newsfeed from us once or twice a week.

 

This past week, we deviated again. Although we need to contradict a statement in the last paragraph – we are a one-issue organization, but there are a few other interests we will defend. One of them is pheasant. Whether it is conservation of wild-hatched populations, stocking incubator – hatched birds, and hunting pheasants, NY Dove Hunting will fight to death over pheasant matters.

 

Last week, on their Facebook page, the DEC posted about their effort to crackdown on road hunting of pheasant. Numerous persons, probably paid internet trolls sponsored by the Humane Society of the US, conflated the DEC’s message and high jacked the discussion about road hunting pheasant to spread their pheasant rhetoric.
We have advised previously that the DEC Facebook page has more participation by anti-hunters than hunters; to the extent they disrupt any meaningful form of communication. We also have advised about the importance of responding and responding appropriately to anti-hunting editorials, in general, not just on Facebook. We outlined how to track such editorial content and also indicated that we would be ringing the siren when we become aware of any so that our subscribers can respond.

 

Our community has improved in this regard, however we have not grown enough. If a dove bill was introduced today, that would mean a two year editorial public opinion battle with the antis. The response from last week, if it mirrored the response to the Facebook squabble, indicates we are not close to passing a dove bill in NY State.
We did indeed get some cooperation, go look at the Facebook post. However, it was not strong enough and few of those we reached bothered to act. We are not going to reinvent the wheel every six months; we outlined several times the importance of debunking these editorials. There are many different reasons for in-action which vary from person to person; however, we are still receiving feedback from some people believe these editorial protests do not matter. We maintain they do indeed matter and that they are a tactic used by anti-hunters to influence public opinion, political opinion, and as a tool to spread misinformation. Misinformation, that is; incorrect info repeated often enough, becomes accepted as fact, and then very difficult to dislodge.

 

Let’s stay away from the pheasant rhetoric. Let’s look at one mourning dove example, one of many. If you invest the time in reading Fred Neff’s manifesto, you will see some of the reiberations he has got from various members of the Legislature over many years. Reiberations that trained attorneys, elected to the NY Legislature, derived from the HSUS’s website section dedicated to mourning doves. A list of premises, all incorrect. Yet, Neff’s effort was not given the benefit of fact checking the propaganda provided by campaign donors. No effort to get at the facts or apply the due diligence expected from lawmakers.  We might add, some of these exchanges have treated Neff quite rudely.
We will cite one example; remember we emphasize one example, when there are numerous examples. The HSUS has claimed for 30 years in its dove propaganda, which has not been modified in that many years, only put online with the advent of the internet, a laundry list of misinformation. Let’s discuss just one: Doves reduce undesirable plants. We love that one, because this actually originated from a biologist. However, birds are seed dispersers – they promote the spread of plants, both beneficial plants and undesirable pest plants. And, birds that eat almost entirely seeds – mourning dove check, with huge populations – mourning dove check; and birds that migrate - mourning dove check, disperse even more seeds than something like a wild turkey.

 

Yet the Humane Society has sold that to the public and the NY Legislature for 30 years. Perhaps that is a bad example, because someone can pull out the outdated and incorrect document from a biologist, who made this claim. Bad example or not, we will use this one, the HSUS likes to fight, and so do we, so we will give them some rope and they can cite the document and make an argument from authority….  The bottom line is this is why YOU need the facts and why YOU need to push back at those editorials with the facts. And if a Lawmaker gives you a line of rhetoric, YOU can set him straight. Sometimes it’s not complicated – former state senator Mark Grisanti claimed doves are not edible. Other times you need solid information.

 

The entire point of this correspondence is:  your cooperation in responding factually to these editorial attacks is going to be very important to the success of future dove legislation. There are some who will tell you otherwise, including those with a case of overconfidence due to an officer position with a rod and gun club or federation or something. However, do not fall for it. There has been inaction on dove legislation for three decades in NY and other states have similar histories. Give the NY Dove Hunting Team the benefit of the doubt and trust us.