Least Free State

[BKhunter]

Not really a shock......

 

http://nypost.com/2016/08/16/will-new-yorkers-ever-be-free-of-endless-government-rules-and-sky-high-taxes/ 

[Trial153]

Doesn't surprise me one bit. This place is a shithole.

[bugsNbows]

That is precisely why I moved away. Dumb masses.

[Rattler]

I'll bet the top ten least free states are controlled by Leftist Progressive Democrats.

[grampy]

And yet, the same lawmakers keep getting voted into office. No hope in sight.......so sad. No one on a state level that I have voted for has been elected. So apparently, this is how the majority of people in this state prefer to live.

[slickrockpack]

17 hours ago, grampy said:

And yet, the same lawmakers keep getting voted into office. No hope in sight.......so sad. No one on a state level that I have voted for has been elected. So apparently, this is how the majority of people in this state prefer to live.

Clearly they do and it's life with blinders on.

I use vehicle inspections as an example, last I knew only 18 states did inspections but if you live in the northeast you'd think well, every state I drive through does it this way so the whole country is like this.....but it's not.

It's only a few states in the northeast and the 3 west coast states that have their heads up their butts. 

Make a break for it

[grampy]

1 hour ago, slickrockpack said:

Clearly they do and it's life with blinders on.

I use vehicle inspections as an example, last I knew only 18 states did inspections but if you live in the northeast you'd think well, every state I drive through does it this way so the whole country is like this.....but it's not.

It's only a few states in the northeast and the 3 west coast states that have their heads up their butts. 

Make a break for it

Not long until retirement for me, and I'm seriously thinking about getting out. I have been looking at an area just north of Cedar Falls, Iowa in Bremer County. 

[Jaeger]

Last election, Mr. Cuomo won reelection by carrying new york city and it's 5 boroughs along with a few up state cities like Albany, Buffalo, etc.  He LOST almost all up state counties and still got reelected.  And we suffer.

If he cannot get the legislature to approve a law he wants, he uses executive action to have regulatory agencies "criminalize" the same thing, often retroactively. Yes, he can make retroactive regulations to punish people when he cannot get the legislature to make retroactive laws.

Yes, you can leave, but upstate NY is one of the most beautiful areas of New England and a wonderful place to live.

But I am at that point, having again been punished with his retroactive regulations, that leaving the state I love (countryside, the most beautiful coastline in NE on LI, and frankly some of the easiest and most extensive hunting around) may be a necessity.

Its a shame that the coagulated citidodts living in their sardine can like existences can rule and control the lives of all the rest of us.

Edited August 18, 2016 by Jaeger

[airedale]

It is tough to leave your home but after awhile you can only put up with so much and pack your bags. For the outdoor sports I think California has got NY beat for now.  Even though the general population continues to rise those participating in the outdoor sports have had a huge decline. It is really depressing to see what has happened to a really good hunting and fishing state in just a few short years.

 

By JIM MATTHEWS www.OutdoorNewsService.com

 

    

 The final 2014 numbers are in and the number of hunters and fishermen in California dropped to their lowest level in history last year. I think the Department of Fish and Wildlife can pat itself on the back for its monumental effort to drive sportsmen away from hunting and fishing in an unprecedented way.

 

    

 These are the numbers: In 2014, there were 990,447 annual resident sportfishing licenses sold in this state. This is only the second time the number has dropped below 1 million (the last time in 2011, when it missed the mark by 32 licenses). Throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, annual fishing license sales exceeded 2 million each year, and the peak sales year was in 1981 when just under 2.3 million were sold. As an interesting note, during that time, fishing license sales were almost exactly 10 percent of the state’s growing population. License sales continued to grow on pace with the population until the mid-1980s when the sales numbers began to steadily decline.

 

    

 While there might still be a few more hunting licenses sold between now and the end of the license year the end of June, the numbers for the 2014-15 year look like they will drop below 245,000 for the first time, setting a new, all-time low mark. While DFW on-line data doesn’t go back before 1970, I have read that hunting license sales peaked in the late 1960s at about 700,000 (there were just under 691 thousand sold in 1970). Numbers have declined steadily ever since. Numbers hovered around 500,000 per year in the 1970s and then declined into the 1980s. They dropped below 400,000 for the first time in 1988 and below 300,000 in 1997. There has been a downward trend of 4,000 to 5,000 per year since then.

 

      

Amazingly, the agency’s revenue from sportsmen has continued to grow even as our numbers dwindle. They gouge us with increased license and tags fees, permits or stamps also have annual increases, and there are new individual fees each year for just about anything we might want to hunt or catch. With the money the same or increasing, do you think the state agency cares our numbers are declining? Do they care enough to do something about it? Absolutely not.

 

    

 The DFW is in charge of selling a great ‘product,’ and if the staff wanted to refocus its management, reduce the regulatory burden on hunters and fisherman, and initiate a private-sector type marketing program (like the state has done for Covered California, the health care debacle), they could increase license sales by a minimum of 50 percent in three years. I happen to believe the reality is that they don’t want to increase our numbers again, and they are certainly not investing any of its funding to do so. They don’t want more people looking over their shoulders. They don’t want more accountability.

 

     

When fishermen represented 10 percent of the population and hunters were four or five percent of the state’s population, we were a significant ‘constituency’ group that mattered to Sacramento legislators, so we also mattered to the DFW and Fish and Game Commission’s political appointees. A phone call or letter to a representative about declining trout plants or changes in a hunting season meant the DFW and FGC would be called out and there was accountability. Today, no so much.

 

     

There are legislators today who probably don’t know the state plants trout for anglers. Why should they? Anglers are now just 2 1/2-percent of the population, and hunters represent barely a half-percent of the people in the state.

 

 To the rest of the state’s population the DFW is supposed to represent when it comes to non-game and endangered or threatened species, most can’t tell you who or what the DFW does. They don’t know its Fish and Wildlife that are supposed to be the watch dogs that protect wildlife and habitat. If they did know that, they would gasp in horror and the incompetent job the agency is doing. Why? Because there is no accountability.

 

    

 Just the condor program is a prime example. The state is supposed to be the coordinator of a broad-based coalition of scientists and researchers from private, state and federal agencies working with this critically endangered bird. After 35 years of supposedly intensive study, we still really have no idea of where or what condors eat in the wild. With all of the birds wearing markers and most with radio telemetry gear so we can track their movements and location, we still only have anecdotal information on where and how they feed in the wild. There has never been a food study done on condors.

 

     

This is a critical omission when you have been telling everyone for two decades that lead poisoning from the condor’s food is their biggest threat to recovery. And that lead poisoning — they have and continue to say — is caused by lead ammunition remnants left in game gut piles and carcasses discarded by hunters. But then we banned lead ammunition for hunting in condor country, there was a real shocker. It didn’t help.  The after-ban data shows the condors are still getting lead in the same amounts. Now, the so-called experts are scrambling trying to make the data fit the disproven theory. They are grasping at straws: ‘Hunters must not be complying.’ ‘Poachers are still using lead.’ But all the excuses beg the simple question. It’s working for eagles and vultures, why isn’t it for condors? Well, it appears the simple answer is that the assumption about condor lead coming from ammunition was at least partially wrong, mostly wrong.

 

     

Has the DFW said, ‘Whoa, we need to finally, once-and-for-all, do a condor food study and see where this lead is coming from’?

 

No, they are mismanaging endangered species like they have the resources — the hunted and fished species — that could make them a mint in license sales if those populations of game and fish were optimized.

 

A total ban on hunting with lead ammo goes into effect on July 1, 2019

The NSSF surveyed California hunters after AB 711 passed and found that nearly 40 percent said they will either have to stop or severely reduce their hunting due to the much higher costs of non-lead ammunition. This goes for 22 rimfire ammo also, probably the most widely used ammo of all. So far the best they come up with for 22 rimfire is a powdered copper X poly pressed bullet that shoots like crap and costs 10.99 for fifty. And “widely available?” Forget that. 

 

The Fish and Wildlife Service has an approved list of non-lead ammunition that has less than 40 manufacturers on it. Further, due to local restrictions in densely and highly populated Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco, ordering ammo by mail is nearly impossible—if not all together forbidden.The NSSF report says the ban could lead to a loss of $20 million in revenue for the state.

 

 

     I won’t name names here, but there was once a do-nothing biologist I knew in the 1980s (an anomaly back then, because the biologists with the DFG then were mostly hard-working, dedicated troops) that became the butt of a joke. I used to say, ‘Put him in charge of desert tortoise if you want to assure they go extinct.’ He pretty much represents how the entire agency functions today. There are a lot of biologists (excuse me, they are all now ‘environmental scientists’) who would love to get back in the field and do good things for wildlife, but they are handcuffed today by bureaucrats and supervisors who don’t want to fight the good fight. They are handcuffed by decades of regulations and rules that no one questioned when they were implements. They are handcuffed and lack of funding (read that ‘lack of funding’ line to mean, ‘misappropriated funding spent elsewhere on something that doesn’t really benefit anyone or anything in the state’).

 

    

In a recent press release, the DFW director hailed one of the top accomplishments of the agency: Wildlife nanny. He didn’t use that term, but he was proud of the time his biologists and wardens wasted on problem wildlife calls. Mountain lions, bears, and other potentially dangerous critters would enter urban California and need 100s of man-hours of time to be tranquilized, caged, and relocated. For many animals, they would end up in the same situation a week or two later. That is an accomplishment? Wildlife nannies: That’s what the DFW has become, a feel-good agency all fuzzy and warm and politically correct.

 

     

The wildlife nannies (aka DFW) don’t have the gumption to tell the public that those critters should get a load of 00-buckshot and a necropsy. Potentially dangerous wildlife coming into urban California is a problem we don’t want to give another opportunity to hurt someone. They come because they are looking for food; because the population is saturated, and they can’t find food or a home range outside of urban California. They come because we’ve mismanaged the lion, bear, and other wildlife populations beyond all recognition. They keep coming because we want to do the feel-good thing instead of the right thing. But it’s one of the agency’s key accomplishments?

 

    

They have lost their way. And only a handful of us remember or care what the agency should be doing or why. Hunting and fishing license sales are the big picture they refuse to see or address.

Edited August 18, 2016 by airedale

[diplomat019]

Just moved to jersey.  If you think ny is bad nj got it beat by a mile. 

[BizCT]

Just moved to jersey.  If you think ny is bad nj got it beat by a mile. 

You did? Now you can bait for deer!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[diplomat019]

3 minutes ago, Biz-R-OWorld said:

 

You did? Now you can bait for deer!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yeah.  Finally closing in my house in ny 9/1. Fingers crossed it all goes smooth.   U cant even hunt on sundays here if im correct.  Im still gonna trek back to ny for deer hunting.  At least for this season 

[Bowguy 1]

Why would anyone read the NY post. It's a rag magazine 

[Bowguy 1]

3 hours ago, Biz-R-OWorld said:

 

You did? Now you can bait for deer!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

You can bait but there's places w very few deer because people who haven't learned to hunt can see n shoot a few. The herd is very very depleted in North Jersey. Sunday Bowhunting is allowed but only on wmas or private land. There's actually more land available to bowhunt though than most guys know about

[Four Season Whitetail's]

I hear Ny is not a bad place to live when ya live by your own set of standards.

[Uptown Redneck]

1 hour ago, Bowguy 1 said:

Why would anyone read the NY post. It's a rag magazine 

Probably the same people who watch it's owner's news channel  

[sits in trees]

NY is a great state. We have it all, I've been all over this country and nothing compares.

[Rattler]

Geographically it's great.  But politically it sucks.  How can anyone enjoy the outdoor offerings in NY state when freedom is so blatantly infringed upon at every turn and taxes and regulations are out of control.  Many people who have moved from NY tell me it's not obvious to NY people how bad being a resident of NY State is, until they live in a state that allows you to thrive and be free from all kinds of government oppression.

[Uptown Redneck]

On 8/20/2016 at 11:43 AM, Rattler said:

Geographically it's great.  But politically it sucks.  How can anyone enjoy the outdoor offerings in NY state when freedom is so blatantly infringed upon at every turn and taxes and regulations are out of control.  Many people who have moved from NY tell me it's not obvious to NY people how bad being a resident of NY State is, until they live in a state that allows you to thrive and be free from all kinds of government oppression.

Pack yourself and move then, hell, I'll even help you load up the moving truck to get you outta NY

[DirtTime]

24 minutes ago, Uptown Redneck said:

Pack yourself and move then, hell, I'll even help you load up the moving truck to get you outta NY

Many people would do the same for if you left. I bet we would even chip in for the cost of the moving truck including mileage. Maybe even air fair to another country, maybe one of the ones you prefer and defend over your own? 

 

 

NY has great hunting and fishing lands. Yes, it's politically a mess of corruption and lies. The political issues that revolve around hunting and guns are a joke. Too many people agree with the corruptness because they are corrupt and selfish as well. You cannot cure stupid. It's a "mental illness" and those who have can't own guns so they don't want the rest of the population to have them either.

[Uptown Redneck]

2 minutes ago, ....rob said:

Many people would do the same for if you left. I bet we would even chip in for the cost of the moving truck including mileage. Maybe even air fair to another country, maybe one of the ones you prefer and defend over your own? 

 

 

NY has great hunting and fishing lands. Yes, it's politically a mess of corruption and lies. The political issues that revolve around hunting and guns are a joke. Too many people agree with the corruptness because they are corrupt and selfish as well. You cannot cure stupid. It's a "mental illness" and those who have can't own guns so they don't want the rest of the population to have them either.

I have no desire to currently leave NY. I shall remain here with my liberal friends and neighbors content in knowing that our votes for the democrats will continue to cancel out any votes cast for republicans keeping NYS firmly in the Blue 

[DirtTime]

6 minutes ago, Uptown Redneck said:

I have no desire to currently leave NY. I shall remain here with my liberal friends and neighbors content in knowing that our votes for the democrats will continue to cancel out any votes cast for republicans keeping NYS firmly in the Blue 

It was worth a shot.

[Rattler]

1 hour ago, Uptown Redneck said:

I have no desire to currently leave NY. I shall remain here with my liberal friends and neighbors content in knowing that our votes for the democrats will continue to cancel out any votes cast for republicans keeping NYS firmly in the Blue 

I think Detroit and Chicago have been firmly in the blue for decades.  Lib votes cancelled out everything worthwhile in those places.  If NY State stays blue, those lib votes will have the same effect on the entire state.  These content fools will soon find their contentment was ignorance when the reality of "progressive" policies slaps them hard.

Only the trapped or stupid stay in NY.  I'm am moving to PA in the near future.  However, I hold a lifetime hunting license in NY and some land, so I will return to enjoy the only thing NY has to offer an intelligent man.

 

[grampy]

18 hours ago, Uptown Redneck said:

I have no desire to currently leave NY. I shall remain here with my liberal friends and neighbors content in knowing that our votes for the democrats will continue to cancel out any votes cast for republicans keeping NYS firmly in the Blue 

There you have it! A classic case of the blind leading the blind.

[Uptown Redneck]

1 hour ago, grampy said:

There you have it! A classic case of the blind leading the blind.

Yes, we have all seen the progress brought about by conservative principles...namely most of them being found unconstitutional in courts nationwide