Walk in Areas ?

[Nulle]

As long as I am on my soap box another gripe of mine is the States program on the walk in areas open to the public for hunting ect.
These are a joke for the most part and our tax dollars are funding them. In my area most of these walk in areas are barrin of anything but snakes and maybe a hungry rabbit. There should be some regulation as to letting the grasses ect grow rather then grazing them down to dirt and then getting paid from the State for the privilage of hunting these barren plots of ground.

[BILLY D.]

Nulle

Have to agree to an extent.

A lot of ours up here are in great shape and do support a lot of birds.

The problem is non resident hunters. At a parking lot a few years ago there were 27 vehicles parked there, 23 from out of State. The hunters clean these places out then they finish up the process by going on their paid/canned hunts down in the South west part of the state. God only knows how many birds these folks haul out of here.

I will admit it is good for the economy, food, lodging, sporting goods etc. But it narrows down the amount of places to hunt. Every body that lives here aren't privileged to have a Grandpa and Grandma who own some land. The F&G dept. here has done a great job of buying lands for hunting. It isn't the lack of birds thats a problem it is a matter of compressing tooooo many people into small areas for hunting purposes.

I know this may sound like a strange analogy when talking about a State with just a little over a half million population. But sometimes it gets downright pushy around here when it comes to hunting. The rich come flying in here and pretty soon they think they own the place cause they got a big bankroll. To put it simply, we North Dakotans ain't bought real easy, and there are Nodaks who have big bankrolls also.

Sorry, I'm just poor white trash and was stupid for spending 27 years of my life defending my country. Other than getting my body broke up and getting old I reaped very little.

Again I have to give our State F&G a pat on the back on game management here except for the Mountain Lion and Wolf problems. We also have a Elk problem in the Badlands, but they are looking into that. ;) ;)

As far as I'm concerned lands that are in CRP should be opened to hunting. If they want a Federal free ticket there should be some form of reimbursement.

Our WPA's and walk in areas are in pretty good shape so I can't really complain about ND but during my highway travels I have seen some pretty sad looking areas like you described.

I can only wonder and ponder what the future holds in store?

Best wishes, Bill

[Nulle]

I ageeeeee with you Billy and thats the same problem in this state also. In the Western part we do not have the pheasant numbers so the walk in area is not regulated to the extent of the eastern part of the state. Yup the out of staters hunt the fee hunting last and attack our walk ins first which is a mess.
I will see if I can get a pic posted of a mountain lion we took a pic of last week in a residential area of Sturgis.