MN Pheasant Summit

[cstemig]

http://www.twincities.com/ci_27124898/m ... e-coverage

A good read.

It will be interesting to see if Dayon and other legislators will work towards the goal of a single authority to enforce compliance of buffer strip laws along waterways. Apparently there is some confusion if enforcement is only on the local level or the state level.

Several other ideas came out of this meeting as well. Let's hope that some action is taken on them.

[Goldfish]

What read?

[cstemig]

My bad, I forgot to include the link in my first posting.

[get-n-birdy]

A few little changes here and there, could benefit farmers and hunters. Problem seems to be farmers don't like to change. And hunters want all or nothing. Farmers and the DNR aren't the bad guys. They are just stuck in a lot of traditions, crop price fluctuations and politics.

[get-n-birdy]

There's some good pheasant hunting in sw mn. The issue is most of it is in isolated blocks of good wma and WPA habitat. Tying those blocks together through drainage ditch lines, with some buffer areas along those ditch lines, could be beneficial on so many levels. And not for just pheasants, it would benefit waterfowl as well.

[lanyard]

So, if it all amounts to grasslands, maybe some erosion control, clean water, etc.

Why not pay for easements on planted grass lands over and above what is required by law? Use stamp funds, WIA funds, etc.

[Waterfowlist]

There conclusion: wanna kill pheasants? Leave the state

[gimpfinger]

There conclusion: wanna kill pheasants? Leave the state

I'd be more than happy if it goes back where everyone thought there was no birds in mn and all go to sd.

Team Power Dump

[Waterfowlist]

I shouldn't talk I know nothing about pheasant hunting.

[OTCKid]

Well the Ag Commissioner's comments were pretty discouraging. More or less saying "well, we could just give up!"

He's right in saying that the patchwork quilt of regulations and responsible agencies and authorities is overly-complex. Having grown up on a farm and seeing my brother, who now owns and runs it, try to navigate through the list of requirements, I can tell you it's pretty Byzantine - and he's a hunter so he's pretty inclined to err on the side of habitat when he has the chance. It's made worse by enforcement that varies from place to place and frankly often ranges from haphazard to non-existent.

Get-n-birdy is absolutely correct - neither the farmers nor the DNR are necessarily 'the bad guys' in every case but sometimes the rules turn them into adversaries unnecessarily.

But throwing your hands in the air and saying "this is too hard" isn't much of a solution.