Change waterfowl baiting rules

Attention waterfowl hunters. Unless you are part of the 1 percent with way too much money, commercial hunting outfits are ruining our sport. Here’s why.

These people have figured out they can create legally baited hunting sites by flooding small, unharvested grain fields with shallow water. These artificially built “corn ponds” are so overly attractive to waterfowl that limits are guaranteed for every hunter, every day, all season long. Indeed, illegal baiting would not improve their success.

Now, forgetting the idea of Fair Chase in blood sports, here’s the problem for all the rest of us waterfowl hunters who can’t afford a thousand dollars a day to shoot guaranteed limits. These commercial outfits are not just providing flooded, unharvested grain fields where waterfowl can feed daily and only get shot twice a week, they also provide sanctuary lakes where the birds can rest completely undisturbed. Then, each year, as long as there is enough food to eat, more and more waterfowl will keep moving onto these sanctuary lakes because that’s what ducks and geese do, and an awful lot of these birds will be ones relocating from public hunting lands, which is why waterfowl hunters who aren’t rich should be concerned.

I gave oral and written testimony about this issue before the Wildlife Commission, but all that happened was the advertisements these commercial outfits pay for in the hunting pamphlet were scrubbed of proclaiming “guaranteed limits”. No one contacted me. It’s as though the people in charge might use these services.

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 10:28 AM with the headline "Change waterfowl baiting rules."