Fargo Advisory Board Meeting Reminder

The G&F Advisory Board Meeting was a lot like the website petition submittted by Cancarver.

The same questions applied and it was an open format for any questions.

Positives:

Dean Hildebrant answered the door: The head of the G&F himself was answering questions and the door for any concerns.

Mike Johnson and any other high end representatives was there to answer questions as well. It was a good way to address those whose concerns needed attention.

I had the chance to meet a lot of guys who feel the same as me.

I saw a lot of famiar faces, both young and old showing their concern....those from the site I recognized: Old Hunter, MotherGoose, Decoyer, DrakeKiller, GooseBuster3, Eric Hustad, Scraper, and more.

Negatives:

When you mentioned sensitive issues to Dean Hildebrant he ran away.

Nothing was addressed to mention commercialization or the regulation of guides and outfitters.

No open format. Nothing to spark interests or strong vocalists showing there concern, at least for the non-interactive.

All in all, the meeting addressed mostly those concerns addressed on the G&F Website. If you filled out the form, you pretty much attended the G&F meetings.

All in all, pure informational.....but it lacked on reponse. If you feel that commercialization is the biggest problem....I URGE YOU TO WRITE NOW! Dean Hildebrant didn't feel there was enough oppostion to commercialization...so he didn't add it to the ballet. COMMERCIALIZATION IS WRITE IN ONLY...so please let the G&F know how you feel. Dean said to have all inquiries go through his address, so look him up( I post it tomorrow ).

Chris

I thought the meeting overall was a positive for people to get information and talk to some of the head people. By far the most aggravating part of the meeting was talking to the advisor for our area here in Cass County, Ken Toop. A good friend of mine, Marc Halvorson, asked Mr. Toop if his quote in the Fargo Forum was taken out of context:

"want to hunt in our state, and they want to go to other states and
hunt, but they don't want anybody else to come to our state and hunt," Toop
said. "That's kind of the feeling I get out of some of the Fargo hunters
sometimes."

When asked about this Mr. Toop said 75% of resident hunters go to other states to hunt . He also believes most people in our district here want a cap number of 30-35k. He also had the "I go all day and only see a few hunters." Marc and I walked away feeling very discouraged that this guy is the voice of the hunters of Cass County. I would appreciate if anyone here know how to go about removing this guy. Who do we write to.? I hope everyone here knows that our views are being represented poorly.

Agree with all the above.

I came away pursuaded that a lot of letters need to be written to the political people involved. They need to listen to the professionals that they employ. If the G&F biologists ran the show, I have every confidence that things would be running smoothly without the possible east/west debate we have now. I was impressed with the various plans proposed - they were well thought out, but all hinge on the single factor of how many Non-resi's can be sustained. They would all work if the starting point is 11,000, but all fail if the starting point is 25,000. That will be the political event here.

I was also dismayed that folks filling out the early opener survey didn't have the information they needed to make an informed decision. What framework will we have this year? One guy at the door said we were near 100% certain for a liberal season - 75 days. Mike Johnson and Bobby Cox agreed that it was closer to 0% that we'll have liberal season. Therefore, best we could hope for is 60 days, and if the Delta Waterfowl folks are right in their projections (very low humbers - like '94 levels), we could be in for a 39 day season. Perhaps it's unlikely, but if the numbers are way down we gotta do it.

The last thing I got from Roger Rostvet is that we have to get on our local legislators. The local legislators need to know how their constitutents feel. That is happening with the commercial interests, but not with the sportsmen. Therefore, the legislators all seem to feel that all the support is for commercial interests. We gotta fix that.