Why Do We Get Up at 0 Dark Thirty?

Why unfavorable odds don't deter Vt hunters
WCAX
By Alexei Rubenstein - bio | email With only a few days left of rifle season, Eric Nuse is getting all the time he can. The 32-year veteran former Vermont ...
http://www.wcax.com/story/16114145/why-unfavorable-odds-dont-deter-vt-hunters?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6485716

Conference Workshop to Focus on Restoring Bison to the Northern Plains

Orion Founder Jim Posewitz is working on this project in Montana.

A workshop, “Bringing Bison Back: America’s Last Big Game Challenge,” is scheduled for 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Monday, March 12, at the 77th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.  It will examine the political, cultural and ecological steps necessary for bison to be restored, managed and valued as a wildlife resource on northeastern Montana’s Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR) and other multi-jurisdictional landscapes. The Great Plains of Montana once sustained bison herds that numbered in the millions. Like so many other wildlife species, the bison population was decimated by market hunting and habitat loss during the latter half of the 19th century. Through historic conservation efforts—led primarily by sportsmen clubs and conservationists, including William Hornaday, Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell—many of the game species suffering from overexploitation recovered to a sustainable degree were and been restored to native habitat. The American bison, however, was not one of those species. More:

Locavore "Wild Foods" Festival

From The Elm the student paper for Washington College in Chestertown, MD:
...
The first event of the two-part celebration took place on Friday evening with a lecture entitled “Hunting: A Matter of Life and Death,” by Drew University Professor Dr. Marc Boglioli. Boglioli’s lecture explored attitudes toward hunting in Vermont, both of the hunters themselves and anti-hunting activists as researched in his book, A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont. His research focused specifically on deer camps and the stigmas associated with them, such as misogynistic perspectives and an obsession with killing. His findings, however, revealed that deer hunters in Vermont are separatist rather than misogynist and view the deer camps as an escape from the compulsory competition associated with gender in society. “Deer camp is a liminal place where men are free to act in ways counter to the dominant societal expectations,” said Boglioli.
Additionally, he described the hunters’ approach to nature as respectful rather than exploitative.
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Genuine Hunting

I'm rereading one of my favorite books, Hunting the Whole Way Home, by Sidney Lea. On page 25 he is describing a bird hunt in one of his Vermont covers. He tells of seeing chickadees, hearing the "gritty croaks of ravens" and the "pileated woodpecker's flourish."
He goes on to say:
"Why should I be less enthralled by any of these creatures than by a game bird? My answer is scarcely recondite, yet few will grasp it who have not traveled my kind of beautiful miles. And of course, indifferent or plain hostile to genuine hunting, that 's exactly what most people will never do. I preach to the small choir. To the great congregation my sermon is either an attenuated frontier romanticism or, more commonly, a bloodthirst tricked up as aesthetics.
It's true enough that I can't evade the fact of blood. A kill defines the hunt and all its subordinate objectives and agents, including the hunter: in that one moment, the path of an elusive and superbly equipped prey intersects with a human predatory capacity, both schematic and intuitive, mundane (which boots to bring, which shells?) and superstitious (hunt high ground in an east wing); and for that one moment, the world reveals a gorgeous coherency.
The anti-hunting propagandist is appalled by such a sacramental perspective, precisely because its icon is a bloodstain. Nor will the hobbyist sportsan read me rightly. I speak only to and for the passionate hunter, the one who regards this business as more than mere sport. Surrounded like everyone by a mechanized and abstractive culture, he appreciates how seldon human gesture can be unmediated, literal.
I've always understood all this somewhere in my soul, but I've need to come this far before bringing it to articulation, however imperfect." p. 25
Sounds right on to me.
Ps. Sidney Lea is the poet laureate of Vermont, you've got to love a state like this.

Federal Court Upholds National Roadless Rule; Sportsmen Celebrate Conservation Victory

News for Immediate Release Oct. 21, 2011 Contact: Katherine McKalip, 406-240-9262, kmckalip@trcp.org
 
Decision by appeals court resolves uncertainty regarding 2001 rule, safeguards the prime habitat provided by inventoried roadless lands. 

WASHINGTON – The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership today commended a decision by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals that reinstated the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule as the law governing 49 million acres of inventoried roadless areas located on the nation’s national forests and grasslands. The ruling overturned a lower district court’s decision enjoining the 2001 rule in August 2008 and resolved uncertainty about federal management of roadless areas across America.
The so-called “roadless rule” is a multiple-use national forest management regulation that was designed to limit road building and timber harvest on undeveloped public lands managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The rule determines the management of all national forest roadless areas outside of Idaho.
“Today’s decision affirmed the value of backcountry areas in sustaining healthy and secure habitat for fish and wildlife – something hunters and anglers have known for   years,” said Joel Webster, director of the TRCP Center for            Photo by George Cooper.
Western Lands. “Sound roadless conservation policies safeguard big-game habitat security, productive trout and salmon fisheries and our sporting traditions. The 2001 roadless rule is a strong mechanism for conserving America’s backcountry recreational activities and outdoor heritage.”
The TRCP has mobilized a broad cross-section of sportsmen, conservationists and recreationists supporting conservation of roadless areas and the outdoor opportunities they foster. For purposes of the rule, roadless areas are defined as contiguous blocks of backcountry public land that are 5,000 acres or larger and do not have improved roads.
While access is important to sportsmen, densely roaded areas have been shown to negatively affect elk and deer behavior, reproduction and survival and consequently hunter opportunity. Excessive, poorly located roads contribute to increased sediment loads in waterways that are important to wild trout and salmon, thereby diminishing the number and size of fish.
“We appreciate the dedication of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in upholding this popular land management policy,” said TRCP President and CEO Whit Fosburgh, “and we applaud the court’s decision as one made in the absolute best interest of our public-lands fish and wildlife populations and outdoor recreation.

“As the 2011 fall hunting season continues, sportsmen have reason to celebrate backcountry conservation,” continued Fosburgh. “Whether they’re hunting the West Big Hole of Montana, the northern Blue Range of New Mexico or backcountry lands in Vermont’s Green Mountains, public-land hunters across the nation will benefit from the court’s thoughtful decision for generations to come.”
Learn more about the TRCP’s work in support of roadless area conservation.

Vermont wildlife officials say Pete the Moose's former home to close

 From the Burlington Free Press
 


MONTPELIER — The northern Vermont game preserve where Pete the Moose lived and died is to close, state officials said Thursday, moving Vermont a step closer to ending the practice of allowing wildlife to be imported into the state and fenced in on private hunting grounds.

Walt Driscoll, a member of the state Fish and Wildlife Board, said the owner of the Big Rack Ridge hunting preserve in Irasburg told him he planned to close the preserve in Irasburg.

...“For a long time, we’ve had this idea that wildlife that lives anywhere in North America and especially here in Vermont does not belong to any private individual,” Scott said.

Lawmakers made that position official this year when they passed a law declaring that wild animals are a public trust, meaning that legally they are “owned” by every resident of the state. 

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Baucus to introduce Front wilderness bill

From the Great Falls Tribune.com

Jim Posewitz, founder and board member of Orion-The Hunter's Institute and a longtime advocate for sportsmen, introduces Sen. Max Baucus at an unveiling of the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which Baucus will introduce in Congress. TRIBUNE PHOTO/JOHN ADAMS

HELENA — U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., announced Friday that he will sponsor the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act in Congress.
The long-anticipated bill, which Baucus said he plans to introduce this session, would add 67,000 acres of new wilderness to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. The measure also would designate another 208,000 acres as conservation management areas, which would limit road building but allow current motorized recreation and public access for hunting, biking, timber thinning and grazing.
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Green Fire, Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time

If you are a fan of A Sand County Almanac and Aldo Leopold, seeing this DVD is a must.
I was able to attend a screening at Sterling College with Leopold biographer, Curt Meine and film makers Ann and Steven Dunsky. The room was full of hunters, conservationists, students and environmentalists which led to a lively discussion after the film.
The essay, Thinking Like a Mountain, served as the thread that ran through the film.  Greenfire does an holistic job of tracing Leopold the man and his thinking from childhood until his death. 30 years after cutting down a female wolf and watching the "fierce green fire dying in her eyes." Leopold writes,"I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."
DVD's can be ordered at the Aldo Leopold Foundation book store. More about the DVD and trailers at the Greenfire website. You will not be disappointed.

ABOUT THINK TANK II and “SPORT HUNTING”

From the Thinking Hunter:

I’ve been doing some work on my notes and ideas from the Think Tank II.  I came away from the gathering wishing it had been at least one day longer.  There was a lot of free discussion about the present state of recruitment to the outdoors but I heard something that was, to me, very important for the future of hunting, and it was the simple statement that hunting would be referred to as “hunting” and not “sport hunting” or have any other adjectives affixed to it.  
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At Times, The Token Cheap Shot Is The Fairest Play

This is a guest post written by Orion supporter Chris Clasby from Helena, Montana:

The third Saturday of Montana's 2011 duck hunting season, I crept to the edge of backwater on the Bitterroot to see what came in.  Decoys displayed and a couple practice calls later, we waited for shooting light.  Moments of silence waiting in darkness allow one's mind to wander, and mine went back to the first drake Mallard I shot last winter.  The first duck I'd shot in 20 years.  And I shot him on the water.  Then I thought about hunting ethics.

I'd shot quite a few ducks those twenty some years ago while in high school in Helena, MT, but none on the water.  Irrigation ditches in the valley north of town were late-season havens when standing water reservoirs had become ice.  Jump shooting was the strategy, and it was effective.  Enough so that I remember a double or two on rare occasion.  I had hunted with a retired friend, an experienced waterfowl hunter, who taught me the ropes and let me use one of his shotguns.

That past time had passed for twenty years and it had felt good to start again.  This was a different style of hunting, now from a blind with decoys rather than ditches, different companions, and a different part of Montana.  I wondered if my ethics and changed too, then considered again having sluiced that drake on the water and that my companions and I were fine with it.  Actually, pretty ecstatic.  I'd like to think age has refined my ethics.

The biggest change was that those years ago I was a perfectly mobile, physical teenager as capable of wingshooting as anyone equally experienced.  A car accident the following year had left me quadriplegic, and I now traverse by power wheelchair and shoot using a rifle mount aimed by chin-joystick and fired by sipping into a tube that actuates the trigger.  The motors aren't quick enough nor designed for wingshooting, so a stationary target is necessary.  In the last year I'd weighed the sitting duck situation both ways: was it the perpetual cheap shot contrary to the waterfowl hunters' moral code or do situational variables deem actions acceptable in some situations?  The latter is usually at best thin ice on the pond of moral and ethical relativity, but in this case I still feel dry.

Before making that shot, my companions and I knew that my field of shooting ranged about fifteen degrees in all directions from where my barrel pointed before birds approached.  We had strategically placed decoys on the periphery of open water toward which my gun was aimed to encourage them to land there.  I was also aware of the speed of the aiming motors -- fast enough to get to my target, but slow enough to stop on it without going past.  Finally, I knew I'd always be shooting within range of my shotgun and would be aiming at one specific duck.

Having compared the certainty of my shot to standard wingshooting, I felt comfortable with and good about having done it.  We'd used only traditional methods of allure, they were all wild ducks, and they were even given time to escape on wing as the wind of my motors brought my barrel to the target.  I was also quite certain that a standard shot pattern was more likely to cleanly kill a sitting duck than one passing on the wing, regardless whose barrel it came from.  Everything we'd done was also legal by all state and federal regulations.

While disability hunting has been an improper excuse in recent years to justify game farms, hunting inside fences, and crossbreeding, there is substance to my justification.  Ethical questions in the field consider multiple variables, and I think I passed the test.  The technology required was fairly basic, required for my participation, and surely offered me no unfair advantage.  We were hunting with hopes of but uncertain success, and it was about the experience more than the kill.  At times, the token cheap shot is the fairest play.

[Hunters] Endangered Species

Vermont Life, Fall 2011

Suburbanization, animal rights, newcomers -- these and other social trends have Vermont's hunting culture on the run. In this special report, veteran field-and-stream journalist Matt Crawford examines what will be lost, why there might be hope and why even those who don't hunt should care.

By Matt Crawford Can Localvores Save Hunting? "We're only ever going to have a certain percentage of people who hunt," said Eric Nuse, of Johnson, executive director of Orion–The Hunter's Institute, a national nonprofit that encourages ethical and responsible hunting. "With this new wave of back-to-earthers being spearheaded by people concerned about the origins of their food, we just might appeal a bit to those who will consider hunting."

The policy and politics behind Pete the Moose

WCAXhttp://www.wcax.com/story/15715058/the-policy-and-politics-behind-pete-the-moose
... you have to step back and say, wait a minute-- what are the bigger implications," Eric Nuse of Orion Hunters' Institute said February 2011. ...

Celebrity moose that was pardoned by Vt. gov dies

National / World News 

By DAVE GRAM

The Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Pete the Moose, who developed a cult following with a Facebook page and a rally at the Vermont Statehouse after biologists threatened to kill him to prevent the spread of disease, has died, the state's top wildlife official said Friday.
 .... A public outcry erupted, and in 2010, Vermont lawmakers crafted a compromise.
... But lawmakers reversed themselves earlier this year, saying wild animals in the state can't be privately owned and are legally a public trust, owned by all Vermonters.
More: 

From the Burlington Free Press:
As Vermont mourns Pete the Moose's death, questions swirl
State officials say they were 'misled' about Pete the Moose's well-being
...“This is the prime example of why wildlife should be kept wild,” the commissioner said. “When you try to domesticate wild animals you have to undertake these sorts of procedures, and you put their lives at risk.”
...
Lawrence Pyne, outdoors columnist for the Burlington Free Press, said Pete never should have been taken from the wild.
“If Pete has one important, lasting legacy, it’s that he was the catalyst for the bill being introduced last January that established in the law that wildlife is a public trust resource that cannot be privatized,” Pyne said.

More:

From ABC News:

Preserve Owner Admits Covering up Vt. Moose Death

 

Bringing Back the Bison

SOUTH OF MALTA — Jim Posewitz is confident he will see a huntable herd of free-roaming, wild bison somewhere in Montana in his lifetime.
"We'll have to hurry, though," he said, smiling.
Posewitz is 76.
A Montana conservationist, hunter, author and promoter of hunter ethics, Posewitz has lent his voice to the National Wildlife Federation's push to have bison restored to the 1.1-million-acre Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Montana.
"What better place, what better species and what better time?" he said.

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_da1eb01e-87cf-57bf-9488-366e7f5ad29c.html#ixzz1afoFw6M0