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Author
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Topic: Night hunting in Kansas may actually be coming
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted June 26, 2020 12:22 PM
Thought I'd bring y'all up to date that we are as close as we have ever been to getting a night hunting "season" in Kansas. Sat for a 3-hour ZOOM meeting yesterday with our department's commission where they addressed the issue in a Work Group session. The final vote yay or nay will come in two months at their August meeting.
At this point, the chairman of the group is a huge supporter of the idea, along with four other members, with only two showing any push back, and one of them is the sole female commissioner who has a long history of not being supportive of killing shit.
I sent each of the commissioners an email a month ago outlining many of the points that have been offered here and included a 30-minute video created by Randy Buker to address the litany of myths surrounding the proposal. Of course, my emails were joined by animal rights proponents from all across the country and I am happy to say that those emails were effectively nullified on the basis that "we don't need people who don't live here or understand how we live telling us how to live."
I knew from the get go that we weren't likely to see a year-round season because Kansas is a top tier trophy whitetail deer state and the deer hunting lobby has an impressive amount of pull. That said, we have garnered the support of several livestock groups and our state's Farm Bureau is remaining undeclared so as not to piss off either side of their membership. Surprisingly, the state's bow hunting group - our staunchest historical opposition yet - has voiced their displeasure due to all the usual rumors and fears, but have pretty much resigned themselves to the fact that this is coming and they won't be able to stop it. I sincerely hope that once in place, people will quickly realize that all the rumors about rampant poaching and the onerous demands upon game wardens who have to get out at night to check lawfully hunting coyote hunters will go the way of the rumors of gutters running full of blood that preceded the constitutional carry debate and laws, none of which have come true. Quite the opposite, actually.
Our goal - there are others beside myself - was to bring a plan to the table that achieved what we wanted, but also gave a nod to the concerns of deer hunters, ranchers, and law enforcement as a way of staving off any opposition before it even got started. Basically, let us hunt at night during the best time of the year for us, and we will gladly compromise where we can.
The end result for now, is as follows:
Coyote hunting will be allowed using visible light, infrared, and thermal.
All legal types of calling gear will be legal at night.
No night time calling on non-private property or department leased Walk-In Hunting Access acreage or state/ Corp of Engineer public grounds.
No calling or shooting from any vehicles or motorized conveyances. I had suggested they include public roads and their right of ways, too.
Coyotes only, no other furbearers. Data does not show that pop'n numbers will support that sort of pressure from floating creeks and rivers shooting beavers, raccoons, etc. where you aren't actually calling. Commissioners want to make sure that they allow hunting, not just shooting.
Will be allowed during the period of January 1 to March 31 when deer seasons are all closed and antlers are dropping. This, and the public roads item above, are to better allow officers to enforce laws where possible poachers only claim to be hunting coyotes which is a big problem right now and always has been
Night time callers will be required to purchase a state-issued permit at a cost of $2.50 - the cost of actually issuing the permit - as a way to track how many people are taking advantage of this opportunity.
This is a compromise that we can get behind, as a starting point. Maybe, as the state grows comfortable with the idea and actually learns what night calling does and does not cause, we will see amendments like hi racks become a reality.
The two commissioners opposed to the idea cited the same threadbare arguments about how lights violate "fair chase" rules and that the female commissioner had received an overwhelmingly negative response to the public request for comments leading up to the meeting. The chairman made the point that he had received a wealth of responses,m of which only one w as negative and that was a guy that appeared to think every other sportsman in the state had an advantage over him and wanted all those limitations removed.
At the same time, the other negative Nelly was worried that hunting at night with lights and suppressors will cause a bad public image for hunters. The chairman and at least one other commissioner replied that he obviously had an unrealistic idea of just how easy it is to call coyotes and it wasn't going to be a wholesale slaughter out there just because of boys and their toys out in the night. These are the same folks who didn't oppose the state's pressure to stop calling competition under the guise that it violated state gaming laws because calling is a "game of chance", saying that skill doesn't have any impact on success rates. I guess all the folks that ask to go calling with me because they can't take as many as me might argue that point.
One interesting point I learned was that the state legislature has been doing the advance work to move this proposal forward statutorily over the past year and that hints were given to the commission to get something done with regulatory measures first in order to avoid the legislature passing a law that would likely to come with a bevy of amendments and riders that would either compromise its passage, or impose new policies on the agency that they don't consider to be in their best interests. In short, the commission can pass something they want, or they will have it rammed down their throats with a bunch of other crap.
I will know more in late August and no, there was no discussion on non-residents for this. Yet. Right now, a general hunting permit and the special night-time stamp will cover resident callers, and I would hope that the general NR permit and the stamp would suffice for NR's.
I know that those of you who live in places where night hunting is the rule are probably scoffing and laughing at how this has dragged on. It's new here and it's a process I and we can either work with, or against. Working with it gets us under the stars sooner.
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted June 27, 2020 11:15 AM
On the subject of night hunting, this is the only place where completely ignorant people make the rules.
All you ever hear, and the first thing out of their mouth is POACHING! Look, whatever poaching there may be, and to tell the truth, in almost 50 years night hunting, I have never seen poaching occurring. Where ever it does occur, it's usually in big game management areas, so far as I know? We generally avoid game animals as much as possible. Why? that's where the wardens are and they are paranoid about spotlights.
The next thing out of their mouth is safety! Why? They don't know but it seems logical? You know, it's dark, can't see, etc. The fact is, night hunting is far safer than almost any other , particularly turkey hunting because so many turkey hunters are taking those infamous "SOUND SHOTS". Coyote hunters are ten times smarter, 100 times better shots, and never waste their time with sound shots!
If you get deer hunters and turkey hunters out of the woods, you have eliminated 99% of the safety concerns. Waterfowl hunters are a little more professional but you never hear of coyote hunters shooting somebody. I think that if you only allowed coyote hunting, there wouldn't be any hunting accidents, statistically approaching zero would be my guess?
So, that's all they got, a bunch of half baked theories and zero facts. There is no reason to not allow night hunting from a safety standpoint. But, apparently ignorant people continue to make game laws. There is little hope for logic to have any influence on game laws, like the 3 rounds in a shotgun rule, just off the top of my head. Or a 30 round magazine in an AR will blow a deer to smithereens. Game management theory says that if you have 30 rounds, you will shoot 30 times! Stuff like that, and those are some of the more intelligent regulations.
Good hunting. El Bee
Sorry for the rant!
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31462 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted June 29, 2020 07:53 AM
What you describe is pretty much exactly what I took as my starting point when I first assembled the foundation of this idea several years ago. At that time, our commission consisted of seven people who were appointed into what they viewed as politically important stepping stones looking for something better in politics down the line. Few of them had any real world experience in wildlife or fisheries management, but to a certain extent, that is different now. My biggest concern now is that at least one falls into the non-consumptive, bird-watching demographic and, as expected, the animal rights people did their homework and sent her the vast majority of their opposition emails. She, therefore, came to the table with the false impression that there was strong opposition to the idea. To my surprise, the chairman refuted everything she offered and disallowed her the opportunity to gain any real traction.
To me, getting to where we truly want to be with this project is a process. We have our foot firmly in the door now and, if things go as I anticipate, we will be given the chance to summarily debunk all the myths about the damage that night hunting will do to hunting in general. At that point, we can submit ideas to amend the original regulation and passage of those amendments will be much easier and with less public hoopla.
Four years ago, Kansas was like a lot of states in that calling contests were being held almost every weekend during then winter. Fund raisers were the biggest basis for these events. One hunt was served with a civil law suit by an out of state animal rights group and they immediately caved. The contention of the plaintiffs was that such contests violated Kansas's gaming laws forbidding games of chance. Myself and my partner in running the Kansas Predator Challenge (which had already been discontinued for other reasons at that time) were disappointed that the guy running that hunt hadn't reached out to us so we could have offered statements on his behalf to refute those claims. Anyone who has called coyotes for any length of time at all will attest to the fact that success is anything but by chance. Skill, knowledge and understanding coyotes better than the other guy is 99% of the winner's success. Preaching to the choir here. Once we made an issue of that, the AR groups left knowing that we would make sure their money was wasted in Kansas. Hunts have now resumed for the most part without challenge.
Any time a new realm opens in hunting, there is opposition, even from within our own ranks. I submit the ongoing rancor in the archery community. Primitive hunters lost their shit when compounds first came out. When crossbows were proposed, both the compound and primitive hunters joined in their cry that deer hunting and the deer herd would be decimated. Today, the number of firearms licenses sold in Kansas has dropped precipitously as a LOT of those gun hunters switched to using XBows during archery season because it meant a longer season for them, the opportunity to hunt for several months rather than just ten days, and the ability to hunt during the rut. None of the disastrous rumors and myths have materialized. You don't see the angst today over XBows today, no more than you see people crying over compounds.
This is new to our commissioners. To their credit, they've taken the position that Kansas will decide its own way of doing things and out of state interests need not apply for consideration.
Moreover, several of the commissioners did what I asked them to do in formulating their positions by reaching out to their contemporaries in states that presently allow night hunting and appear to be following the data and the evidence that night hunting will not be what the opposition says it is.
We have a terrible problem with mange in this state. Our coyote population has tripled in some areas due to leasing for deer hunting which has limited a lot of access. While bowhunters condemn the idea of night hunting coyotes, they are the loudest to complain about the adverse impact coyote depredation is having on fawn survival. I wish there was data somewhere that compared states with night hunting and expanded coyote hunting opportunities on both the prevalence of mange and both game and non-game mortality due to depredation losses. Can't find anything like that. Since both are density-dependent factors, I would anecdotally think that greater reductions in coyote numbers would create healthier coyote populations as well as other species.
Under our current system, - specifically dog wagons combined with high fur prices on coyotes - calling coyotes is difficult at best. Having a chance to call and take coyotes at night will, for me, be a leveling of the playing field.
One point I made to the commissioners is that trapping and hunting of coyotes is, for wildlife management, akin to what the Second Amendment is to the remaining Bill of Rights. The 2A is unique in that it allows us to defend and secure our remaining rights while the rest of those rights have only a limited benefit to the 2A.
The benefits of trapping and hunting on maintaining and stabilizing populations of all other game and non-game species far outweighs any benefits to coyote calling afforded by managing for songbirds and deer hunting. I firmly believe that when the deer hunting groups see better hunting data because predators are being removed in greater numbers leading up to fawning that they will understand the role night hunting coyotes plays in the overall big picture. Every year, the deer hunters who know nothing about predator-prey dynamics loudly declare that we need to "kill all the coyotes" in order to save the deer (despite opposing every proposal to give me and other callers the means to do so) while failing to understand that science has clearly shown that prey numbers control predator numbers and not the other way. They begin to stammer and stutter when I point out to them that the only legitimate way to reduce numbers of coyotes and other predators is to reduce deer numbers from their ongoing and perpetual artificially maintained high numbers, solely for the purpose of giving them something to hunt. They miss the logic. And every year, someone has to cite the study that says that we can accomplish reductions in coyote numbers if we could just drain the coyote numbers by 70%.
First, they fail to realize just how difficult doing so would be, and second, they are regurgitating someone else's claims without understanding that the study they're indirectly citing also determined that the 70% reduction would have to be done over fifty consecutive years in order to be even marginally effective.
Maybe my point here refutes the very data I'm offering, but the ability to night hunt on those leases and in deer fawning areas right up to and during the fawning period will, in the short term, reduce depredation losses until recruitment of new coyotes into those areas fills those voids. Hopefully, by then, the new fawns are better able to evade and defend themselves from coyotes.
Sounds good in theory.
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted June 29, 2020 09:06 AM
Yes, that's true, sounds good in theory.
Anyway, it seems like you have your ducks in a row and good luck. Prevailing on logic is not a winner, long term.
In this once very decent state, we have allowed Liberals to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. If you want to know what I think is the truth, it is that Bunny huggers are way ahead of us and have infiltrated the Game and Fish Departments from top to bottom. Outrageous policies favor the game and handicap, nee, kneecap the dwindling hunting population. It's like Three Card Monty where the object is to do things that negatively affect most every aspect of hunting. They don't want you to be successful and what follows is discouragement; screw it, I can't hunt coyotes when F&G provides the lawyers to actively oppose any predator hunting as detrimental to their ideas of what game management is. It's the same thinking as introducing wolves and Grizzly bears to provide the wilderness experience. and, BTW, if the totally protected lions eat a few citizens every year, it's a small price to pay.
I'm saying, keep the environmentalists out of your game management policy decisions. These people are not our friends.
Good hunting. El Bee
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31462 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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