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March 2015 One More Time I sent an e-mail blast out on Friday last week asking you to consider contacting your state senator about SB 39, which would open all state lands to all forms of access, including all motorized vehicles. As a bird hunter, I was especially surprised to see that the bill would allow this on the new GEM Lands in the UP and northern Lower Peninsula, lands that are specifically being set aside for grouse and woodcock hunters. I think you’ll agree that we don’t want to be running dogs in a grouse cover with dirt-bike and four-wheeler trails active nearby. It is my feeling that there are plenty of places on Michigan’s lands to run these vehicles, and that certain lands can be managed for certain species and activities – all lands do not have to be all things to all people all the time. If that’s the case, then we should be able to hunt in a state park, right? I’m sure the campers won’t mind. Well, a new bill was introduced by the same group of senators last week: SB 206, and this is a new twist. Thousands of acres of state land have been purchased using Pittman-Robertson Act funds (the tax hunters and shooters pay on guns, ammunition, and hunting equipment). Still more land has been purchased using state hunters’ money from license sales. In both cases, these lands are, by law, restricted to use by hunters, and habitat for game species is managed by the DNR on those lands. Of course, others – hikers, X-country skiers, those who snowshoe, birders, amateur botanists, and others – use those lands as well, and we welcome them; many of them are us (for me, it’s amateur botany). SB 206 would use other state money to, in effect, buy back the restrictions on those lands, remove all gates and barriers, open them for all uses – as in SB 39 – and (you’ll love this) allow those lands to be sold. From the outside looking in, this could be construed as an anti-hunting move, intended to disrupt our sport on lands we paid for, and even potentially moving some of those lands out of the public realm. Take the time to contact your state senator. A number of groups have been informed of this bill: MUCC, the Ruffed Grouse Society, a state chapter of Safari Club International, but we need all voices; as taxpaying residents of the state – and bird hunters – we need to make ours heard as well. Provided is a link to SB 206, and below that, links to the offices of Senators Darwin Booher and Tom Casperson, who were also sponsors of SB 30.
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