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Mrs. J. T. Fleegle,
Mrs. Fleegle, I am writing this letter to you in response
to your “Enough” and ‘Bobcats and coyotes and bears, Oh my”
articles. I find your articles to be insulting and am infuriated
by your callous, pompous attitude towards the travesty that
has befallen our great deer hunting tradition in pa.
Normally, I would take the time to spell check and edit what
I have written ,but in this case I am going to skip the formalities
and let you have it off the cuff. I hope you have the courage
to hear me out, as I think you got it comin’, verbally, of
course.
Let me introduce myself, my name is Jim Joint . I was born
and raised in Erie, Pa. and learned to hunt and fish from
my grandfather in central pa., Renovo, to name the place.
I am the captain of our bear and now defunct deer crew, thanks
to decisions and opinions of pompous, educated, know it alls’
like you.
You know the type, you must parley with them every day in
your attempts to impress each other. The ones with the generic
answers like, “you don’t get in far enough”.
The reason I told you the town in central pa. where I learned
to hunt is because if you know Renovo, then you know what
rough country is and that you can “get back in” there. Our
bear crew has taken 102 bears, look it up if you have to,
our crew is the ucnuttin camp, you guys must surely log all
this info for data banks, right along with the accurate data
on how many deer we have and how many are taken, and oh yeah,
the no. of boone and crockett bucks taken in pa. since the
“plan “ was instituted.
We hunt the toughest, back in country in pa. for these bear,
and guess what, they used to be full of deer too, good bucks,
that got little to no hunting pressure in the 2 weeks of buck
season. Not much has changed ,EXCEPT, the deer are all but
gone. Do we get back in, yup, do we hunt hard, yup, come and
see for yourself. Since we have taken 102 bear and HUNDREDS
of bucks, BEFORE the plan was put in place I think my crew
and myself have bragging rights.
Back in the “day”, the 70’s , 80’s, and early 90’s, we had
bears and bobcats, little hunting pressure and lots of deer.
We started seeing coyotes in the early 90’s and coincidently,
that’s when we started seeing our deer herd start to dwindle.
We started finding their [coyote ] kills everywhere. We saw
them trailing deer on bear drives,and read the sign in the
snow. We informed Mr. Alt of this before the plan was started
and he told us that this would be taken into consideration
as to how many doe tags and dmaps would be handed out. He
said each unit would be treated differently. Never happened,
doe tags and dmaps were and still are handed out without concern
of the damage.
You and all your pgc cronies and generic answers and lack
of data, pertinent, that is, think this is funny. I don’t
think it’s the least bit funny, never mind the 500,000 less
hunters since the plan started, never mind the hundreds of
mom and pop hotels, stores and gas stations that went out
of business. Come on man, even Mr. Alt made the comment of
“seriously, 2 weeks of doe season?” Worst of all, is the youth,
you all in your educated pomp have no idea how you have effected
many of our youth today.
Earlier I made mention to our defunct deer crew, and that’s
what it is. After a few years of demolished deer herds the
young’uns quit wanting to come to camp and bust steep sidehills
in the cold and rain and snow , to not see a deer. We hunted
hard, all over pa. we preferred the back in places, tough
places, where we had the woods to ourselves and had plenty
of success. Now we kill more bear than deer in our season.
Ha, we found some deer around Pittsburgh, amongst the houses
and highways, which is fine for now, but there went our backwoods
hunts. And by the way, do ya think that the 500,000 less hunters
has anything to do with a few deer comin back???? Or was it
the stellar plan? This is not the first letter I have written
, but it may be my last, I learned to get my deer hunting
elsewhere, other states, which is a travesty in itself that
I hafta give up ,like countless hunters, on a tradition and
sport I love in my homestate because of decisions made or
fueled by “educated” fellas as yourself.
Just because you have a degree, it does’ nt make you right.
I suggest you go over that traveled road and talk to locals,
not posted,qdm, managed areas, private farms. Mountain country
people, ask them, ask meat cutters, the ones I talk to say
business is way down, ….listen there is much more I could
ramble about, but I wrote this because I have seen what it
has done to our youth and felt I should at least try to make
a point, I can live with the repercussion of what I have attempted
to do…how about you…have you made the right call??
Respectfully
Jim Joint
Capt. U.C. NUTTIN CAMP
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