MN bills introduced to allow crossbows during archery season.
- Thread starter Wind Gypsy
- Start date
hunts_with_stick
5 year old buck +
That’s what happened in PA, Xbow manufacturers approached lawmakers. It’s all a joke. Politicians are bought and paid for. Both D’S and R’s.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
This actually got done. Am I the last to know?
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Probably not the last but it was posted in this thread a month ago haha.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I feel like my minority only special season is closer and closer to coming to fruition. Especially in whacked out places like Minnesota
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
YES!!! Both sides are bought & paid for. Those who can write the BIGGEST checks are the ones who get laws passed for THEIR advantage. The only reason politicians even think about hunters & natural resources is when they want our vote. After that, we're toilet paper.
As for the remote mountainous regions of PA., what better, quieter way to poach than with a crossbow?? Cocked and ready in a vehicle or bed of pickup with a buddy driving .........
I've run into deer carcasses / skeletons with the antlers sawed off within 40 yards of mountain roads. Sportsmen??
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
The poaching angle is a slippery slope. Same is said about .22s, 300BO, suppressors, etc.
Mortenson
5 year old buck +
I'm wondering how exactly they know that. And then I read, "The study reported an increase of non-white visitors from five percent in 2017 to 11 percent last year. The survey may or may not reflect an accurate demographic of state park visitors, since it relies on voluntary participants; MDNR pulled their data from 2,000 interviews last summer." And it tells me they have no clue, but that they just really want more black people to enjoy Lake Superior's beautiful north shore. People actually get paid to do this.I feel like my minority only special season is closer and closer to coming to fruition. Especially in whacked out places like Minnesota
Good luck with your special minority only season. I agree it's coming.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
The fact that they over doubled the % if non-white visitors in a single year and seem to be looking at that as a failure is odd.
Yeah, its a crazy world we live in. Amazing how little morals/virtues some of these idiots have. They work harder doing illegal shiite than what they would if they'd do it right. I think a lot of it could be solved by proper parenting from the start. I've coached youth sports for many years. I've seen POS parents raise great kids, and I've seen great parents end up with a devil child. Those are the exceptions tho, the root cause is at the most basic level IMO.
The politicians can't fix this basic issue, but they do compound it by supporting measures as a knee jerk reaction.
Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
Where in that article does it say anything about a minority only season?
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I made the comment a couple weeks ago where I could see it happening and then the mndnr comes out with this hard hitting study. Combine that with states (and the likes of bass pro/cabelas/nwtf/sitka/etc) falling over themselves to place minorities on covers of regulation books and on websites and in catalogs and articles I can see the writing on the wall. As if the two black women headed into the deer woods alone is actually a thing.
With that said I would love anyone and everyone to get involved in the outdoors. The outdoor lifestyle can literally save peoples lives by giving them purpose but let’s not be silly. It’s obvious to most people it’s just trying to check a box so they can’t be called out.
Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
It's not like there is a much better way of actually measuring demographics of people who use state parks than self-reported surveys. I am actually happy to hear about these results. If 78% of people who live in MN are white and only 5% of non-white people are using state parks, there are quite a few people who are paying for the parks without using them. 11% is getting closer. If it takes over-representing people on covers of a magazine or an ad using models to get more people outdoors, I'm all for it. It is not like MNDNR has an agenda here. They know that the vast majority of their budget comes from outdoor-related permits.
I am not normally a huge fan of the HUNTR podcast, but they recently had Aaron Warbritton (from The Hunting Public) on and they were talking about hunter numbers and increasing hunting access through policy. There was some good discussion talking about how policy has been affecting hunter behavior, as well as whether or not the hunting media has any responsibility for congestion on public ground. I feel like it was a pretty level-headed discussion that talked about everything from crossbows, muzzleloaders, cell cams, season length, baiting, and hunter recruitment. Basically, right in line with what we have been talking about in this thread.
I am not normally a huge fan of the HUNTR podcast, but they recently had Aaron Warbritton (from The Hunting Public) on and they were talking about hunter numbers and increasing hunting access through policy. There was some good discussion talking about how policy has been affecting hunter behavior, as well as whether or not the hunting media has any responsibility for congestion on public ground. I feel like it was a pretty level-headed discussion that talked about everything from crossbows, muzzleloaders, cell cams, season length, baiting, and hunter recruitment. Basically, right in line with what we have been talking about in this thread.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
If minority communities are just unaware of the opportunities out there or exposed to them less I'm all for making sure they are aware of what exists for them out there and encouraging participation. It absolutely makes sense to target some of these groups to get them more involved. But they tied this into some of the woke "give this person the job/opportunity because they aren't a strait white male" insanity out there.
I shouldn't assume like I am, but i bet that calculation is largely based off of taking white gdp per capita and extrapolating to everyone and it doesn't work like that. Giving minorities jobs over white male candidates because they are a minority doesn't create that same job for a white male candidate somewhere else. Corporate America is making tons hiring/wage decisions largely based on people being other than a white male now. Discrimination is the policy so people dont say that you discriminate. It seems like they are claiming that excluding a certain subset of the population based on race/sex from focus on growth/opportunities it will result in a higher GDP.
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It seems like you are recommending the DNR follows the Bud Light marketing plan by abandoning their core customer base in an attempt to get a few new customers from a different group. I'll admit it's not like current park users are going to abandon the park system because the new DNR marketing is targeting different groups, but if the goal is to increase users it would make the most sense to go after the groups that are most likely to actually use those parks. It isn't like the majority of residents are not aware of state parks and facilities, perhaps they just aren't interested. And that's fine, everyone has the right to do what they want and nobody is being excluded. The opportunity to visit parks and enjoy the outdoors is available to everyone.
I bet if the state surveyed the rider usage on the Twin Cities light rail system, they would find a user demographic that doesn't match the state population %. But by your thinking, perhaps the state should pour some light rail advertising dollars into some outstate billboards to try to pull the rural population to the light rail system.
Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
The parks aren't a product and visitors are not customers. These are literally taxpayers who own these parks just like every other resident in the state.
Why is everyone determined to view this through the left/right political filter? This isn't about wokeness or trying to win over "new customers". It is about funding of our wildlife agencies and the resources they manage.
People are talking like they want more people to be exposed to the outdoors. Sure seems like the state is trying to bring as many as possible. Somehow people know their ulterior motives? What is the simplest explanation - that all of these state agencies (who are made up of hunters and anglers just like us) have a left-wing agenda in order to appear woke, or that the agencies themselves know that they rely on permit sales for most of their budgets and we are approaching a recruitment cliff?
We as a hunting culture have a hard enough time recruiting new hunters. If this attitude of "I've got mine" is maintained, eventually the people speaking up for hunting will have an even smaller voice, or may not have a voice at all. Fewer than 5% of the US are license holders. In the next 10 years, that number will almost be cut in half.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
The cut in license holders will probably correlate with the loss of available land to hunt so it’s a wash! We have bigger issues than number of hunters. Go knock on some doors within 2 hours of any major city in the United States and ask if you can hunt. I guarantee a 95% failure rate at best.
Back on topic, agree to disagree, this is wokeness personified. Worrying about making sure you get enough of one race, sex or whatever because essentially too many white people are participating sounds woke to me. Nevermind statistically it’s probably on par for the demographics of mn. It’s like college coaches putting in a disproportionate amount of effort to recruit white cornerbacks cause there’s like 2 in the whole ncaa and clearly underrepresented.
If you want more people to hunt, there needs to be more places for people to hunt and there needs to be animals to hunt. It makes no difference what race or sex anyone is, but if there is an open place to hunt that has animals on it, there will be hunters.
I don't know where you are from, but you view the DNR like I used to years ago. You seem to believe they make decisions in the best interest of hunter, but the opposite is often true. The CO's are generally pretty good people, but some of the people running the DNR are managing the resources in ways that will reduce hunter numbers but appeal to environmentalists. We pay their salaries with our hunting licenses, and they bulldoze trees on public hunting grounds (reducing deer habitat and deer numbers while trying to replicate the pre-settlement landscape), manage zones for low deer numbers and add as many seasons as possible to reduce the deer population as quickly as possible without any regard for hunting quality. Most hunters I know in Minnesota have given up trying to push for meaningful change on a state level since it will never work. All we can do is manage what property we have.
The last legislative session in Minnesota saw the party in power work wording in wherever they could that would give preference to "historically under represented populations." When I looked up the definition on Google, the only group not covered that I could identify was straight white males. This is throughout Minnesota law now. The next session doesn't look like it will be any different.
If they want to increase the diversity numbers in state parks they should open them up to public hunting if close to a metropolitan area.