First of all we don’t have anti hunting pressures like they do in other places. On Sask fb hunting groups you see hunters who don’t bait and they aren’t calling for bait to be done. They support it and a person right to hunt that way. Our trained wildlife people are overshadowed by farmer crop damage complaints and vehicle accidents. So ship has sailed a long time ago on wildlife managed professionally up here. Not saying that’s right. A few years ago they tried to do away with our OTC archery mulie tags. And we as hunter banded together to stop that especially considering there is hardly any tags sold, low success rate etc
You could be right, but I have a hunch your FB group isnt a full representation of the hunting community in Saskatchewan. I’ve seen multiple hunters from Saskatchewan on social media and forums saying that baiting should’ve been banned when CWD showed up. Quite upset more was not done.
But to your point, the discussion around banning baiting in Sask needed to happen long ago, and that ship has long since sailed.
I’ll leave you with this to consider, and I don’t need a response. It’s more rhetorical in nature. Something to chew on for a while. Baiting is without a doubt transmitting disease, that can’t be argued by anyone with common sense or objective reasoning. So, ask yourself a fundamental question around why a hunter would be okay with being directly responsible for spreading a 100% fatal, neurological disease to a wild animal they claim to care about a great deal?
Because at the root of this question is, to me, the part of this conversation I find the most difficult to convey to folks. Because it shows that some hunters have allowed themselves to pull the proverbial wool over their own eyes.
They’ve fooled themselves into thinking it’s about hunting rights, or property rights, or ethical shots, or doing it for “the kids”, or the elderly, or the disadvantaged. But it’s none of those things, those are just disingenuous arguments that avoid the core of their actual stance. Which is that they simply don’t care. They don’t care about creating sick deer, spreading disease, hurting a public resource, or the incredibly selfish nature that’s at the core of any of those ideas. It’s all about “me” and getting “mine”, regardless of anyone or anything else. They know it, they know it’s a chit argument, that it’s selfish, and all these other arguments are their only option to save face and come off sounding decent. Because telling the truth, saying that they don’t care and that hunting over bait is more important than a litany of other things that are actually important. They know that hurts their cause and makes them look really, really bad.
This is a problem within the hunting community not just specific to CWD or baiting, I think it is the same thinking that is behind these efforts towards privatization, and poaching for YouTube content.
But again, in my opinion, that’s what we’re going to see across the country with these CWD issues. Weve already seen it in North Dakota, Oklahoma, and to lesser degree in a handful of other states. But I think this will continue to happen. Hunters will be leading charges to remove authority from their Game and fish departments, getting backed by groups like the Farm Bureau, Hunter Nation, Ted Nugent, Dr. Deer, or other Property rights groups, some who don’t actually care about public resources, public hunters or public hunting, much less baiting or CWD. But they will absolutely take advantage of an opportunity to attack their state Game and Fish departments. When or if that happens, certain private interests will gladly step in to capitalize, further pushing us towards the European model, meaning less hunting for guys like you and me. Baiting will be an afterthought. Just my 2 cents.
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