2005 Summit-future Of Hunting In Fl Meeting

[N. Cook]

The meeting is in the planning stages.....UW-F is one of the Steering Committee members.....Florida hunting license sales have dropped 100,000 in the last 10 years and the FWC wants to reverse this trend. A very aggressive meeting of invited parties who may have ideas and have the power to act on those ideas is visualized. The meeting is expected to be in the Orlando area in August.

UW-F directors voted at the recent meeting in Titusville to accept the invitation for two officers to attend and to donate $1000 toward the expense of the meeting. We will have excellent PR and name recognition as a result. The meeting budget is about $300,000, mostly to be financed by large corporations in the hunting trades. Nationally known speakers and presenters will participate.

There are monthly statewide teleconference planning meetings and I will keep the members up to date as we progress.

[northfla_hunter]

there are very simple reasons why the hunters have declined so drastically in the past 10 years.

#1 - for deer hunting, development. lots of land that people used to hunt are now housing developments. there is very limited public land and what there is usually does not provide a good hunting experience. the only option left is to pay several thousand dollars a year to join a camp and maybe shoot 1 100lb deer a year?? dont think so.

#2 - for duck hunters, nobody gives a rats arse about us. this is evident in the decisions by almost every public entity. the army core drains rodman to kill the hydrilla, the WMD sprays every lake that there is an ounce of hydrilla growing in. then they spray it again and possibly again. so what we are left with is open bodies of water with no food, so if the birds actually migrate down, they have no reason to stop.

didnt mean to hijack your thread, just doing a little venting and inputing my public comments. i surely hope that the higher ups realize this and are not wasting everyones time looking for crazy reasons why nobody hunts anymore. if they simply made everyone wait until mid-late january to practice "weed" control, it would drastically improve waterfowling across the state. i refuse to believe that 45 days is going hurt their efforts at all. fisherman (which i outside of duck season) have 12 months out of the year, hunters have 2.

[N. Cook]

Member and guests comments are welcome.....we will be able to state UW-F's postitions and our representatives will have a position paper......thanks for any input.