ND vote could ban big game hunting on fenced land – Sify News
October 27, 2010
Butch and Deb Dick’s lifelong dream was to open a big game hunting preserve and after years of preparation, they expected to welcome the first customers to their southeastern North Dakota ranch this month.
Voters will decide next month whether to shut them down.
Measure No. 2 on the Nov. 2 general election ballot seeks to abolish fenced preserves where people pay to shoot big game such as deer and elk. Supporters of the measure say the practice is unethical because the animals can’t escape. Opponents say it’s free enterprise.
There are thousands of big game breeding operations in the United States. Although it’s not clear how many offer hunting, there’s no federal law banning fenced hunting and a majority of states allow it.
“I think it comes down to property rights,” Butch Dick, 34, said quietly, gazing from a ridge that overlooks his wooded and hilly Dragon Creek Ranch in the surprisingly rugged Sheyenne River Valley 8 miles west of Lisbon. Most of eastern North Dakota is flat farmland. Click Link Below for Full Story!
via ND vote could ban big game hunting on fenced land.
State canceling pronghorn antelope season
July 15, 2010
By BRIAN GEHRING Bismarck Tribune
This week pronghorn antelope hunters would have found out if their application for the gun season was successful.
They weren’t — for any antelope hunter — gun or bow.
Randy Kreil, wildlife chief for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, said the department will not recommend a hunting season this fall because of back-to-back tough winters and subsequent poor reproduction.
Kreil said department biologists recently completed their annual pronghorn population survey, which shows 37 percent fewer animals than last year and 50 percent fewer than 2008.
Bruce Stillings, the department’s big game biologist in the Dickinson district, said the statewide estimate of pronghorns is down to 6,500.
He said the numbers have been at more than 10,000 antelope since 2003, including two years when there were more than 15,000 animals. Click Link Below for Full Story!
via State canceling pronghorn antelope season.
Proposal would eliminate big game feeding in N.D. – Minot Daily News
January 26, 2009
BISMARCK (AP) – Hunters who attract big game by putting out piles of feed are the target of a legislative proposal to eliminate baiting, but the law also could affect animal lovers who just like having deer around.
Greg Link, an assistant wildlife chief for the state Game and Fish Department, said his agency has not monitored feeding by animal lovers as closely as baiting.
”That’s kind of on the fringe of our responsibility,” Link said. ”We don’t have a good handle on the number of people who do it and for what species. Obviously, there are people out there throwing out feed.”
The bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Curtis Olafson, R-Edinburg, said the state must do something about such threats as chronic wasting disease and bovine tuberculosis. Those diseases can be spread by baiting or feeding deer, he said. Click Link Below for Full Story!
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