Impact of Anti-Gun Legislation on Hunting and Formal Target Shooting in Maryland

There is some truth in the numbers as my dad belongs to a hunting club and not only did he hunt less last year. But One of his hunting buddies dies from cancer earlier in the year and several others are basically getting too old to keep even fool with going to the eastern shore for more than a few trips. And as far as revenue hunting licenses for seniors is free. So just my limited exposure, I have noticed a huge decline in hunting.

Threeband said:

Free condoms for deer.

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Ok - I just have to ask; who's going to put the condoms on the deer??

dreadpirate said:

I think there is a strong case to be made that the laws being proposed will have a devastating effect on hunting (let alone a lot of legitimate recreational shooting). Do people realize what an increase in the deer population means? If the deer population is not kept in check, they will deforest the area and destroy the habitat for rest of the ecosystem. Don't we have a responsibility to manage our natural resources?

Or at least that's a case I would make. Just another angle to consider.

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I have to deal with this disconnect in modern society and the reality of deer in eastern forests without predation in my career. It is and has been for a long time a given there are declining numbers of hunters and days hunted. Hunting clubs in my current area continue to close down and those and other properties are repurposed for uses that the new users find hunting objectionable. With their pockets of forest interspersed with lush grass and gardens, suburban areas are also perfect environments to support exploding deer populations.
This has two impacts.
The first is declining biodiversity of native forest vegetation preventing new trees from reaching maturity and allowing invasive plant species to take hold. When I left MD, the Wavy Leaf Basketgrass was infiltrating Patapsco State Park. Also at Soldiers Delight, there are rare plant species that are threatened by the deer population impact.
The second issue is tick populations that go along with the deer and the public health hazard they create. In places like Greenbelt Park, one cannot walk the woods without coming out with hundreds of seed and adult size deer ticks, the vector of Lyme disease. There is also a new invasive tick species, the Asian Longhorned Tick, that has been positively found in the eastern United States. It is the vector of a very nasty disease. It has been identified in the Shenandoah area. Thankfully just the tick and not the disease has not been detected in the United States to my knowledge.

It would be nice to just go with what works or reintroduce apex predators everywhere, but public, typically emotion driven, opinion has great impact on what professional land managers calling the shots are willing to do or even propose doing.

The book Nature Wars by Jim Sterba is a good quick read on this and similar topics.

For a deep dive on forest ecology issues and deer, here is a 2016 scholarly article.
For those that don't have time to read it, take away is >4 deer per sq./km has an impact and red oak stands are the most profoundly impacted. https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/2017/nrs_2017_Russell_001.pdf

Here is the CDC report on the longhorn tick.
https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/longhorned-tick/index.html

dreadpirate said:

Ok - I just have to ask; who's going to put the condoms on the deer??

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The Moms.

nedsurf said:

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The second issue is tick populations that go along with the deer and the public health hazard they create. In places like Greenbelt Park, one cannot walk the woods without coming out with hundreds of seed and adult size deer ticks, the vector of Lyme disease. There is also a new invasive tick species, the Asian Longhorned Tick, that has been positively found in the eastern United States. It is the vector of a very nasty disease. It has been identified in the Shenandoah area. Thankfully just the tick and not the disease has not been detected in the United States to my knowledge.


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The reducing the checks on Lyme disease point as a public health concern is excellent.

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nedsurf said:

The second issue is tick populations that go along with the deer and the public health hazard they create. In places like Greenbelt Park, one cannot walk the woods without coming out with hundreds of seed and adult size deer ticks, the vector of Lyme disease.

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Took my 6 grandchildren to Greenbelt Park for three nights of camping. Three of them and myself had multiple bites. Yes, we used Deet & clothing spray, but that didn't help.

Fortunately, I was the only one ended up taking the meds.

As you said, it is a very real health hazard. Just ruins all the fun, when you have to be concerned about ticks.

Reading the posts, I wonder how this will affect Boy Scout camps in MD? Will younger scouts be able to shoot shotguns or rimfire rifles?


Q

dreadpirate said:

Ok - I just have to ask; who's going to put the condoms on the deer??

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Well....they did demand action.

Qbeam said:

Reading the posts, I wonder how this will affect Boy Scout camps in MD? Will younger scouts be able to shoot shotguns or rimfire rifles?


Q

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No. But that's the long game. Teach kids that guns are bad, leads to less adult usage, leads to easier to ban and control a population of unarmed sheep.

I learned to shoot in Boy Scouts (when men were men) and it was that love that led me back into guns as an adult.

MoCo had such a problem with deer that a couple of years ago they organized a deer population thinning hunt.

But what happens when there are not people to do this controlled hunting????

Pinecone said:

MoCo had such a problem with deer that a couple of years ago they organized a deer population thinning hunt.

But what happens when there are not people to do this controlled hunting????

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Us taxpayers will probably have to pay for out of state hunters to come in a do the thinning for us.

hodgepodge said:

No. But that's the long game. Teach kids that guns are bad, leads to less adult usage, leads to easier to ban and control a population of unarmed sheep.

I learned to shoot in Boy Scouts (when men were men) and it was that love that led me back into guns as an adult.

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That's also largely why they push so hard for sites like Youtube to censor gun content. They don't want the next generation to understand guns or the anti-gun argument will fall apart.

CrueChief said:

Us taxpayers will probably have to pay for out of state hunters to come in a do the thinning for us.

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No, it would be even worse. There would be a government job created to fill this void and you would have to pay that persons salary, health benefits and retirement.
And all of the office space they need
And the disposal
and the vehicle maintanance
and the training for this person
and the payroll
and the hr person for their department
etc......
its how government likes to grow.

Another point that anti’s don’t know about, or understand is the money generated by the federal Pittman-Robertson act, and all the money from the sales of hunting licenses.

The Pittman-Robertson act, is a federal tax in which all long guns, ammo, and archery equipment is taxed 11 percent, all handguns are taxed 10 percent. The money generated by this tax is used to help preserve wildlife, and there habitats, purchase land, surveys of wildlife, and wildlife research.

Money from hunting and fishing licenses pays for the DNR, and all of their services, along with everything mentioned above.

All the money from the Pittman-Robertson act not spent by the state goes to migratory bird conservation.



Without hunters, and the shooting sports, where would the money come from to help the wildlife?
They fail to realize what a service we do for the wildlife. Without our money the wildlife would suffer, but they are the ones that say they care about the wildlife more than us.

If this passes, the next generation of hunters will think it is normal,, then take some more from them (no SA, cap on ammo bought a month), then the next generation will think that is normal.

Allen65 said:

The strategy of the hardcore antis is to incrementally reduce the size of the population involved with firearms until it's too small to fight finally getting steamrolled out of existence. In their line of thinking, economic contributions of shooting sports like hunting actually impede getting to their goal. The larger the contribution, the bigger the problem to them.

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I will in no way argue with anyone who says that these legislators will not listen to reason and don't care; granted. I think there are some moderate voters out there or even environmentally conscious folks that would listen to this line of reason. Anything we can do to cast any amount of doubt on this legislation is worth it.

Brickman301 said:

Another point that anti’s don’t know about, or understand is the money generated by the federal Pittman-Robertson act, and all the money from the sales of hunting licenses.

The Pittman-Robertson act, is a federal tax in which all long guns, ammo, and archery equipment is taxed 11 percent, all handguns are taxed 10 percent. The money generated by this tax is used to help preserve wildlife, and there habitats, purchase land, surveys of wildlife, and wildlife research.

Money from hunting and fishing licenses pays for the DNR, and all of their services, along with everything mentioned above.

All the money from the Pittman-Robertson act not spent by the state goes to migratory bird conservation.



Without hunters, and the shooting sports, where would the money come from to help the wildlife?
They fail to realize what a service we do for the wildlife. Without our money the wildlife would suffer, but they are the ones that say they care about the wildlife more than us.

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YES YES YES!

Brickman301 said:

Another point that anti’s don’t know about, or understand is the money generated by the federal Pittman-Robertson act, and all the money from the sales of hunting licenses.

The Pittman-Robertson act, is a federal tax in which all long guns, ammo, and archery equipment is taxed 11 percent, all handguns are taxed 10 percent. The money generated by this tax is used to help preserve wildlife, and there habitats, purchase land, surveys of wildlife, and wildlife research.

Money from hunting and fishing licenses pays for the DNR, and all of their services, along with everything mentioned above.

All the money from the Pittman-Robertson act not spent by the state goes to migratory bird conservation.



Without hunters, and the shooting sports, where would the money come from to help the wildlife?
They fail to realize what a service we do for the wildlife. Without our money the wildlife would suffer, but they are the ones that say they care about the wildlife more than us.

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Almost anything hunting sports related can apply for some of each state's Pittman-Robertson money as a grant.

S

Doctor_M said:

Public safety hazard too... every year in Maryland there are about 10,000 deer/vehicle accidents. Unchecked populations will only increase that number.

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And given that 2/3 of the state are liberal democrats, odds are greater that they have more deer collisions.

So let’s stop hunting deer altogether in that case. Let the population explode for the next decade. Drive up the number of deer involved crashes, and drive down the funding for DNR, forcing the state to seek more funds from other types of users - like cyclists and hikers and equestrians, who also tend to be libs.

Win win.

More deer when we agree to start hunting again, and more libs getting their cars wrecked and getting Lyme disease.

redeye said:

And given that 2/3 of the state are liberal democrats, odds are greater that they have more deer collisions.

So let’s stop hunting deer altogether in that case. Let the population explode for the next decade. Drive up the number of deer involved crashes, and drive down the funding for DNR, forcing the state to seek more funds from other types of users - like cyclists and hikers and equestrians, who also tend to be libs.

Win win.

More deer when we agree to start hunting again, and more libs getting their cars wrecked and getting Lyme disease.

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Great idea.