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Member
Posts: 1406
| Picked this up over at WC and thought the WI boys here should be aware!
Not trying to point any fingers and not trying to start a racist thread but if your planning on a vacation on the Tomohawk area you might want to know about it and possibly fish elsewhere
Good Luck
Tyee
I'd like to know how a reporter got access to DNR e-mails? Steve can you get in their addy book?
http://www.lakelandtimes.com/news.php?story=1229
Edited by tyee 5/6/2006 5:28 PM
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Member
Posts: 2393
Location: Waukesha Wisconsin | Tyee,
Because the DNR agents are public employees, their emails are considered part of open records. Anyone can ask to see them at any time. You can request the same information from any public employee like teachers, school board members, any state officials. |
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| There is a long "learning curve", in some cases a generation or more... The "these are my fish" attitude is not limited to any one group by any demographics...
I am the first to admit that that is how I was first "raised". I grew up on the Mississippi River, living right on the river, literally in a cabin on stilts between the river and the levee. By the age of 11 or 12 I had learned every skill necessary to be a successful poacher. I ran illegal crappie baskets, gill nets... learned to stun and harvest fish with a generator from an old crank phone or the magneto from a Model A Ford... I hunted ducks and geese from dawn till dusk.. time being the only "limit". You ask, "how and why"? Because, sadly, I was "taught" that the resource was "mine" to do with as I pleased. And, I was taught by the previous "generations" of watermen the "how". They justified their actions (rationalized) by saying "they" were here before the regulations and that is how they lived. My most influential teachers, my father, my uncles, cousins, friends.... they all believed that the resource was "theirs". My "mold" if you will... was the same (at least in attitude) as these offenders in the article.
It wasn't a "one day I changed" thing... either. As the song goes, "my first thirty years"... in my case at least the first twenty years... But, I became a law enforcement officer... so... First, I stopped "poaching" because if I did it and got caught it would cost me my job. No great moral epiphany... I stopped because it was too risky. But, as time passed, and I continued to hunt and fish "inside the rules" I began to focus on the "experience" not the "results". And, I did eventually change, gradually. I learned that I could fish and hunt... be outdoors doing what I truly loved doing and do it legally and have just as much (and really more) enjoyment.
Fortunately, the cycle is broken in my family. I have taught my children the "right" skills. They enjoy hunting and fishing... and they pride themselves on knowing, following and educating their friends on the joy of doing it all within the rules.
If I am any sort of "proof", it is that it is not "excusable" behavior. I knew then it was wrong, and justified it. But, I did learn a new way. And, that can be taught. The old skills can be carried on to future generations. (Well maybe not the phone crank skills or the gill nets...lol) But, the skills need to be taught in the same time as a respect for the resource is taught.
The people involved have to change so that a new attitude is passed on to the future generations. |
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| P.S.... Oh yeah, and "in the next thirty years" I have been much better behaved! |
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Member
Posts: 1314
Location: Menasha, WI | Nicw post hg. I was also raised to keep everything (although it was everything inside the law ;)) As I aged, I learned that I shared the resource with everybody and our mutual respect for the resource was in everyone's best interest. |
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Location: Rhinelander | It's a shame this sort of thing has to happen. Wanton waste is just that, and the folks who broke the law will be punished, that's for sure. |
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