No sheds on your own property!

[headbones]

Here is an article from the S L Tribune,

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5490614

no sheds from your own private property, what's up with that? I wonder if Hardware Ranch and Deseret Land & Livestock are driving around the antlers on their property to obey the law? What do you think?

 

[ColoradoOak]

"You can't do it May 1," said the Utah landowner. "By May 1, the grass has grown and the sagebrush is growing and filled with ticks. The antlers have turned brown. It's hard to find them."

Hmm, I've never heard of the antlers turning brown the longer they lay out there. This guy sounds like a real professional antler hunter.

 

[headbones]

After reading that myself I'm sure that is the editors mistake.

 

[patience]

awwww man, no we have to fight sagebrush and ticks to find antlers. i'm just going to give up on this whole antler thing. if they don't lay out in the open blinking at me I don't want to do it anymore. boohoo.

 

[Daxter]

The private property thing is kinda crazy isn't it? The funny thing is that the rule was orginally proposed (by sportsmen not the DWR) to include only public lands, but private landowners requested that their property be included to give them additional tools against tresspassing antler hunters. Pretty interesting situation.

The bulls all left Hardware before shedding, but I know that at Deseret the wildlife manager has told all the employees not to pick up sheds. I think they got permission to move them out of the road if necessary, but they can't keep them. They even put up a sign in their main office. I wonder more about how compliance is on the public lands.

Dax

 

[headbones]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-22-07 AT 01:44PM (MST)[p]Dax, thanks for the info, I was wondering how the ranch was dealing with this issue, and I figured common sense would be used, comply to the law as best as possible. Even though this was a mild winter, it actually could be worse at these elk wintering areas and most antlers will be dropped off these areas and alot higher elevation this year.

Enforcing isolated private land is probably alot tougher when it is the land owner picking them up verse the tresspasser onto private land. I agree that this is good for private land owners to help keep tresspassers off, people need to read signs and respect private property.

 

[huntntrail]

Dax....Oh it's going great on public land...I haven't seen another soul out and about.....J/K.....On a side note I read somewhere that someone is suppose to be doing a study about what kind of affect this shed law has had.....in hopes of taking it state wide....hope it's not skewed by the unusually nice spring we are having..What do you know about that?

 

[Daxter]

I I heard that the Wildlife Board wanted to study the issue and how it goes in the Northern Region to discuss the possibility of a statewide rule, but I haven't heard of any formal or scientific studies being done. A scientific study would be pretty difficult. Maybe you could look at winter survival rates for fawns from different regions and see if the northern region improves relative to the other regions, this is data we already collect, but it may take a few years with similar weather patterns across the different regions to see if there is a detectable change.

You could also look at winter movements using GPS collars. You would want some control animals and some treatment animals. That would be good, but would require some serious time and money. Maybe that would be a good grad school project for someone?

You could also do mortality counts, or body condition scores, fawn ratios in the fall, lots of stuff could be looked at, but again it would probably require several years worth of data to see if there is a decectable change.

It would be nice to have really good data sets with conclusive evidence for making all managment decisions, but to quote the manager at Deseret Ranch "most important decisions are based on incomplete or inconclusive data".

I just hope we make the decision that is best for the deer.

Dax

PS: Headbones, I am sending you a pm.

 

[mooseman]

what i would like to know is they will be opening up middlefork on april 15th to the public. this is when the mad rush for elk, moose and deer sheds on the wintering range occurs. but this year we won't be able to pick up till may 1st. i wonder how many will leave the sheds alone or will stash them or just bring them out??????

 

[toughshed]

That article is a joke. What does poaching deer and elk around Cody Wyoming have to do with the issue of collecting shed antlers? Poaching was going on a LONG time before shed antler collecting became popular. These articles are written by some junior reporter who knows nothing about the topic and can't get the story straight. And the private landowner who is having difficulty collecting sheds cause of ticks and the color of the shed...exsqueeze me? He sounds like a major wuss to me...

Private landowners needed a law about banning picking up sheds because why? The existing laws about trespassing aren't good enough? And every person who picks up sheds is a hunter so we'll take away their hunting rights for five years, yeah, that's the ticket. Gave that alot of thought huh?

Now we have Forest Service, BLM, DOW, Fish and Game and Lord only knows who else lurking about in the woods and on the winter range watching ever second? And that's not disruptive?

Some years ago there was an news article about sheds and how it is important that they remain on the ground for the critters that eat them for calcium and minerals in general that are available no where else in the universe. A few paragraphs later they quoted a park official that said that "they can't pick them up fast enough to keep them away from the poachers." AH, now that makes sense doesn't it?

It just like lying...once you start weaving some BS story you get to the point that the story starts to make no sense and you end up looking like a fool.

I'm gonna shed hunt when I want, where I want. Hopefully, I'll be doing it in legal areas that are open for use. Whether I pick them up and take them home is nobody's business but my own.