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Michigan deer permit issues
I'm with Bitter on this tempest in a teapot. From what I can gather, there's a big fight over Michigan raising its deer tag fee from $5 (where it's been since 1966, in days of 25 cent gas), to a whole $15. I gather from news clips that it also proposed to raise hunting license fees from $15 to $30. (The news articles are all over the place on numbers; seems to have been several different proposals).
A fight over a 10-25 dollar increase, after passage of 40 years? The average hunter would prob. spend more on gasoline to get there, and more on the box of cartridges. And if it's like AZ, the funds are kept by Fish and Game, to be used for hatcheries, hunting promotion, dealing with poaching, and building shooting ranges.
Here in AZ the resident license is $32, and the deer tag $42. So the combination costs $74, versus $35 under the MI proposal.
And you're a lot less likely to get a deer in the desert! If you want good hunting, you go to the Kiabab Forest. The deer tag for that is over a hundred bucks.
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Having been in the Kaibab next to the North Rim, and seen mule deer a-plenty, I would love to hunt that area. Hell, I would like to live in that area. But. How do you earn a living (presuming you're not a polygamist trying to scam the welfare system, that is)?
In Michigan-with the highest unemployment in the nation---deer hunting is a "right of passage"---a "god-given right"---like smelt dipping--that makes normally reasonable folks nuts. But I agree---the fee has not gone up in years and it was time.
When I still hunted I never resented spending money on license fees etc. if they went to preservation of fish and game.
I do however have a problem with the state attitude that the deer belong to them for purposes of hunting and you must pay for permission to hunt, sometimes exorbitantly, but they aren't the state's deer when they come through your windshield.
A few fee bumps and a youth hunter education requirement and you can kill off a whole generation of hunters.
They shouldn't charge ANYTHING. No user fees for public schools, so why hunting? There are so many deer they ought to be unlisted as a game animal and reclassified as vermin.
This brings up another issue related to the Heller case. Under the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife in Restoration Act all firearms, ammunition and other outdoor equipment are taxed to pay for wildlife restoration. These funds are then supposedly given to the state game departments for saving wildlife. If you are a hunter or not, not only did you pay a tax on your firearm and ammunition to the Feds, but then you had to pay the state for a license. The state is getting money from you from the Feds and it's own license scheme. Nothing like double dipping the people.
Quotes from the breakroom when this issue first came up in November:
"psssht-- just push the cost up over the price of actually buying the meat"
"They will probably make less money from all the people that won't buy a license anymore."
"Yea, maybe that is acceptable to some %&^* in Lansing, but people who work..."
Mind you these are not exact quotes, it was two months ago, but they are damn close. No one was that strongly against a small raise, but the proposal is more than double. While the dollar has lost significant purchasing power in the last 40 years (that $15 license would cost you $92.65 in 2006, so add 4.6% more inflation for 2007) the working class income in Michigan has not rose with inflation for over 25 years.
Considering in Michigan they are not trying to save the deer population for future hunters-- but actually talk about their worries that not enough deer are being taken in a year to cull the herds, hiking the price like that just doesn't seen prudent to me. It will cost a hell of a lot more to PAY someone to do your hunting for you than to COLLECT $16 now. (I read $15 here, but I swear I have been paying $16... Are we sales taxed on them too?)
If you account for inflation, it's probably at least equal to $15, if not more.