Relevance

It is easy to see this buck has four points on one side, as the photographer is only 25 yards away with a telephoto lens... but it's not so easy to seethat if you are using open sights on a rifle at 80 yards.  In fact, it is impossible to be sure at that range if the buck is moving, and you have only 10 or 15 seconds to take the shot.

I sat in the office of the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Enforcement Chief, Larry Yamnitz, and told him about all the situations I had learned about over the past couple of years when I thought innocent people had been targeted by conservation agents, and given citations for technical, meaningless offenses.

He wrote a word on a piece of paper and handed it to me. The word was “relevance”. He said it was the one thing he stressed to agents, that their work be “relevant”. And it is a good word for conservation agents to remember. Some do, some do not.

If we do not have competent, efficient, and conscientious agents, our wildlife will suffer in the long run. It is hard work, intercepting and arresting the criminal element in the outdoors. Those are the spotlighters, the people who keep over their limit of fish, the people who will bait deer and turkey, who will flagrantly disobey the game and fish laws without thought of anyone but themselves. When an agent works hard to apprehend those people, he has little time to worry about finding and persecuting those who are guilty of some meaningless technical violation.

I am sure Yamnitz knows all about those technical violations which are not at all relevant. He rose through the ranks after years of field work as an agent himself.  But I am not at all sure he can do much about some of what has been going on which is completely and totally irrelevant. For instance, the situation recently where a conservation agent broke the law, and was not even disciplined for it, but instead given a promotion to a supervisory position. Yamnitz cannot even talk about it. Part of a million dollar settlement which the MDC had to pay includes the stipulation that no one can even speak of it. The MDC is protected by that, news of it has scarcely been mentioned in the press. Few Missourians know a thing about it. But it is a million dollars, and involves an agent who flagrantly disregarded the rights of an innocent person, yet was not punished in anyway for breaking the law.  Is that “relevant”.

Despite the fact that he is enforcement chief, Yamnitz could not discipline nor fire that agent, because there are those above him who made the decisions which he cannot question. During that interview we talked about bringing cases to his attention, and Yamnitz states he wants to know when there are situations where agents may be targeting innocent people. We discussed a situation where an agent confiscated a deer head and antlers of significant size from a hunter on a technical violation, then either sold it or gave away, (the agent says he gave it away). Yamnitz says the agent was “reprimanded”.

Many feel an agent who uses his job for his own benefit in such a manner should be fired. There are more situations involving valuable deer heads, perhaps worth thousands, being confiscated by an agent and disappearing. In one case, the hunter was found innocent in court, but his mount disappeared and was never accounted for. Many of these things need to be looked into.

I believe Yamnitz is an honest person who would indeed like to see some things change with what today’s conservation agents are doing. I don’t know if he can do much if there are those above him who do not feel that way. But he says he will listen, and I am in the process of bringing some of the cases to him which I have written about in this column. The most important thing we can do as conservationists, outdoorsmen, hunters and fishermen, is to try to see to it that actual violators are found and prosecuted, while those who are innocent have a voice.

Two ‘Common Sense Conservation’ groups have been formed already, one in El Dorado Springs, and another in Warsaw. Their numbers are growing, and they are pooling their money to represent those who want to go to court and try to prove their innocence.  It involves finding a local attorney who will agree to represent those folks at a reasonable charge.

In the past it has impossible to actually go to court and be heard without spending several hundred dollars. The fine which you have to pay may be a couple of hundred dollars, and therefore, you just pay it, because there is no sense in paying many hundreds more to be found innocent.

If such an organization grows to include chapters in dozens of other areas, conservation agents will begin to note that their activities draws public attention, and things will change. The MDC has thrived from knowing that most of what they do will never be known by the general public. The agency is tremendously rich and powerful, and the news media of the state never criticizes them. Much of that is because the knowledge of what they are doing never comes to light. 

The deer season approaches, and the four-point restriction which the MDC has imposed on the upper two-thirds of the state, in an effort to increase the number of “trophy-sized” antlers, would be opposed by a five-to-one vote if all deer hunters in those counties were allowed to voice their opinions. There isn’t space here to discuss why the regulation was adopted, but it has nothing to do with common sense management of the deer herd, but rather the economics of “trophy hunting”. It requires hunters to be certain that one side of the bucks antlers have four points in order to be legal.

Yamnitz and I talked about that, and since he too is a hunter, I have no doubt that he knows how ridiculous it is to assume that most deer-hunters can easily discern the number of points on a moving buck at 60 to 100 yards. He told me that he does not want to see a buck killed accidentally and left in the woods, as in one case I observed last year. He states that if you felt the buck was legal and after killing it, sees that it was not, you should contact an agent and tell him what happened. In most cases where it is obvious the deer could have been mistakenly thought to have four points on one side, an agent will allow you to tag and keep the deer so it won’t be wasted.

This is nothing more than a concession that this four-point rule is only occasionally feasible. So remember that if you make an honest mistake, you should not allow the deer to be wasted. But by all means, call an agent. Don’t bring it in from the woods until you talk to someone with the MDC.

One of these days, that ridiculous regulation will be rescinded. As it is, many, many hunters have ignored it, because so many know ways to get around it. As all of us who hunt and fish know, it is fairly easy to intentionally break the laws and get away with it. If you believe in doing things right, if you believe in wildlife conservation, you don’t! But there comes a time when all of us can be arrested on some technicality.

There are many good agents out there who are not interested in technicalities, but are working hard to find the intentional violator we all detest. Unfortunately the MDC has a large number of agents who are just looking for an easy ticket to write.  We need to stop them, and we can. Yamnitz is right, it is a matter of relevance.

If you want to start a Common Sense Conservation chapter in your area, contact me.  The address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net.  My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. The phone number at our offices is 417-777-5227.