The Department of Tourism has a lovely video encouraging folks to visit South Dakota to “travel back in time.”
In that spirit, Governor Kristi Noem pitches her questionable but newly approved plan to pay South Dakotans to kill skunk, badger, raccoon, possum, and fox as a way to get kids to go play outside:
On April 1, we launched the nest predator bounty program that will focus on increasing trapping. Although this is a new program, trapping predators during nesting season has been practiced in South Dakota for decades. I’m excited to implement this plan to get our kids outside – away from the x-box and into the live box. This program will be extremely beneficial in enhancing duck and pheasant nest success [Gov. Kristi Noem, weekly Dear Leader propaganda, 2019.04.08].
Leave your X-Box, bring your live box! That’ll get all the millennials to come here and raise their families. You betcha.
Dumb dumb. Build habitat that will last.
Dumb dumb idea. Build habitat that will last. Plant shrubs, cedars, and areas pheasants can survive in overwinter.
In iowa, animals considered fur bearers have a closed season, just like game animals. The only exception would be coyotes which have a trapping season, but you can shoot them year around.
I remember back when I was young and dumb, iowa paid a bounty for fox ears and gopher claws. Since then, the iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has shifted their efforts and pesos to buying land and creating habitat for all animal species.
The county I live in has purchased several areas of hilly/timber along my beloved Little Sioux River for public access to hiking, bird watching, seasonal hunting and where people can observe some of the unique land formations similar to Loess Hills.
Generally, I want kids to be outside, learning about nature and being active. This is not that. It’s more of a propaganda effort for a know-nothing politician. Barney has a better idea. Restore a prairie or wetland on some unproductive farmland or in an urban area. Learn how to identify plants, bird watch, hike. There are lots of birds coming through this time of year and you can join efforts to burn relic and restored prairies in spring and/or fall.
No Nothing GNoem needs to tell the little folks to save money, better to go stand by the bridges to watch them fall down. Great entertainment to further the fact of a do nothing legislature that gives lip service to do nothing congressional representatives. I think even North Korea has better roads and bridges than we have here in South Dakota.
” (CNN)Officials have dubbed Monday’s bridge collapse in Tennessee a freak accident, but that might be turning a blind eye to a larger issue.
Bridges across the United States are deteriorating, and a new report estimates it will take more than 80 years to fix all of them.
More than 47,000 bridges in the United States are in crucial need of repairs, says the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, or ARTBA. The group, which advocates for investment in transportation infrastructure, analyzes data from the Federal Highway Administration and releases an annual Deficient Bridge report.”
We are Puerto Rico, only with poor white folks, too damn dumb to know they have just driven off what they thought of as a bridge. Infrastructure? who needs it when your governor wants you to shoot wild skunks instead of making the real skunks do their job. https://artbabridgereport.org/congressional/map
Can some gun official explain that gun in the picture? Besides the fact it is not a black powder smoke pole so Noem doesn’t need a powder horn, there is no lever on the lever action. Even single shot lever actions had the requisite lever to eject shells.
The powder horn is for the make-up, giving her that tanned, leathery look. This can easily be removed for her meetings with the white nationalist folks where she chugs white milk. Regarding the gun, it has significance because it is as empty as she is.
No gun expert myself Mike, but if you look closely you’ll see it has a revolver type cylinder. Rare in a rifle, but there have been a few made although I don’t recognize that one and it certainly doesn’t look like black-powder. On the ill-advised bounty program, it’s in keeping with the conservative tendency to waste time addressing the symptom rather than the cause. I’ve just got one question though: looking at the GF&P rules for this foolishness I see that road kills are not allowed. If you’re only required to bring in tails and not the whole carcass how could they tell?
In some ways, the decline in hunting recruitment is a reflection of changing American culture and demographics. The vast majority of hunters are white. Mostly in the shrinking middle class. Mostly from shrinking rural populations. Hunting has become more expensive as well, thus, less equitable and inclusive. And habitat has been shrinking for decades.
Rather than blame xbox and iphones, why not try to recruit from the growing urban population? And growing non-white and immigrant populations? City kids would benefit from learning more about wildlife, conservation ethics and responsible gun ownership. Hunter “culture” would benefit form a little diversity, as well. Just a thought.
Kristi’s as dumb as a bagful of hammers. Her War on Skunks & Vermin will produce nothing. There is no qualified research data that indicates a state hunting and trapping program has ever been effective in sustaining and growing a region’s duck and pheasant population.
And when was the last time you heard kids say, gee, they’d sure love to catch critters in traps and watch them squirm?
JonD, you may be right, but I am having trouble locating any revolving rifle or shotgun that looks anything like that pic. Maybe it is a toy gun.
On that image, I borrowed it from folks selling the costume, not real effective tools… rather like Kristi Noem.
On habitat, habitat, habitat! We could send kids outside to plant trees and grassy buffer strips, to take samples for water quality monitoring, to help with the annual rooster count….
No Nothing GNoem is in lickspittle lockstep with the autocrat in Washington. They both could give a damn about conservation and instead are in it to kill it.
“Scientists and officials around the US have told the Guardian that the Trump administration has withdrawn funding for a large, successful conservation program – in direct contradiction of instructions from Congress.
Unique in scale and ambition, the program comprises 22 research centers that tackle big-picture issues affecting huge swaths of the US, such as climate change, flooding and species extinction. They are known as Landscape Conservation Cooperatives – or were, because 16 of them are now on indefinite hiatus or have dissolved.
“I just haven’t seen anything like this in my almost 30 years of working with the federal government,” said a scientist at the Fish and Wildlife Service who worked for one of the LCCs and wished to remain anonymous, because federal employees were instructed not to speak with the Guardian for this story. “There is this lack of accountability.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/08/trump-administration-sabotages-major-conservation-effort-defying-congress
So kids take a look at what your parents have done to your world. Pretty amazing that you’re not on their list of priorities and you’d better get used to it until the Democratic posse comes back to save you from them.
Thanks, Cory and JonD for the info.
Back in the 80s and 90s, South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks had a very popular program called the Junior Ranger Program, which provided some hands-on experience about wildlife management, forestry, biology and outdoor ethics. It was very successful.
Today, South Dakota kids have similar options. The GF&P’s Junior Naturalist Program which is “an excellent opportunity for youth 7-18 years of age to explore South Dakota State Parks and learn about the rich natural and cultural history of South Dakota.” Link: https://gfp.sd.gov/junior-naturalist-program/
The National Park Service offers what it calls The Junior Ranger Program across the nation and here in South Dakota “at the Ben Reifel Visitor Center throughout the entire year. Open one and begin your thrilling adventure through the Badlands. Complete all the fun-filled activities in the book and watch the exciting park movie, Land of Stone and Light, or attend a daily ranger-guided program (summer only) to earn your official Badlands National Park Junior Ranger badge and a signed certificate. Return your completed book to a ranger at the visitor center desk and take the Junior Ranger pledge.
“Congratulations! You are now an official Badlands Junior Ranger!” Link: https://www.nps.gov/badl/learn/kidsyouth/beajuniorranger.htm
Or try this one on for size at Phillip: “Minuteman Missile National Historic Site’s Junior Ranger Program is a great way for children, as well as their parents, to experience the park. By completing several different activities, the whole family will learn about:
• Why Minuteman Missile’s were so important during the Cold War and still are today
• How the Air Force personnel lived and worked at Minuteman sites
• The mission of the National Park Service and our ranger staff
Link: https://www.nps.gov/mimi/learn/kidsyouth/beajuniorranger.htm
Similar Junior Ranger programs are held in the Black Hills, Wind Cave and at Devil’s Tower. At Yankton, join the Missouri National Recreational River’s Junior Ranger Program, which has programs for pre-school (socialism???) to second grade, third to sixth grade and 7th grade to adults and you can learn about the river system’s biosphere and geology.
Of course, you can teach a kid in a few minutes how to set traps and snag critters. Watch them spin and cry out and squirm until someone puts it out of its misery. And maybe Coyote Kristi’s got an economic vision for this. Kids can kill varmints and get a little pocket change, and then someday, they can create a new South Dakota economy based on hunting skunks.
“Gee, pa, I wanna be a skunk hunter jus’ like you!”
Get your kids outside and kill something, don’t forget to take em to the White S BBQ , shave heads get in free, 1/2 price tattoos
Many activities that include shooting something
C ya Sunday
Junior Rangers! Junior Naturalists! Those programs sound great, 96! They provide kids a chance to do real science (the kind Noem and her President find so anathema to their existence and so hard and those poo-poo in policy, as Jerry points out). Kristi would rather dangle ten-dollar bills to get kids to mutilate creatures that they won’t even get to eat. So much for life skills.
TAG, southeast Asian people are quite interested in hunting. The Hmong, Vietnamese, Karen and Laotian people in Minnesota have added to the numbers of hunters in the fields. The biggest issue has been emphasizing that there are specific seasons and rules for hunting.
In addition, fishing is very popular with Latinx folks from all the countries south of us.
Will this program wipe out all the predators around the game lodges, I wonder?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pnoQ9w4HNY
Oh, Chris, I thought i heard a double meaning there:
Noem’s idea of going out and killing hasn’t reached iowa, yet. I just had a rooster pheasant walk across my sidewalk about 10m from my door and I did not shoot it. I also see coons coming out of the corn crib and the barn and did not shoot them, either.
This terribly crooked governor of ours is INSANE. She just handed out $900 THOUSAND dollars worth of free traps to people, many of whom have ZERO experience, or training in trapping at ALL, no less have any knowledge on HUMANE trapping practices, and she’s going to spend another half a million to pay people to kill any POSSIBLE “nest predators”? That lunatic is specifically encouraging young CHILDREN to participate, by BRIBING them with $10 whole dollars per LIFE. First off, this is going to wreak HAVOC on this state’s ecosystem. Second, it won’t do a damn bit of “measurable good”. She wants the tourism money that phesant and other fowl hunting brings in, when in reality, there are way CHEAPER, MUCH more effective things that could be done, SIMPLE things, at that, to increase the phesant population. Just ONE example, being to STOP MOWING THE DITCHES that they NEST in, WHEN THERE’S TALL GRASS TO SHIELD THEM!! This is madness. Trapping has exsisted since about the time humans have, and I have no issues with people who KNOW what they are doing, and are able to make the deaths as LEAST horrific, terrifying, and painful, as they possibly can be. This is cruel. This is madness. This is NOT ok. PERIOD. You wouldn’t want someone who has never held a firearm, to go out with zero training, to try their hand at rifle hunting big game, would you?! THIS, is an even MORE absurd, and disturbing scenario. Noem should be ashamed of herself, Lord knows we are all very ashamed of her, and this, is only the latest reason why. Sickening.