Governor Kristi Noem spent $900,000 to give away traps and $500,000 on varmint bounties on the premise that killing more furry predators would give us more feathered friends to shoot. After that motivation was widely panned as unscientific, Team Noem shifted to justifying the Nest Predator Bounty Program as a way to encourage kids to go play outside.
Fewer kids appear to have gone outside to play at killing more creatures. Game Fish and Parks reported at last week’s GF&P Commission meeting that it has sold 25,962 fewer hunting and fishing licenses and brought in $1,146,631 less in revenue this year than it did in 2018.
Check those youth numbers:
- Resident youth small game licenses: down 11.3%.
- Junior combination (age 16–18) licenses: down 6.0%.
- Non-resident youth small game licenses: down 19%.
- Youth annual fishing licenses: down 9.8%.
So whether we’re measuring by pheasants or youth in the field, Noem’s critter-trapping initiative appears not to have achieved her stated goals.
Maybe she can threaten kids with no graduation until they prove they are proficient at killing stuff. Maybe she can make them promise never to move out of state while she is at it.
Vote for the schlubba who had her ear on this fiasco. Who do you think convinced her it was a good idea? Nobody. But … somebody was too intimidated to tell her it was a waste of money. And, in a state where negativity bias is as refined as white sugar, that’s sayin’ something.
Somebody should ask for a list of the people who got free traps cross-referenced and 3-tabbed into colorful binders with the list of people who bought fur licenses.
I suppose her top advisers, her children, came up with this boondoggle failure. NoMa’am needs to stop taking nepotism lessons, or any lessons at all, from Pervert Poppa in the WH.
I’ve got an old gunnysack filled with raccoon tails, a little more than 100 of them. I was hoping to hand them over to Governor Cutie Pie and barter them as my Governor’s Club contribution for 2020. Reckon I’m a little late. Darn!
Wonder if Wall Drug could use them to make coonskin caps for needy little buckaroos …
So is this some desperate plan to save GFPs?
“… but Ma, it’s cold and wet out there.”
Kids probably don’t want to be out where they can’t get signal on their phones and have to keep two steady hands on their firearms at all times.
Finding a place to hunt has become more difficult every year with the Lodges leasing the land, especially for town kids. With corporations owning more and more land its hard to find someone to get permission.
$1.4 million wasted on the laughable trapping program, $1.1 million down in hunting licenses, add it up and GF&P is down $2.5 million for the year. I wonder if there are any maintenence issues at the state parks that will deferred because of funding shortfall.
“According to the Gun Violence Archive, the Saugus high school shooting in Santa Clarita, California is the 366th mass shooting in the United States for calendar year 2019.” Somebody’s huntin somewhere. More than one mass shooting a day! and we still have a month and a half left.
Moscow Mitch, Pootie’s Puppet and the rest of the GOP needs to take their bloody hands and go to Russia and stay with their boyfriend till they’re all dead. Then the rest of us will protect our children and one another with reasonable gun laws like the rest of the civilized world.