BEAR BUSINESS AND THE MDC

 

Game camera photos of Ozark black bear at bait sites, and Arkansas bear hunter with a  big boar… killed over bait site.

 

      The migration of black bears from Arkansas means big money for the Missouri Department of Conservation money-grubbers.  They put their heads together and decided that since no one really knows how many bears there are in the state, they can say the number is way up there and a hunting season is justified. 

 

 

    So here is the thing that made them almost a hundred grand, with only 8 bears killed... First you pout out the word that hunters can get in the drawing for a bear tag b y sending their information and a NON-REFUNDABLE 10 DOLLARS. And so 7,300 would-be bear hunters did. MDC made 73 grand just like that!    

      Then they chose 400 of those applicants to sell 25 dollar bear tags;  another 10 thousand!   Now before any rules are set they have made 83 thousand dollars.  So the rules are, no dogs and no bait.  And old-time bear hunters would have a big laugh out of that.  Without bait, you just don’t kill bears.  Not one bear is killed in Canada by U.S. hunters without a bait site, usually a private garbage dump or fish entrails dumpsite.

    Out of the 400 who buy a 25-dollar bear tag, a few know that if they use bait...who will know? So seven out of the eight that are killed are shot over hidden baited spots where no game warden will ever go.         

  

      The same idea has been used with that elk herd in the eastern Ozarks, where they were stocked.  About nine thousand applicants at 10 dollars each...  A pot full of money… ninety thousand bucks, and you might get drawn for one of four hunters who get to go out and shoot a semi-tame elk.  A fifth tag is given, and this is how it worded, “to an adjacent land owner”. That adjacent landowner is Johnny Morris, Bass Pro Shops owner who has always been in on the elk restoration program, because he buys land adjacent to Peck Ranch , where the elk are, and MDC personnel work on his place for a couple of years, clearing brush and planting elk food, so Morris can give his tag to a friend of his and they will ‘for-sure’ kill an elk.  All of that is hushed up until MDC employees start calling this writer and telling what is going on.

    You can buy replacement pen raised elk for about 500 dollars each, so go buy 5 more to be replacements.  What a money-maker!

 

      So--- out of eight or ten bears and five elk each year, the Missouri Department of Conservation made 170 thousand dollars easy money.  In the next five years, that combination of taking advantage of the ignorant will pocket them almost a million dollars.  Without any baiting, the bears won’t be hurt at all population-wise.   Bear biologist for Missouri says there are 11 to 12 hundred bears in Mo.  Printed MDC material says there are about 500.   What difference does it make that no one knows for sure… eight or ten killed each October can’t hurt a thing.  And we all know how badly the MDC, one of the top three game and fish agencies in the nation in funds available, making about 200 million per  year, needs the money!