Quote:
Originally Posted by wetfeathers00
Question
Where do yo hunt??
ON a DU project property??
On someone else's leased land??
Your answers will help this issue of why you support DU and I dont so answer honestly.
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I'm assuming you are aiming this at me. I hunt public land, and to answer ASR's question, I hunted roughly 12 days last year. Most of that was weekends, but I took a few days here and there during the week. Stayed pretty busy at work, so it's hard to take off during the week. I hunted once on private land with a buddy that has no ties to DU. All of my other trips were public land in SELA, and none of those are in areas that have benefited from a DU project. I've been on some public areas in the past that have benefited from DU projects, but I rarely hunt those anymore because there are public areas closer to where I live now.
So, I'm not as big a diehard as some guys, but, you know, being 26 and all (since you seem to think my age is so important to the topic), duck hunting doesn't pay the bills, and I have a family to think about.
Still waiting to see that information on those grants. I really do want to read about this program that is apparently biasing conservation activities towards other states.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cjleger337
Smalls, Im compelled to ask: Is there a correlation between the DU projects and what land is considered protected land in LA? It seems like majority of those red dots coincide with land that would be considered protected land/land owned by the state or feds. Is there a reason for this? I wonder if its the lack of support that DU has from private land owners in LA? I wonder if DU had more support from private land owners in LA they would make an effort for conservation on privately held land?
I used to believe all the negative about DU until I started doing all my own research, then realized most of the garbage spewed about DU came from ill informed hunters who were only spreading rumors... unknowingly repeating something that they heard someone else say.
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Honestly, just by looking at the map, its hard to tell. I would suspect many of them are on private land. If you really look at that map, the majority follow the Red and Mississippi River basins. Now, the Mississippi River does have some public land along it, but not near as much as the projects that appear along it on this map.
Without really getting into it and comparing the project locations to public land, it seems like a fair amount of them are on public land. When you compare the public to private land acreage in the state, we are no where near the lopsided numbers of Texas, but private land still outweighs public considerably.
As much as I would love the majority of DU dollars to be spent on public land in our state, its unrealistic. Some of that money is going to get spent on private lands. Whether people like it or not, money is going to be spent on the Gum Cove and Black Lake areas. I've been out in Marcantel's "marsh", and its pretty useless. Open water. You all know this if you've been in that area.
Part of the reason that DU has so much resistance in Louisiana is
because of the work they do on private lands here. People feel like Marcantel and others are getting special projects in return for large donations. I really don't see a problem with that if the money is returned to conservation done elsewhere. A lot of the work they do on public land goes unnoticed because of this. Hell, the only reason I knew about the Rockefeller project was due to a post on the Louisiana DU facebook page. They just don't seem to be very good at PR.