Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Backcountry hunters and anglers. ......???

Well said.



There's a bill before congress right now to designate about 60K acres in southwestern Colorado as wilderness. Mostly additions to existing wilderness areas.

If you google "San Juan Mountains Wilderness Act" there's a pretty impressive list of local organizations that formed a coalition supporting the bill including town governments and county governments. Locals get what you're saying.

I have found the people involved in BHA very approachable and this group was formed by hunters and for hunters. Hunters that will work on access issues and speaking to keep the wild country wild. There isn't much of it left,really. BHA speaks for so many hunters out there and I can't imagine many green'ies ever infiltrating this group.

Much less funding them, right?

As far a "backcountry areas where no vehicles can access"....

There's already millions of acres of that.

About all National Forests prohibit vehicle use except with so many feet of a designated road.

The forest land I'm familiar with you could get a rifle and a pack and walk for as far as you want without encountering a vehicle.

That would depend on how far you want to walk.

Yep.

And I don't blame you guys for wanting to get away from other hunters. From my experience though, that doesn't take much walking, as the vast majority of them are just cruising up and down the road with 6 guys in the truck wearing camo and rifles sticking out of every window...

I just don't see the need to set aside MORE land as roadless. Or the need to further restrict multiple use on public lands.

Some abuse it, and they should be fined, jailed, and lose the use of public lands for life when caught.

Thinking that the greenies can't infiltrate a group is sticking your head in the sand even if it was started by hunters and supported. Take alook at REMF a few years ago started getting to green for my taste so i let my memebership go. Seems like there getting back on the right track now so if they stay on it i will renew my membership. When big green money starts showing up i'm very sceptical.

No one said they couldn't. All I said was, "show me some facts."

No dog in this fight just using the RMEF as an example.

thanks rbb,
now I know who he is, presumably.

Guess I'll have to find out if there was strings attached for those "grants". I wonder if BHA publishes a list of their grants and what they were designed to fund? Many/Most grants are written with specific objectives outlined, with reports due to the grant funding agencies of activities the funds were used for.

If Mr Wyss's foundation provided funding to BHA for a study of roadless areas vs roaded areas on elk habitat, or trout stream conditions, then I'm all for them using that foundation money. I'd be interested in seeing the results of such research also.

However, if the grant was to study (or worse propose without study) what effects a complete shutdown of mining/mineral extraction, stopping ALL logging, removing all campsites, preventing access even by hiking/horseback/llamas/etc, and removing all traces of humans from the system.........I'd be opposed to BHA taking their money.

Most of what I outlined in the last paragraph goes against the intent of BHA, they just want "appropriate" use in/on our public lands.

No doubt there's folks in the organization that would like to go further. No doubt the same holds true in all organizations. I'd certainly believe that someone could find evidence of donations(hidden/masked/laundered) to some conservative organizations by organizations supporting the beliefs of the Third Reich. That doesn't mean we shouldn't support the organization as a whole.

From what I've seen, BHA has protected a lot of land critical to healthy fish and game populations. Yep, no doubt some other interests might be excluded, but overall for us hunters (not the ones driving around six to the truckbed "raod hunting") and fishers we know the results will likely be positive for those coming after.

I'm not a fan of complete road access to every inch of FS/BLM land, heck I'm over 60, with a bad back, knees, vision, etc and I'm pretty sure my days of lugging a 50lb+ pack 10 miles into the wilderness are over. But, and it's an important but, I do take advantage of roads that border wilderness land, where I can hike a coupla miles into that area to take advantage of relatively "pristine" and quiet areas away from those road hunters. As I generally hunt alone and like the solitude, those areas are critically important to me and if BHA wants to push for a few more, so be it. Like someone else mentioned, and I paraphrase, those are the areas that seem to be in short supply. Not the areas with roads and noisy campers every weekend and more so during hunting season. Not the streams that are stocked by our F&G agencies, right near a road or a bridge/road crossing that get hammered on opening day of trout season (Heck, I'm in the fish businees and I see the need for those kind of places). There seems to me to be plenty of those type areas already.

For me, (Everyone get that?) there's nothing like walking into a place to hunt and not seeing/hearing another person all day. Or going to a stream and fishing up and down a mile or two and not having to pass up a hole because there's 7 people there already.

So, yeah, BHA is probably going to continue to have my support. When they get to the point of wanting to shut down ALL access, then we have a different situation.

And when I'm older and can no longer hike in a few miles, I'll gladly turn that backcountry land over to the next generation.

Geno

We have 31 wilderness areas in Washington totalling around 4.5M acres. We also have the 1M acres of Colville nf which has about 50acres of ohv trails. There's BLM land all over this state that you can't have motorized access on.



We're not hurting for roadless area here. The problem with making it wilderness is that is can never be managed, logged, accessed by the disabled.

Well,
I'd like to point out that BHA's first funder, the Wilburforce Foundation, is about as green as they get. Here's something you hunters should know...Wilberforce is named after the DOG of a couple of Seattle tech zillionaires, the Letwins. And the first guy running it was, and might still be, Tim Greyhavens. Grayhavens was best known prior as an animal-rights activist -- just the guy to administer grants to "hunters and anglers," right?
Here's from his Wiki:
"Tim proudly points out that except for one not-so-proud day he has worked for nonprofit organizations his entire life, including the Humane Society of the United States and the International Snow Leopard Trust."
HSUS. You betcha.
There's more, I mean, just check out this page --
http://www.wilburforce.org/about-us/
And you should check out what Defenders of Wildlife (you know, the wolf freaks) think about Rose Letwin, the founder of Wilburforce.
http://www.wilburforce.org/about-us/celebrating-rose-letwin/

O.k i have been doing some checking on my own,seems the co-chair for the montana chapter for the BHA is a member of the montana wilderness assc. They(Montana wilderness assc.) have sued the USFS over ever single logging sale that the USFS has proposed. So i ask the BHA and Co-chair how you can support logging if your a member of an assc. that sues over every single sale that is proposed. I am not in favor of roads everywhere I hunt in 2 of the wilderness's here in montana. When board members of orginizations belong to other orginizations that have these types of track records and Green orginizations are donating large somes of money well something smells. We all have our choices but i choose to not associate or belong to these types of groups.

Does BHA support hunting and angling in the backcountry? If so, I'll renew my membership.

Unless they get money from somebody whose okay with killing babies or smoking weed. Do the leaders of this group associates with democrats? Well then, these are bad, bad people!

GOD BLESS 'MERICA!!

Good one Greenhorn!

Didn't you know that Hilary Clinton is the Montana co-chair?

Probably a safe bet that BHA's board voted for Hillary Clinton. Or, in the primaries, Bernout.

Dave, are your eyes brown? I'm betting they are.

Maybe you can point me to where Wilderness was "tossed", because I work in this arena and I'm not aware of a Wilderness designation being undone...ever.

Wilderness is the new currency of environmental groups, and it damn sure isn't in short supply. There is more designated Wilderness today than at any point in history...and that's a fact.

I've enjoyed Wilderness both professionally and personally for over 20 years in my home-state of Idaho, but people that think it's necessary for the "protection" of public lands are kidding themselves. There are a myriad of management prescriptions available, most of which allow for far "better" management of lands imho...acknowledging that "better" is subjective in nature.

Wilderness designation is favored by land-managers in my experience, simply because it allows them to walk away and essentially "do" nothing...if for no other reason that it is the least utilized public land in America. I'm not arguing that it doesn't have some inherent value for the record, just that it has very, very low utilization as compared to other federal lands.

I don't favor another acre in Idaho being designated as Wilderness. Some is fine, but we long ago reached what I believe to be "balanced" in Idaho.

As to the matter of BHA,...they are an extremely "green" group in Idaho. If you believe otherwise you're either a member yourself or you've never researched the issues they weigh in on in Idaho.

This is encouraging. More and more people are opening their eyes and getting a clue.

Well said, Sir!

If I look at this debate from another perspective some interesting things come to light.

Their President is Land Tawney - Ardent Obama supporter in fact Chair of "Sportsmen for Obama Committee" in 2008. He also donated $500 in his name to the John Tester campaign individually and $500 from the organization to a PAC for John Tester. Personally I have no opinion about John Tester, I do have an opinion on anyone that supported Obama being aboveboard about their aims. (Source - http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/norindsea.shtml)

From a financial standpoint, their form 990 seems a little wonky to me (I'm an engineer not an accountant) - Form 990 .

$1.26 million in income with 9 employees and zero grants given, but a whole lot of "other expenses" as well as an average salary of $53K for each of those 9 employees. Note in 2014 their executive compensation exceeded 10% of their income.

Public support for 2015 was 58% of their income (Section D). Where did the rest come from?

In Part I-A they gave $106,000 in political expenditures. In Fundraising events (Schedule G Part II) they spent $113K in two events and netted $55K.

Sure, taxes are a bit masked by nature but I look at the numbers and wonder where they got their money and who did they give it to (other than themselves)?

Lots of good charities out there but are folks donating to this one getting their bang for the buck? I wonder but it's up to everyone to make a decision.