Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just cannot find any justifiable “legal” reason for this law. What leg do they have to stand on to defend it?
I just got to thinking what was the biological or any other reason for HR12 ?Point 1: If anyone was to do a study from a biological perspective it is a ZERO impact hobby the skunk and ringtail cat take 100 times as many in one day as we take in 10 years.. Point 2: I cannot recall anyone getting run over or hurt in that part of the country other than an occasional snake bite. Point 3: It is an awesome way to learn about nature rather than sitting in front of a television set drinking beer. My conclusion is it was “concocted” to put some income into their air sucking funds. If this is the case don’t we have a way to expose them and make a case? I know we are fighting “The Machine” but there must be a way to pour some salt water in their hard drive. Any ideas?
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Data and Fluff

Safety:
They have no data to show safety issues with collecting a right of way, but the fluff sounds good. Even though we can compile data to show the danger of hunting open country at night.

BTW - We need this from everybody that can contribute. If you have had a bad expreiance because of or complicated by being away from your car or the road. If you have a handycap, or small children or too old to feel safe on open country at night etc. I need that info. Please email me at (LanceBenton @ sbcglobal DOT net)

Conservation:
They are treating us all like greedy commercial collectors, and that is what they have data on, lumping captive bread animals into the mix can make it look bad as well. The truth is that collecting a narraw transect such as a roadway leaves a vast amount of untouched habitat for the majority of the animals to live in untouched.

Fairness:
Game hunters do not have the opportunity to hunt on ROWs. Well they use lethal firearms and bows to hunt and that is a danger in a public place, plus they have access to WMAs that we do not. It is a different world between the two, we need to start looking at ourselves like fishermen instead and expect the same treatment they have, not hunters.

We need to undo all that fluff with some data, and we can do it. But it will take all of working on this as a committed resource, not just a couple of people making phone calls and writing letters. Any data you have - stories related to safety, arguments for collecting ROWs we need to compile. You can post them or email them to me. But it would also help to put them in a signed letter and get them to a single location so they can be presented to the right people that can fix this.

commercial collectors obviously have an impact - try finding a collared lizard or box turtle these days - but that is a very few individuals having an extremely disportionate impact. If they want to shut down commercial collection, then let them institute an annual quota as many states have.

As for the alterna nutz, some figures: the six main alterna counties (Val Verde, Terrell, Brewster, Presidio, Jeff Davis, Pecos) comprise a bit over 19,000 sq. miles. Alterna are also found in at least six other counties, plus New Mexico and Mexico. Figuring the roadway and ROW at 80 ft, then for every 100 miles of roadway hunted we are hunting 1.25 sq. miles of surface area. So we are covering less than two square miles out of 19,000 sq. miles .0001% of the available area. yes, that is one one thousandth of a percent. And what we are hunting is manmade roadcuts, which is rather like fishing an artificial reef.

Road hazard? Preople have been roadcruising Texas highways for at least 60 years and I doubt there are any records of a herper-related accident. Yes, herpers have had accidents but I know of no instances where they have caused an accident while in pursuit of herps.

In other words, there is NO justification for this law other than "pay to hunt" landowners such as mr. Hildebran don't like that they are not making a profit off us.

Well said John! Much "cleaner" than I would have put it!

Wayne

and he's able to use words of more than one syllable too!! learn from him Howie!!

WHAT????? Learn from John???? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I seriously doubt that the reason behind this is so that private landowners can make a killing off leasing land to herpers. There's no way they could charge the amount of money they do for game hunting-who would pay it? And would they allow night hunting? I just don't see this as a viable reason behind the bill. I think it has more to do with the landowners not wanting a bunch of people transversing the roads at night...imagine having 20-30 cars cruise through your neighborhood. Even if the roads are public, obviously something has occurred to drop the wrath of the landowners on snake hunters...they didn't just pull our groups' name out of a hat. LE has gotten tired of complaints, the legislators finally took notice and did something about it.

So now you are an expert on why all of thia occured Maakie???? WOW. Better run for the Texas Legislature then.

Wayne

I can't...too many shady acquaintances. But lets face it dWayne...how much would you fork out for a day of hunting on someone's land? Not five figures, that's for sure.

Back in the early days we had little or no trouble with the ranchers. I rmemeber one night on Pandale dirt when a rancher found a blair's and held an auction right then and there, and made a decent profit. That was back when it was all sheep and goats. Now most of that land has been turned into hunting leases - notice all the expensive new fencing along lower Pandale road. When I was running the restaurant in Del Rio in the mid-70's I knew most of the ranchers in the county and most of them had given me permission to herp their land. I never did, but the permission was there. However, a few herpers started going onto ungated ranch roads, some climbed fences and one lazy sucker actually cut a fence. It is actions such as those which started the ranchers disliking the herpers. Then you have the people who drive the Lamgtry loop at night and don['t dim their lights going through the ocvcupied part of town - some have even spotlighted in town - another good way to turn the friendlies against you.

They make no money off us, so they have no reason to like us. Is it the game ranchers who were behind this? I have no idea.

Then there is the feeling by TPWD that every herper out there is making obscene amounts of money collecting these "rare" snakes. This is, to me, a more likely reason. And don't forget the taxidermists, who don't make a cent off us, nor to the people who cut up the deer and bag the meat for hunters.

The biggest commercial opereations in native wildlife are, of course, the ranchers who make good money charging people to shoot animals which actually belong to the people of the state, but they aren't looked at as commercial people. The herpers, however, constantly toass around values, post lots of snakes for sale and are in all other ways OBVIOUS. We are obvious in our herping, we are obvious in our postings, we are obvious in our dealings. TPWD doesn't like OBVIOUS profitmaking. We should be more like the game ranches.

Not a dam*** penny. Their as*** would be paying me! Don't get me started Maakie!

Wayne

quote ,, you cannot recall anyone being hurt or run over

How bout when you ran over my foot with your car on the Gap "LOL"

I don't remember it, therefore it never happened.
But if you walked away, doesn't count.

JH

Sorry John, I meant that Sighthunter ran over my foot. I should have clarified my post better.
Barry

We got the snake didn't we! How is the prosthesis
working out.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Good, but it's really hard to climb a rock cut now !!!! And I have to keep oiling the hinges on this darned thing.
B