Outdoor commentary and legislative issues.
WARN winch
The package features a 3,000-pound WARN winch with roller fairlead and fully sealed motor. The rugged, dependable winch can haul out big game and get hunters out of a pickle if needed.
6-ply tires and 12-inch aluminum wheels
The 26-inch (66.4 cm) Carlisle ACT HD (heavy-duty) tires offer a six-ply rating, giving the Outlander Mossy Oak Hunting Edition excellent durability and dependable traction in rugged terrain. They’re fitted to 12-inch (30.5 cm) black aluminum wheels to complete the stealth look.
Michigan’s existing state record for smallmouth bass was broken Sunday by Robert Bruce Kraemer of Treasure Island, Florida.
A longtime angler with a cottage in Indian River, Cheboygan County, Kraemer said he’s been fishing Michigan waters since 1965, but this is his first state-record catch. Using night crawlers for bait, Kraemer landed a 9.98-pound, 23.10-inch smallmouth bass while out on the Indian River.
“I usually spend June through the end of September up here at the cottage,” Kraemer said. “I’ve got some great fish stories and some nice fish, but nothing like this.” Read more
Hunters in DMU 333 reminded of the requirement to have harvested deer from the area checked
Since May 2015, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has been actively conducting surveillance for chronic wasting disease (CWD). To date, more than 6,000 deer have been tested since the first positive was found, with seven cases of CWD confirmed.
However, a 3.5-year-old buck taken recently in Meridian Township is likely to be the eighth positive and the first discovered since March of this year. The sample is currently being tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, to finalize confirmation.
The suspect deer was taken as part of the DNR’s CWD management program through targeted sharpshooting, which actively removes deer that are more likely to be affected with the disease in and around areas where previously identified CWD-positive animals had been detected. Read more
GW: These rogue, unelected power mongers need to be cut off at the knees now that the horses are already out of the barn.
The ruling in American Farm Bureau Federation and National Pork Producers Council vs. EPA concerned the federal agency’s 2013 release to three environmental groups of a vast compilation of spreadsheets containing personal information about farmers and ranchers who raise livestock and poultry in 29 states. The case also related to similar personal information from farmers and ranchers in seven additional states that had yet to be released. The information included the names of farmers, ranchers and sometimes other family members, home addresses, GPS coordinates, telephone numbers and emails. EPA claimed that it was required to disclose the information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
“This was an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy by a federal agency in violation of law,” said AFBF General Counsel Ellen Steen. “The court’s decision is a vindication of the right of farm families to control their own personal information. Farmers and ranchers have a strong privacy interest in their personal information, including their home address, even when they live and work on the farm.”
Farm families usually live on the farm and the court took note that EPA’s disclosures in this case could facilitate unwanted contact and harassment of farmers and ranchers by the FOIA requestors and others. According to Steen, “this case assures us that individuals still have a privacy interest in their personal information. The fact that government agencies may have that information and even store it on the Internet does not eliminate the individual’s privacy interest.” According to the court, “EPA’s release of the complete set of data on a silver platter, so to speak, basically hands to the requesters a comprehensive database of their own, whatever their motives might be.”
“EPA now has to ‘recall’ all of the personal information it unlawfully released, but unfortunately that information has now been in the hands of the FOIA requestors for three years, and many feel that the damage is done,” Steen said. “AFBF will continue to work to ensure that personal information about farmers and ranchers is not disclosed by EPA.”