I hate getting on a soapbox, but something just smacked me in the head this morning while I was downloading the hunting forcast for our website, http://www.spoiledmule.com/.

Every year the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife makes it a little more expensive to hunt, takes away some hunting opportunities and increases the burden on the hunter to document, report and prove their hunting results. All that might not even be so bad, but now they won't even let me keep my trophies - at least not intact. They want the teeth from some trophies, the wings and tails from grouse, the head from pine marten and bobcat, and even sex organs and guts from some big game. Now we have to bring them our cougar with the sex organs so they can "register" the trophy. Does anyone else find that a bit invasive and kinda disgusting?

Okay, I get the whole argument that there are a lot of hunters out there and the state wants to keep track so they don't dessimate the native animal populations. Fine. Make everyone turn in their tag filled out with the results of their hunt. Why does the state need to know what days you went hunting, what methods you used and where you were? All they need to know is where the animal was when you harvested it, the general age of the animal and that you had the license and tag to legally harvest it. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of the fish and wildlife biologists to go out in the woods and take a census on the animal populations - not the hunters. We are now paying a greater percentage of the cost to support ODFW and doing more of their work. I've been told by law enforcement folks that ODFW has a better DNA testing facility for animals in this state than there is for testing human DNA for the state police. What the heck is that all about?

Let's face it - people who break the game laws are not going to report themselves just because they have to turn in the teeth from their deer. People who illegally harvest animals probably won't bother buying a tag, and will do their best to stay under the ODFW radar. Is there really some person at the ODFW that thinks they will finally stop poachers by forcing this "big brother" stuff on the honest hunters? You don't stop criminals by making honest citizens register their guns, and you won't catch people who violate the game laws by making us report our every move when we hunt.

Here is my point - bureaucrats will always try to pass rules that make their jobs easier and support their belief system. The forest service does their best to justify keeping us out of the woods - even though we pay the same taxes they do and have just as much right to use the public lands as any employee of the state or federal government. In the same vein, ODFW doesn't have any right to stop us from hunting, but they can make it increasingly more expensive, more difficult to deal with the rules and less appealing by snatching our trophies. They do it a little at a time to make it relatively painless so you don't even know you have lost something until you wake up one morning with a headless bobcat and a toothless deer and wonder whatever happened to the joy and annonymity of being in the woods.

Hunters of Oregon, don't sit at home waiting for the next shoe to drop. Talk to your legislators! Get some grassroots movements together before the state makes hunting so regulated and expensive that only the wealthy (and those hunting show guys) can afford to hunt.