You’re now going to allow…

You’re now going to allow people to shoot thing 8-9 months of the year. And allowing it from boats and open water where pellets can travel much further. And allowing during the busiest boating and water recreational times of the year. At what point did that strike someone as a good idea?

Furthermore, it is basically unlimited shooting just for the sake of of killing something. Yes you can shoot 50 but since they don’t need to keep those carcasses you don’t know if they’ve killed 50 or 550. No-one will eat cormorant. At least not more than once. Using small game licence to slaughter a practically unlimited amount of cormorants and leaving them to rot does great disservice to those of us who take pride in our careful regulation of small game and using as much of the animal as we can.

It is our lousy fishing practices and alteration of habitat that is causing fish populations to drop. A good deal of that problem can be laid at the feet of the MNRF and their short-sighted decisions of the past. But let's scapegoat the cormorants though.

Of all the management solutions possible to controlling cormorant numbers why would you chose this one? You might want to take a closer look at the conflicts of interest that may be influencing your decision makers to chose this route. It sounds like an excuse to placate a minority group of people who want an excuse just to kill something without having the inconvenience of consequences, limited time to kill, enforceable bag limits, and cleaning and prep of their kill.

Get rid of the advisors on this policy. Start over. Come up with a control solution that doesn’t involve giving people who like to kill for the sake of killing an excuse to fire off a gun 9 months of the year consequence-free. If you don’t then believe me the lawyers are going to be all over your tushes when someone gets shot by this policy.

Why not a limited spring hunt? Why not oil the eggs? Why a near round slaughter with birds going to rot instead? How many carcasses are going to wash up onto beaches? What will the smell be like? Why not have a professional trained people ( ie not yahoos drinking in their boats who start taking pot shots at cormorants as they fly by) go to some of the nesting sites and target them there? Yes, it will also be a slaughter but it’ll be controlled and only for a short period of time. And they won’t be drunk fishermen wielding firearms where missed shots travel a long way.

So, smarten up, folks. I know you have intelligent people working for you. I worked there myself at one point. Use their brains. Listen to the experts, like Chip W. Really, I’m rather stunned you even came up with this policy in the first place. On the other hand it certainly fits well into the buck-a beer alt-fact instant gratification mentality of the current provincial govt, so I shouldn’t be that surprised.

So stop making