In the 2001 Legislative session, HUNTER’S ALERT, working with Nevada Hunters Association and Assemblyman Jerry Claborn were successful in passing Assembly Bill 291. This bill enacted a $3.00 predator fee for every big game tag that hunters applied for. It should be noted that no other so-called sportsmen’s organization helped in the passage of this bill which was desperately needed to restore our deer.

 

This bill provides over $300,000 a year for predator control. The original intent of the bill was to do predator control to bring back our deer. However, former governor Kenny Guinn’s appointments to the Wildlife Commission, Tommy Ford, John Moran, Clint Bentley, Jack Robb and Jim Jeffress decided to do more sheep projects than deer projects. The reason for this is that the Wildlife Commission was stacked with sheep club members. It shows that they could care less about people who want to hunt deer.

 

To them, it was more important for 150 people to hunt sheep than the 35,000 hunters who want to hunt deer. I guess nobody in the sheep club hunts deer. Nothing like being a selfish bunch! NDOW has refused to do any predator control on its own. So with the money provided by sportsmen, they farm it out to Wildlife Services.

Someone has to start telling the truth about predator control in Nevada. I guess that someone will have to be HUNTER’S ALERT. NDOW does not want to do any predator control. Let me repeat, unequivocally, without a doubt, NDOW refuses to do predator control without being forced into it.

 

In the 2001 legislative session, HUNTER’S ALERT and Nevada Hunters Association with the help of Assemblyman Jerry Claborn were responsible for the passage of A.B. 291 which gives NDOW $341,000 to $400,000 per year for predator control. By the way, no one from NDOW was there to support the predator bill. This alone should let you know how NDOW felt from the very beginning about predator control.

In the last legislative session, HUNTER’S ALERT sponsored Assembly Bill 259. The intent of this bill was to save more deer by increasing the mountain lion harvest. This bill met with virulent opposition from every Wildlife Commissioner, some sportsmen, and especially from Larry Johnson and his Coalition for Nevada’s Wildlife. They flooded the Natural Resources, Agriculture and Mining committee with incorrect information. They were unaware that the bill had been already been amended to remove much of the language in question. However, Larry just didn’t bother to take the time to get up to speed on the bill’s updated language.

 

New NDOW director Ken Mayer has inherited a 30 year mess. This mess was created by the two former directors, Willie Molini and Terry Crawforth. Also helping to create the mess were the wildlife commissioners who were appointed by former governors Bob Miller and Kenny Guinn. These Wildlife commissioners had no guts to stand up to the former directors so they need to share the blame for the loss of our deer.

 

There are good things in store for the future of Nevada sportsmen. NDOW has a new director, Ken Mayer who is concerned about the loss of our deer and the way the agency has been managed in the past. HUNTER’S ALERT bill AB259 did not pass in its original form but it came out a winner anyway. HUNTER’S ALERT sponsored a bill to audit NDOW in the previous legislative session. The results of the audit proved how badly NDOW was being mismanaged. Because this audit showed numerous misappropriations of sportsmen’s dollars, AB 259 was passed. It mandates NDOW to be audited every other year. 

In the 2005 legislative session, HUNTER’S ALERT and Nevada Hunters Association sponsored a bill to audit a very small part of Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW). The bill passed with the help of Assemblyman Jerry Claborn. Jerry realized how badly NDOW was being mismanaged for many years. Getting the bill passed was not easy as NDOW had their favorite puppet, Larry Johnson there testifying against the bill. Larry’s feeble excuse was that NDOW couldn’t afford the audit. As usual, Larry didn’t know what he was talking about as there was no additional cost to perform this audit. Larry failed to realize that if you don’t stand up for what is right, you are wrong.

My name is Cecil Fredi and I have lived in Las Vegas for 64 years. For many of those years, I deer hunted and everyone in the hunting group took home a nice big buck. Those days have been gone for years. Nineteen years ago, I helped form a group called HUNTER’S ALERT. Our primary purpose was to inform sportsmen that we have a predator problem and that something needed to be done about it. We have mailed 31 newsletters resulting in over a quarter of a million copies distributed throughout the state as well as other states. Every issue stated we had a predator problem and what other states were doing about their problem. It wasn’t like NDOW and the Wildlife Commission were not made aware of the fact that we had a serious predator problem for many years. 

In the April-June, 2006 NBU (Nevada Bighorns Unlimited) newsletter, Larry Johnson wrote an article entitled "NDOW-An Agency in Crisis".   HUNTER’S ALERT and Nevada Hunters Association have stated this for seventeen years. If it takes a person seventeen years to figure this out, that person is not very smart about wildlife issues. That is why it is time for Larry to go. Below are excerpts from Larry’s article and HUNTER’S ALERT’S response.

In our past writings, we have given you many examples of why Clint Bentley should not have been appointed to the Wildlife Commission.  Here are more reasons for his dismal failure. Mr. Bentley is a member of the Wildlife Damage Management Subcommittee. This is nothing more than a fancy name for a predator control committee which in itself has become a joke. Mr. Bentley should never have even been on this subcommittee as on numerous occasions in the past he has failed to react about the abundance of mountain lions in our state. At a meeting on May 13, 2004 in Reno, Gerald Lent, President of Nevada Hunters Association told the committee it was not doing what the predator money was intended for and that NDOW had never supported this predator program.

Nevada Hunters Association

You can thank the Division of Wildlife and the Wildlife commissioners for sponsoring a $7.5 million fee increase for NDOW in the next two year budget cycle. HUNTER’S ALERT and Nevada Hunters Association opposed these huge increases for many reasons.