Stunning. The old saying “no good deed goes unpunished” is more accurate than we’d like to admit.
This wild turkey habitat demonstration area was not for just habitat but also a place disabled hunters could be taken out hunting.
Why would anyone who hunts destroy signs like these?
Or This?
This takes a crackpot. Not a crack shot.
Come on there are shooting ranges all over Wisconsin with much better targets than this. As my rage subsided and my brain begins to work it came up with other possibilities. Perhaps it was not hunters, rather some other entity whose cause would be advanced by bad Hunter P.R.
Many signs in this hunter were shot up
Maybe some rabid anti-hunters. Sobering to think they might have taken up arms. But then I remember members of the Human Society of The United States advocating vandalism on hunting lands to make hunters look bad. A few years ago I some found alcoholic beverage containers strewn about the parking areas of a WMA during a fall hunting season. Being a concerned hunter and good citizen, picked up the litter on my way out. A few days later I returned and found the same type of litter. On my fourth hunt, there was more of this litter. Clearly, this problem was not random, reporting it would be a waste of time without more evidence of the identity. However, being it was hunting season I did not want to waste time. In a discreet location, up went an old trail camera. A week later more bottles were dumped along with several beer cans. I recovered the camera for review after my hunt.
A few years ago I some found alcoholic beverage containers strewn about the parking areas of a WMA during a fall hunting season. Being a concerned hunter and good citizen, picked up the litter on my way out. A few days later I returned and found the same type of litter. On my fourth hunt, there was more of this litter. Clearly, this problem was not random, reporting it would be a waste of time without more evidence of the identity. However, being it was hunting season I did not want to waste time. In a discreet location, up went an old trail camera. A week later more bottles were dumped along with several beer cans. I recovered the camera for review after my hunt.
After getting my turkeys cleaned and my dog settled in it was time to check out the camera images. The camera caught the culprits including their license plate number. Called the sheriff to report and emailed the photos. Each of the four litters were fined $700 and asked the judge for leniency because they were trying to help get the area closed to hunting so that animals would no longer live in fear. Turned out these creeps wanted to stop hunting and figured if hunters were made to look dangerous more people would become activists on their side.
My mission on Saturday was not finding a bunch of shot up signs rather find turkeys, in particular, turkey poults and make notes of the type crops planted or not planted. I found plenty of deer, many does had twins and triplets in tow! The hen turkeys had 4-7 poults each with many hens still sitting on nests. The extra nest setting is probably due to all the rain washing out their first nesting attempts.
On Monday I will be contacting the nice lady in charge of Wisconsin’s voluntary access program to find out where I can purchase some replacement VPA signs to put up. The very last thing we need are landowners who are considering signing up their lands for public access seeing what they will most likely assume are unappreciative hunters.
I don’t think hunters vandalized those signs. What is your opinion?
Update: 6/20/17
I have been in contact with WDNR and found out these signs had been replaced previously and now they have been shot up again, outside of any hunting season. Makes me suspect it might not be someone who hunts. Also, I did not make clear in the post street signs were shot all the way to the location of the NWTF sign obliteration.
FirstBubba says
Hunters?
No, those weren’t “hunters”.
Not in the strictest sense of the word “hunter”.
Hunters “hunt” game…or solitude…or just being in the outdoors.
They aren’t shooters.
Shooters “shoot” targets, clays, silhouettes or other things that are “meant” to be shot.
The people that shoot up signs or anything that isn’t meant to be shot just aren’t right.
Charlie says
I agree. Nearly all of us will automatically assume it was done by hunters (of some sort). However, see the update posted at the end of the post. These signs had been replaced, and now they have been shot again during a time when there is no open hunting season.
FirstBubba says
In all honesty, I’ve had my lapses in “Firearms Etiquette” and some moments that I’d just as soon forget…but probably won’t!
Shooting signs or items in public areas, despite my other socially unacceptable traits, just ain’t one of them!
FirstBubba says
I believe I’d call them “bangers”.
They just want to hear a gun go “BANG”!
If something dies, bleeds or shows visible damage, all the better.
huntfishtrap says
Unfortunately, I know of people who hunt, and who also do dumb stuff like shoot up signs. I don’t know who the culprits were in this case, but there are some bad apples out there.
JM says
Yep…plenty of people around here do it. Pretty much every large sign has a bullet hole through it. Most likely some alcohol involved. The types of people that shoot a sign are usually the “hunters” that the anti crowd singles out to make us look bad.
FirstBubba says
Without a doubt!
It wuz prolly Possum ‘n Skeeter!
JM says
And wow…I somehow scrolled past the parking lot story. How pathetic can a person be? Good on you for taking the initiative for getting them caught and fined what they deserved. Makes me wonder about all of the stuff I’ve seen thrown around conservation area parking lots honestly….and that is too bad. Never thought an anti-hunter would stoop so low(foolish of me to think that). I wonder what they were thinking each time they realized someone picked up the cans….loonys probably thought it was a fellow anti-hunter coming along to pick up the litter.
N.C.L.W. says
Antis are severely mentally ill, it is a form of psychosis – Truly being divorced from reality and the natural world. I’d put nothing past them, not even outright murder, let alone vandalism.
That said, there’s no shortage of idiots in this world unilaterally. It really could’ve been most anyone – excepting Ethical Hunters of course. None such would ever tear up perfectly good things by utilizing them as makeshift targets.
Thanks for replacing the signs if you can! That’s a fine thing to do Sir, great idea.
Tioughnioga says
Some people who hunt just like to shoot their guns. If it isn’t a sign, it’s a songbird or chipmunk. Given some of my older relatives’ ways, I might have been headed that direction myself (I’d like to think not, but you never know). One of the best things that ever happened, I realize as I look back, is when a friend and I went out with his pellet gun and I shot a hairy woodpecker out of a tree. I hit it low on the breast and it was still alive when we got to the base of the tree. I was ten or eleven that year. The sight of that woodpecker crouching in the leaves, all bloody, just staring up at us … my buddy and I both had tears in our eyes on the way back to his house. Funny thing is, I’d been p.o.ed at my dad that year because he wouldn’t let my friend bring his pellet gun over to our house, saying we were too young and too apt to be shooting things we needn’t be shooting at.