A Modest Proposal

[John Bennett]

In all my years of fishing I’ve been carded once.

Rich I understand that populations, regions etc are going to differ but to some extent it should be relative. While your state may not be the size or have the population of Ontario, it should by default if its that much smaller not have the same requirement in terms of staffing/enforcement/research/etc,et or shortfalls.

Another wrinkle would be is the state/province a tourist mecca for out of state anglers/hunters/”User groups”. Ontario most definately is. So we have thousands and thousands of out of prov and Non Canadians coming here every year…strainging the resources and paying paltry amounts really for it. Problem is, if you hike the direct cost to them directly…the tourist associations get bent out of shape arguiing that it will reduce their traffic. I realy dont care anymore. Kind of tired of out of prov people depleteing our resources for far less than $100 bucks.

edit add to give an idea how rediculous it is.
http://northumberlandnews.com/article/143933

The gist of that is the Rice Lake Tourist assoc. If fighting a) the introduction of ice fishing this year because in part they argue it might hurt their summer buisnisses (americans) and b) they are fighting a reduction in the pan fish limit from 500 to 300.

[mick mccorcle]

In Texas, the Fisheries section of the Parks and Wildlife Division derives all of its revenues from license sales.

[Aaron Christensen]

Interesting idea but there are some downsides.  Officers would be motivated to ticket everything and an adversarial relationship could develop between the officers and law abiding sportsmen.  Maybe a middle ground would work — reasonable license fees combined with much higher fees for violations?  

I don’t know why, but I get check at a high frequency level.  They are always pleasant meetings and conversations.  I would hate to think that the officer was looking for every imaginable way to take my money because that would change the dynamics of the encounter.

While I don’t have first hand knowledge of the issue, I hear reports that our judges don’t hold people’s feet to the fire on game violations (unless it is a federal matter).

[Author]

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