LETTER: Dump Walker, save tradition

To the Telegram:

Late last year Governor Walker hired Texan James Kroll as Wisconsin Deer Czar in control of deer management policy.

Kroll has been involved for more than 30 years in Texas as the foremost proponent of deer game farms and an opponent of public lands and public game management, which he described incredibly as “the last bastion of communism.”

Through Kroll’s efforts, 95 percent of Texas’s hunting land is now privately held in the form of self-regulated game farms closed to the general public. Deer and other wildlife are viewed there not as a public resource but as private property much like the old land barons of Europe viewed their hunting estates.

Hunting, in Texas, has become a privilege for those with enough cash or connections and the fenced in deer herd are managed at the whim of the landowner.

Walker’s DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp has already said that Wisconsin public land should be sold to private or corporate parties for their exclusive use and management.

Not surprisingly, Kroll calls those who call for more public hunting opportunities as “pining for socialism.” To people who do not own land or cannot pay sky high access fees for other peoples land, Walker and Kroll’s answer is simple — tough luck.

If Walker and Kroll get their way, public land hunters will royally get the shaft. Wisconsin has a long and proud history of its citizens freely hunting deer and other wild game on publicly owned land. This is not socialism or communism, this is our heritage and northern tradition. If you stand with Walker and Kroll on this, then do you know what you are actually standing in?

Vote to recall Walker and save hunting for us, our children and all future generations.

Richard Gustafson,

Superior

Tags: opinion, letters