Posted on 09/25/2006 10:51:14 AM PDT by george76
A small band of archers has been shooting bows and arrows for 37 years on a range in the Pike National Forest north of Deckers, paying the U.S. Forest Service about $450 a year for a permit.
This year it will all end because the Forest Service presented the Columbine Bowmen with a bill for $23,000 for the one-year permit, said club president Tom Younger.
The same fate faces the 180 or so members of the Buffalo Creek Gun Club, who shoot targets in the Pike forest near Bailey. The club's annual permit fee of $150 over the past 40 years suddenly soared to $20,000.
"It's their goal to do that, to run us off the land," Younger said of the Forest Service. "I'm letting it go. I can't fight it anymore."
Forest Service regional lease officer Diane Hitchings said she knows of "only three or four private clubs" that have been allowed to use national forest land in the five-state region that includes Colorado.
Such "special uses" date back decades to a more relaxed view of the forest. Now, private use of the public's land is discouraged.
"We look at it far more stringently than we used to," said Pike National Forest District Ranger Randy Hickenbottom.
"After the Hayman Fire, they put a gate up and told us to privatize our club and make it for members only," said Younger.
The Forest Service wanted the land closed to better protect it from fire and damage by unsupervised public use, he said.
"Then this year, they changed the policy and wanted us to open it up," Younger said.
He said that now, "anybody can walk in and shoot our range," but the Forest Service is still raising its fee.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
So stop calling yourselves a club, stop paying a cent for the lease, and just walk in and use it anyway.
IMHO, the people own the land, not the Forest Service. It is not the role of the Forest service, or the Federal Government for that matter, to be using public property for financial gain.
Then go out and find a timber company that will give your club a hunting lease for a lot less. You can shoot there, and hunt there too.
Or get a loan a buy land. Yous should be able to get at least 30 acres in Colorado for $20,000, and then you own it. You don't have to pay another 20 Grand next year.
Yup.
" Regulations are put out by bureaucratic assholes who are answerable to no one.
You can fight a law but a regulation is just about impossible..."
Thanks.
We are still kicking.
Exactly.
" The Hayman fire was started by a Federal Forest Service employee !!!! "
The same with family ranchers with grazing permits.
They take the best care of the land as they plan to leave the land to their kids.
That way they can allow the dead biomass to accumulate until, when it finally does catch on fire, it burns so hot and so long it destroys the soil and dormant seeds so that nothing worthwhle will grow for decades.
Forest fires are a natural part of the ecology.
Completely stifle forest fires and you are not preserving the environment, you are changing it to something else, and you don't have any idea what that might be.
Was it zoned? Was it Federal land all along?
white trash redneck may know this better than me.
" Was it zoned? "
My understanding is that it is federal lands which is not zoned by the local county.
Thus the local Forest Serivce guy might follow the wishes of the Sierra Club...
Hopefully this can and will be appealed successfully to Washington.
If it's anything like Alaska you won't be able to take a hike with your dog.
Amazingly, there are places that you can not legally hike by yourself.
No dog, no horses, no bikes, no people.
One forest service plan tried to write in a rule that we could only camp one person per square mile. When pressed by me, they backed off some. My point : what does a family do ? Put a different kid in a different tent ...one per mile ! What about the parents...two tents a mile apart !
That really was in the draft travel management plan.
They push their logic to the limits and then can't answer simple questions. Seen that a lot. It's like they let summer students write their regulations.
That is, until the Democrats take power again in both the Congress and the Presidency. Then they will use Eminant Domain to throw you off your land and will use gun control laws to take your guns.
That fits the view of some envirowacks who believe that "humanity is a virus infecting the Earth Mother Goddess Gaia." Even to the point of prohibiting hiking, camping, canoeing. People are not supposed to venture outside of their assigned "village".
Sad but true.
Some of the eco-nuts hope that these newly created wilderness areas are given to the UN to manage.
YIKES! What scary picture!
Not that I don't believe that this could happen, but I remember when Clinton got elected and we were all operating in this mindset. And after all the kerfluffle settled, it turned out that the Internet stories about black helicopters descending on small towns and seizing their guns and all that other paranoia weren't true, and even if the evil Clinton-Reno cabal wanted to, we weren't going to let them.
And they knew that. So the whole gun control issue became a losing proposition for the Dems, and to a large degree they have backed off.
So all I'm saying is it's a bit early to panic. You should go over to DU and see some of the wild conspiracy crap floating around over there, except that they claim that BUSH is building the detention camps, where we once thought Clinton was.
I take back what I said about "Not that I don't believe that this could happen". I DON'T think this can happen. I don't think they do either. Because they know that we won't let them.
Have faith in America and Americans. And keep your guns cleaned and oiled.
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