Are you a giver or taker?

Where wil bear and deer go when there are no more wild places?

Are you a giver or a taker? It's a very simple question that goes far beyond a one-word yes-no answer.

The bottom line here, in the event this question surprises you, is very simple. Do you take more from your fishing or hunting experiences than you give back?

The purchase of a fishing or hunting license grants us no more than a chance to legally fish or hunt or trap in season. It is a privilege but not a guaranteed God-given right.

It promises opportunities, not limit catches or a heavy game bag.

In days of old, when knights were bold, landowners also owned the fish and game. They owned the river water that flowed through their properly, and Heaven help any soft-headed peasant who poached one of the king's red deer stags, a brown trout or an Atlantic salmon.

The population 300 years ago was far less than today, and peasants were kept in their places and ruled with an iron fist. People caught poaching were severely punished, and any fish or game illegally taken was confiscated.

Things are much different these days. We have flowing springs, but bottled-water plants are tapping into the aquifers. They take our ground water but put nothing back. There are developers ready to quickly fill wetlands, and they operate on the premise that it's easier to apologize later, if caught, than seek permission first.

These are trying times, and everyone wants and needs some outdoor recreation. We need to smell the roses, but what will happen when the roses no longer bloom? What will happen when former trout streams become a turgid trickle before drying up because a bottling plant has shipped our water out of state for corporate profit, and the trout have disappeared because bottlers have drained and sold our water?

Stand up and speak for what you believe in.

How many people are speaking out? Are you standing up to face big business, and asking the hard questions: Is sale of our water a right and proper thing to do? What happens to Great Lakes water when Arizona, New Mexico and Texas want their share? What will we do then?

God help us if the Asian carp gain entrance to the Great Lakes. Out new Carp Czar says he doesn’t think it will happen, but while people stand around and wring their hands about the problem, some of those fish could be moving through Chicago’s canals and waterways. Are you following that problem and pushing for immediate action? I(f not, why not?

Who among us speaks out about urban sprawl in the Traverse City area? Or near Charlevoix and Gaylord areas? On the Petoskey-Harbor Springs region? If you haven’t looked lately, the northwestern corner of Lower Michigan is spreading out at a rapid pace, traffic is horrid, and it reminds me of Detroit.

How many people will take a few minutes from their busy lives to ask why this is happening and how can it be controlled? Why does state government allow this to occur? Why are cities like Detroit becoming an empty maze of cluttered and unsafe streets, boarded up crack houses, and why has 1.2 million people fled Detroit over the past 20 years? Why is the same thing happening in Flint and other once prosperous southern cities?

What will become of our open fields, marshlands, hardwoods and conifers that now provide cover for game and non-game animals and birds? Has anyone paid attention to the downsizing of Michigan's deer herd and our Department of Natural Resources? The marked decrease in snowshoe hares and various game birds such as ruffed grouse has become alarming?

What will happen to our environment and wild game if no one cares?

As alarming, what’s happening to the hoped-for increase in hunter numbers? Baiting died three years ago in the Lower Peninsula, and hunter numbers went with it. At the same time, baiting continued in the Upper Peninsula. Is this fair and equitable treatment to Lower Peninsula hunters?

Is it fair that private landowners get preferred treatment from the DNRE for spring turkey tags, but private landowners in the Northern Lower Peninsula cannot get such a permit. How fair is that?

The answer is simple. We're talking about habitat loss in most parts of the state. We're talking greedy businessmen. How, I wonder, can Exxon and other gas companies declare such huge profits for shareholders while the average motorist breaks his back trying to stay solvent in a credit-card society that is rife with foreclosures. We have Medicare programs that no one understands. It's bureaucracy at the worse possible level.

Granted, what has happened in the past several years to our deer herd is not easy to cope with or accept. But take a hard look at some of the problems.

Urban sprawl is eating away at the land needed for deer to thrive. People move north, buy five or 10 acres of paradise, and disrupt deer travel routes. Homes are built where deer once crossed roads. As more people move in, buy land and build homes, the terrain becomes fragmented. The deer soon disappear to another area that has yet to be exploited, but how long will that area be safe?

People are seeing bears where bruins have never been seen before. The animals need a place to live, but humans have taken over. My wife and I own 20 acres we bought 30 years ago, and admit that we added to the problem. However, we did it long before the big northern invasion began, and since then, plant food plots every year to help wildlife.

Deer numbers in our area are way down so we hunt elsewhere at times. Does this solve the problem? Of course not, it just puts a bit more hunting pressure on an area that hasn't yet felt the full force of land development like what has taken place around Traverse City and other northern cities.

Thirty years ago Traverse City was a quaint northern Michigan town with about 8,000 people. Look at it now. We have the same problems as southern cities have faced for many years. Drugs, embezzlement, robbery, murder. Such things now live on our doorstep, and paradise no longer glimmers.

Twenty or 30 years from now, when Traverse City has expanded southeast past Kingsley to Fife Lake, southwest to Copemish and Thompsonville, northwest to fill the entire Leelanau Peninsula and Benzie County, and northeast to meet Charlevoix and Gaylord that are expanding southward, we'll have the same problems that people fled when they moved north.

The difference is those who moved north brought their heavy baggage with them, and now they want this area to be like their home area once was. Folks, it doesn't happen that way.

When will many people learn to care for other things and not be selfish?

When will people look around, see the slow but sure decay and destruction of this area, and wonder how and why it has happened? Of course, the answer is easy: we are too busy raising our family, pinching pennies because half our pay is a view of the bay, and if we live long enough, we'll learn that if we aren't part of the solution, we must be part of the problem.

Meanwhile, paradise has been turned into another drug store, gas station, bank or a cement-carpeted parking lot. And one must look hard to find a rose to smell, a deer to see, or that wonderful silence at night when the northern lights dance and glow in the heavens and the coyotes howl at the moon.

The problem is we've taken what we feel is ours and given nothing back. How sad is that, and when will we learn? Sadly, I’m sure many people will be asking that question after it’s too late to change our ways.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors