Below is the fiscal note pertaining to the baiting bill in the Senate, SB189. Notice, there is no mention of a $15 sticker or whatever it would be:

FISCAL NOTE

Senate Bill 189 as introduced will allow for the taking of whitetail deer and feral swine by means of bait. This bill could reduce receipts to the Game and Fish Fund of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources by an estimated $142,500 annually for the amount of fines that would otherwise have been collected for violations, based on the average number of arrests and penalties under the current law.


Tom Whatley, Chairperson
Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry

Maybe the game wardens could spend more time catching road hunters and poachers, who are a little more dangerous than the average person pouring out corn. Maybe night hunting and poaching violations could make up some of that money the state would be losing from baiting violations. Just other ways to look at it.

So in this we see the primary motivation for baiting being illegal is revenue from writing tickets, not conservation of wildlife. This is what is wrong with the DCNR in Alabama.

That's a lot of baiting tickets geez

Not sure how the process works, but I would imagine any bill that might have some type of fiscal impact would require a fiscal note.

The money for fines does not go to the DCNR it goes to the county and state. This according to Chuck Sykes.

Wonder how many tickets it takes to make up that amount......??

horseshit! any and all fine monies go to the dept. Court costs goes to the court/county, and I believe some of that goes to the dept.

heck Ole timber2 contributed a big chunk of that I think this year!

Exactly. Their revenue wouldn't go down. The guy who wrote that must be an idiot. They'd probably catch folks doing other stuff that's far worse with stiffer fines too. Stuff that's actually bad.

in my experience there were always better ways to use time than catching baiters. You wasted a LOT of time checking on them, they not showing, showed late yesterday and refreshed, got sick and didn't hunt for two weeks while you checked the bait twice a day with a mile walk each time.

Easily make more money/time spent doing almost anything else. Working a decoy is prolly 10X more productive than working bait.

Come on yall, we are talking about bills...from some legislator...

Dont you remember the song from school house rock???

I'd say it's just so they know how much to raise our hunting liscence after they make it legal.

now they will be checkin for stickers. So they will still be wastin time if it passes

I'm sure the Game Wardens would love for it to pass without the permit requirement. No more checking corn piles daily like Troy said, no more neighbors ratting on each other about corn, and no more 100 yards and out of sight hoohaw. It would let them spend their work time more efficiently. Still not a fan of it, but I can live with it being legal much more easily if it makes the GW job easier. It wouldn't be easier with the permit requirement.

Maybe they saw this coming so this is why they were testing the waters on the bonus buck idea as a way to make up revenue.

I have no doubt about this. We've caught several poachers with stands on our property, but never the guy himself.

Well you can bet that whatever idea makes the most sense will be tossed out the window.

I heard him say the same thing at the game check meeting in Scottsboro last summer. But he lied to me once before so........

I think the what he said at the Tenn Valley Hunting and Fishing Expo in 2016 was that the DCNR gets very little of the fine money and that when you consider the time spent in court, it actually costs the department money when they write tickets.

I thought that was a load of bologna, since the officers are getting paid anyway, any funds that go to the department would increase their budget. It has been brought out that they could be out writing more tickets instead of in court.


Which cost more, driving around from place to place for 8 hours or sitting in a court room for 8 hours where you are getting some additional funds???