First off, I want to thank all of you who followed the tracks left here in 1995. Believe me, your responses to columns, pro or con, provide the encouragement and incentive to continue on this trail that is trashy with conflicts and controversies of all kinds. With that I wish you a Happy New Year and all the best that Maine’s great outdoors has to offer in 1996.

If you’ve had your ear to the ground, you’ve heard rumblings that indicate the coming year will test the collective strength of Maine people – sportsmen and nonsportsmen alike – who respect and value their heritage and the outdoors traditions and cultures that are the essence of this state.

For example, each of us has a vested interest in opposing and defeating the proposals of RESTORE: the North Woods. In what many people consider to be the height of arrogance, the Massachusetts-based organization plans to turn 3.2 million acres of Maine’s heartland into a national park and restore wolves in the process, if you please.

That agenda, obviously, would eliminate timber harvesting, jobs, access and the obvious traditional outdoors recreations. Therefore, Maine’s nearly 400,000 licensed sportsmen would be left with a spruce-spired Disney World for summer tourists and a winter wonderland off limits to hunting and trapping. Think about it.

And think about the resurrection of the Non-hunters Rights Alliance, with the backing of the U.S. Humane Society. The latter, you must know, is a well-heeled, totally anti-hunting and anti-trapping organization. With it supporting the NHRA’s proposal of reverse posting – requiring that land open to hunting be posted accordingly – the message rings as clearly as the calling of geese: brace yourself for another anti-hunting battle the likes of which we fought and won decisively in the 1992 Legislature. You can bet, however, the battleground this time around will be the referendum process.

Also, if you’ve kept your ear to the ground you’ve heard rumors of budget cuts in the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, including disposition of vehicles. What is this, deja vu? Wasn’t the issue of “poaching” the department’s money – dedicated funds – also thrashed and beaten and buried during the 1992 Legislature? It appears that many of the outdoors issues Maine people stood their ground on a few years ago are coming to the surface again.

Additionally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is aiming at the elimination of lead shot for upland hunting. Right now, the service’s sights are set on banning the use of lead shot on 51 national wildlife refuges in its Northeast Region. But you can bet that proposal will spread like a charge of No. 9s fired from a cylinder-bore shotgun.

Actually, nontoxic-shot conversions were proposed for some refuges at the beginning of the 1995-96 hunting season. Among them was the Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Milford. However, written comments from state agencies and the National Rifle Association were generally critical of the USFWS for proposing to implement or expand use of nontoxic shot on refuges without adequate notice and educational outreach to hunters. Therefore, the service delayed the effective date of new nontoxic shot regulations until the 1996-97 hunting season, allowing more time for public response.

Now, my response to this matter isn’t going to put me in the good graces of some people, but I didn’t take this job with the idea of winning a popularity contest. I’m convinced, as I’ve said before, that anti-hunting bias is growing within the ranks of the USFWS as retirements and vacancies are filled by young nonhunting liberals. And don’t think that’s not the case in Maine’s DIFW – which is funded solely by sportsmen’s money.

In my opinion, the USFW’s expanded nontoxic shot proposal, which you can rest assured eventually will become mandatory nationwide, is another indication of anti-hunting bias. My reasons for saying that are this: first, the cost of nontoxic shot is prohibitive to most middle-income hunters. That, along with the increase in posted land is enough to make many hunters give up the gun, so to speak.

Second, from what I hear and see, the word “hunting” is barely whispered by the aforementioned younger ranks of the USFWS. Conversely, their vernacular is profuse with the terms “endangered species” and “threatened species.”

Accordingly, I thought the USFWS jumped the gun on making steel shot mandatory for waterfowl hunting in this country. It didn’t make sense to me that hunters could use lead shot for dove hunting in fields where they were required to use steel shot for ducks and geese. And if you’ve shot doves you know that more shells are fired at those deceptively swift, darting targets than are ever fired at waterfowl.

Further to that, hunters who participate in driven bird shoots at private clubs tell me they shoot lead loads at pheasants, but while standing at the same stations, they have to switch to steel shot when shooting waterfowl. Also, it doesn’t make sense to me that lead shot is still legal in Canada and Central and South America.

If any of that makes sense to you, Sport, I wish you’d explain it to me. In the meantime, keep your ear to the ground and be ready to protect your heritage and the outdoors traditions and cultures that are Maine.