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Tymoczko deserves Fitpatrick Award

As an avid reader of your paper and a longtime football enthusiast, I am writing to recommend to all voters Nick Tymoczko from Bucksport High School for this year’s Fitzpatrick Award. If there ever was a year when a Class C football player deserves the award, it is this year.

I have been around football my entire life as the son of a coach, player at the high school and college level, and as a fan of high school football. Nick Tymoczko would be a star in any class in this state. He is clearly one of the most gifted runners in the state with a rare combination of speed, quickness, and explosive power to break tackles. Nick is 5 feet, 10 inches and 180 pounds with the ability to make people miss or to run over anyone in his way. His statistics this year tell most of the story. He has rushed for 2,071 yards and 33 touchdowns in nine games, both LTC records. Nick is a multi-talented player who returns punts (one for touchdown), kicks, and has three interceptions (one for a touchdown).

A leader on and off the field, Nick spends countless hours as a volunteer youth football coach and with other recreation department activities. His leadership extends to school where he has been co-president of his class twice and a leader on several fund-raising projects. Nick was also a Hugh O’Brien award winner as a sophomore at BHS.

There has been a notable lack of coverage of the outstanding year Nick Tymoczko has had in this year, particularly in the southern part of the state. He epitomizes what the Fitzpatrick Trophy is all about and should be the leading contender for the award as he helps lead the Bucksport Golden Bucks to the state championship game.

Robert Carmichael Jr.

Bucksport

Bear management can be handled differently

I read John Holyoke’s article about Question 2 (bear baiting) this Saturday morning (Nov. 6) and he hit the nail on the head – almost.

One of the major thrusts of the article was the biased exaggeration of points on both sides of the question. Most of the advertisements by those for the referendum showed a trapped, scared bear in pain being shot at close range by a hunter whose face was always blurred out. Holyoke and Jennifer Vashon both pointed out only a very small percentage of the bear harvest is by trapping. On the other side, if Vashon believes the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s current method of bear management is the best method or – even worse – the only method to manage our bear population, she is terribly naive.

As the director of engineering on the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, I was responsible for several surveying crews on Prince of Wales Island. The island is about 120 miles long, varies greatly in width and contains approximately 1,000,000 acres of forest land. The island probably has the highest concentration of black bears of any area in the world. The survey crews worked 10 days on and four days off while in the field. A simple farm-style electric fence kept the bears at bay during the four days off.

We also had between 50 and 75 recreation cabins spread throughout the forest. Each cabin had a prominent sign warning people not to leave food around to attract the bears. We did not even remind people when steelhead fishing during a salmon run to be alert for black bears. That would be between those fishing and the black bears. There was never a problem in the seven years I was there.

Many times, while fishing for steelhead, however, I could hear a bear chomping and cavorting around the next bend in the stream. After retiring from the forest service, I purchased a set of sporting camps on Sebec Lake. I never did any guiding myself, but rented our camps to Wayne Bosowicz during bear hunting season.

I mention these instances only to suggest I may have more “bear stories” than most people in the DIF&W, including a few personal encounters with brown bears.

Now to my suggestions for solving the “bear problem” in Maine. The black bears in this state do not belong to the DIF&W or even the licensed hunters in Maine. They belong to the public in general. If that public decides there should be no hunting, no black bear hunting or some restricted black bear hunting, that is the way it should be and the wildlife biologists should be prepared to manage the wildlife to that end. If managing wildlife in such a manner does not appeal to them, they should get a job somewhere else.

Some management techniques that appeal to me are: 1) no trapping of bears except nuisance bears and no leg traps unless absolutely necessary; 2) severely limit the number of hounds in anyone hunt and no high-tech instruments used to keep track of the dogs; 3) anyone who wants to bait bears pays a sizable fee for each bait location.

I felt kind of sorry for the lady who owns “Crooked Tree Camps.” However, she does not have a “God-given right” to those bear. They belong to all of us.

Stephen Law

Dover-Foxcroft

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