[Jeff Higgins]

Outstanding!

On a serious note, however, such inane b.s. has kept into the hunting and fishing regulations of most of the lower 48. I well remember when I was much younger, and the hunting regulations for Washington were maybe three to four pages, including advertisements. Today they are somewhere between 70-90 pages, with a bewildering array of license and tag options, special hunt applications, "master hunter" only units and seasons, the state divided into hundreds of "game management units", horribly short and divided seasons, antler restrictions by unit and date, and on and on.

Hunter participation is at an all-time low. Our illustrious Game Department claims to be at a loss as to how to encourage more hunters to take the field, but many of us suspect that they really no longer want us to hunt, much less be successful. I no longer hunt in my home state, and I know many who will not.

Another fine example of an unaccountable government bureaucracy, responsible for its own rules and enforcement, losing sight of its real mission. Their self-fulfilling mission has become to simply write more rules.