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JUST ANOTHER GOVERNMENT
BLUNDER
By Ron Wilson
November 27, 2003.... After several years
of hunting game refugees I decided to get into the drawing for a spot to
hunt ducks and geese at Modesto Reservoir. I got a few friends together
and we filled out 5 cards, at $35 a piece, for our chance.
Drawing day came and there were over 200
people present. The big influx of participates for the duck blind draw was
due to Woodward Reservoir being drained. All the waterfowl hunters at
Woodward came to try their luck at getting a spot at Modesto Reservoir.
Draw time came and the numbers were slowly
pulled from the drum. About the fourth number called, to everybody's
surprise, up comes a 4 or possibly 5 year old lad. There were lots
of protests from the crowd since the kid was not big enough to hold a
shotgun let alone shoot it!
Many quoted DFG laws about legal hunting
age etc. to the County Employee in charge, but it was like talking to a
stonewall. She was going to award the youngster a hunting spot no matter
what anybody said. Now it was unlikely that the young lad could even fill
out the application card so it was evident to every hunter there that
something was wrong with this picture!
The county doesn't have any idea what they
are doing or how to enforce their own rules as far as I am concerned! One
of the application rules states that In order to get a blind permit all
applicants must be present at the time of the drawing!
The young lad had the same name as his dad
who obviously applied for the permit. Of course the county employee didn't
know that! I couldn't believe it when they actually let the lad get away
with the deception! Now here is the sticker that really pisses me off, not
only did the county employee let the young lad get away with the lie but
they gave the blind spot to his grandfather who brought him up to the
check in!
As a grandfather myself I could only wonder
what type of example this grandfather was teaching his grandson
and what type of decisions the lad would make in the future because of his
grandfathers action. If there is one thing I know about kids at that age
is you only have to show them once and they will remember what they are
not supposed to for the rest of their life!
Did the lad walk away with thoughts "Boy
it really pays to deceive people!". Has the seed been planted that If I
want or do something wrong from now on all I have to do is lie about it
because grandfather thinks its OK!
The sad part is that Stanislaus County
helped with this deception showing the youngster that it pays to
deceive County Employees to get what you want in life!
I kept waiting for one of our names to be
drawn. However when the drawing ended, I was without a place to hunt. Bad
luck! Well, so I thought!
Come late October I found out that we
weren't even entered in the lottery! I got a call saying they had found
our entry cards and the money I paid in another safe they had! For my
efforts I got my money back and a "we're sorry!"
Big Deal, the idea was to try and get a
place to hunt, not waste a trip to drop off cards that weren't placed in
the proper area and then a couple more trips to retrieve my money!
I guess the county has so much money coming
in that they need several safes just to hold it all! Its no wonder the
right hand doesn't know what the left one is doing in government!
I think every person that attended the
drawing and didn't get picked for the duck blind lottery at Modesto
Reservoir should not only get their money back but they should also be
compensated for the time they had to spend there. I figured our time was
well worth $500 to wait patiently for a name to be drawn that was never
put in the drum!
I can't help but wonder how many other
application entries and fees have become misplaced or lost over the years
and the sportsmen who sent them in never even found out about it!
The county pulled in about $10,000 for the
blind permit lottery at Modesto Reservoir this year. Maybe they should use
that money to do an internal accounting of how they run the process! |
