A Civics Lesson

A civics challenge
A few sportsmen writing letters can make a difference

By Tony Dean
For the Argus Leader


Back when Tom Daschle served as Senate Majority Leader, I asked him how many letters and phone calls it would take before he sensed genuine interest in a specific subject.

"Oh, fifteen, maybe twenty," he told me.

Think about that. A mere handful of people can make that much difference. Problem is few sportsmen seem willing to get involved.

I sense an attitude out there that the quality of fishing and hunting in South Dakota has always been great and it's like that everywhere.

Wrong.

We are currently enjoying the "good old days," as we prepare to open the pheasant season on Saturday with the anticipation of seeing the largest number of birds since the waning days of the soil bank program.

Even at the peak of that program, no state enjoyed seeing as many pheasants as an average South Dakotan saw. You see, we - along with North Dakota and perhaps Montana - remain the last of the great bird hunting states. That's why so many hunters travel here.

There's also an attitude among some sportsmen about keeping fish and wildlife issues out of politics.

Truth is, politics permeates virtually every aspect of fishing and hunting. So our task is plain. We must get involved in the political process.

"You bet these are the good old days," Tony Leif, the assistant director of the wildlife division at the S.D. Game, Fish and Parks office in Pierre, told me earlier this week.

He added, "If we want to keep it this way, wildlife professionals and conservation organizations need the help of sportsmen. The congressional delegation expects to hear from us, but it means so much more coming from average sportsmen."

What Leif was saying is that if we ignore issues such as the inclusion of CRP in the Farm Bill, as well as rates high enough to be competitive with current cash rental rates, it will be gone.

So will our pheasants, ducks, and the countless ground nesting songbirds.

So too will be our walk-in program, which piggybacks on the CRP program because there simply isn't and won't be enough to keep it going otherwise.

But don't make the mistake of simply banging out an e-mail and sending it off. Instead, phone your senator's office or write him. No, you probably won't be able to get through for a personal conversation, but a staff member will relay your feelings.

South Dakota Senators Tim Johnson and John Thune are both pro-CRP, but they will get plenty of pressure from those who want to see the program eliminated, and that includes most of big agriculture. They'll be told CRP hurts rural South Dakota and makes it difficult for young farmers to get started.

Nonsense!

Your phone call or letter will help them resist those who wish to do away with CRP. They'll be told CRP helps dry up small towns and drives farmers out of business. That's laughable because there were 77,000 farms and ranches in South Dakota in 1914 and today we're at about 30,000, give or take a few thousand.

That trend began before the CRP program and will continue. Small towns began having trouble as more left the farm, and that's when small town retailers were hurt. They ran out of customers. Today, those small town retailers count on the pheasant season to help make their year.

So let's get back to your role in democracy. It works best when you participate, and contacting your senator via phone or letter is important. They are accountable but can't read your mind.

As mentioned earlier, you can be sure they have already heard from Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited and other conservation organizations. But even those organizations know that hearing from you means more.

"One letter from a sportsman means more than all the work we try to do with the congressional delegations," Jeff Nelson of the Ducks Unlimited Great Plains office in Bismarck, N.D., told me last week.

I believe Nelson is right, and I can only imagine what would happen if 25 sportsmen from each state contacted their senators over the next few days. If that happened, sportsmen could become one of the largest political forces in America.

And that's our civics lesson for this week.

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Tony Dean ... Outdoors, Inc. 1013 North Grand Pierre, SD 57501 (605) 224-5104 FAX (605) 224-2977 E-mail for Tony Dean