Advertisement
News
This week DNR Law Enforcement busted up an extensive poaching ring in Dodge and Laurens counties and served seven individuals with warrants on 113 poaching-related charges. “In my 28 years with DNR Law Enforcement, I have worked a lot of cases, and I have never seen anything like it,” said Section Supervisor Sgt. Keith Byers.…
When DNR enforcement officers began looking closer at two men charged with turkey-related violations in south Georgia, it sparked an investigation that could bust up wide-spread illegal-hunting activities in and around Dodge and Laurens counties. On April 18, Ranger Johnny Ashe charged William Stacy Jones, of Eastman, with possession of illegally taken wildlife and hunting…
On April 3, Eastanollee’s Terry McConnell caught a Lake Russell striper that pulled a set of certified propane scales to 63 1/4 pounds. That translates to 63-lbs., 4-ozs., which would beat the current Georgia state record. However, because the scales did not read in 1-oz. graduations, Georgia DNR may not accept Terry’s fish as the…
It may not be as bad as originally expected, but the WMA cuts settled on by the Wildlife Resources Division (WRD) are significant — approximately 51,000 acres on three and a half areas, said Mark Whitney, WRD’s Chief of Game Management. Sportsmen should be upset by any cuts to services provided by WRD to hunters…
While the budget news for sportsmen could have been worse, the reality of losing up to a half-dozen Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) is starting to sink in, and rumors of which WMAs will close are spreading through local communities. Dan Forster, director of the Wildlife Resources Division (WRD), said he could not yet identify which…
About 200 hunters packed a recent Gilmer County meeting, upset over what they heard were the county commission’s intentions for the Cartecay Tract, a state-owned property east of Ellijay managed by WRD as a WMA. While some may have had hopes to develop the Cartecay Tract with more park-like features, hunters had other ideas, and…
An interim rule to close red-snapper fishing in federal waters from North Carolina to Florida was passed in a 7 to 6 vote by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) the first week of March. Once approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMF), the ban could begin as early as June, a devastating…
The key issue for sportsmen during the current Georgia legislative session is the Wildlife Resources Division (WRD) budget. The overall budget for WRD has been cut year after year along with other state agencies, despite sportsmen paying for about 80 percent of their own way through license fees and taxes on sporting equipment. This year,…
“Bringing it Back to the Camp” is the theme for this year’s eighth-annual Country Goes Huntin’ (CGH) event scheduled for March 29-April 1 in Blakely. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since the co-founders of CGH, professional hunter Sam Klement and country artist/songwriter Rhett Akins, held their very first CGH non-profit event.…
It was a bumpy start for DNR’s new outsourced licensing and boater-registration systems, but DNR officials say they are ironing out the glitches. “It’s doing as fine as possible for as complicated a system as we have,” said Licensing and Boater Registration Program Manager David Neyhart. “In the beginning, there were definitely issues where we…