UPDATE/Ohio Division of Wildlife writes Fiscal 2019 in red link, likely to repeat in 2020

Officials with the Ohio Division of Wildlife believe the agency’s finances are “okay” though “not great.”

This, in spite of the fact the Wildlife Division had expenditures that exceeded revenues. In Fiscal Year 2019 the agency saw an $8.4 million red-ink gap between what went out money-wise and what came in.

And Fiscal 2020 is likely to see a negative disparity between expenses and income, Wildlife Division officials say as well.

For Fiscal 2019 – and as seen as part of an informative section in the Wildlife Division’s annual calendar – expenditures totaled nearly $81 million. Meanwhile, income totaled some $72.6 million.

A more specific breakdown of where the money came from and where it was spent is summarized into two accompanying pie charts.

The last time the Wildlife Division took in more money than it received was Fiscal 2018.

Still, the Wildlife Division does encounter years where more goes out for projects, services and such than it takes in as receipts from the sale of licenses, fees associated with special taxes, and monies generated from federal aid dollars.

“I think we’re doing okay but I wouldn’t put it as great,” said Todd Haines, a Wildlife Division assistant chief. “We’re holding our own.”

Speaking to specifics was Kelley Moseley, the agency’s administrator charged with handling the agency’s books, along with Brian Banbury, the head of the Wildlife Division’s information and education section.

Moseley noted, for instance, how in Fiscal 2019 the Wildlife Division undertook some large expenses. Among them being a land purchase in Hardin County.

Much work remains at revamping and rehabilitating the agency’s popular Spring Valley shooting range and the one at the Delaware Wildlife Area, too; each of which have been in dire need of upgrades and maintenance.

Likewise, such ranges will remain a priority for the agency with eventual improvements in mind for the one located at the Grand River Wildlife Area in Trumbull County, both Haines and Moselely say.

“We have a lot of catching up to do,” Moseley said. “Our goal is to make these ranges as safe as possible.”

An area where the Wildlife Division is legally bound to spend large sums money is employee wages and the accompanying fringe benefits. Lumped under the pie chart banners of “Wildlife Management,” “Fish Management,” and “Wildlife Officers,” these expenses are demands that can be controlled but are difficult to contain.

One method is to reduce the number of employees, which Haines says the agency has done. The Wildlife Division has shrunk its full-time workforce from 425 employees five years ago to 380 now, Haines said.

As for land acquisition, this line item will always be a feature, the three agency officials say.

However, the purchase of up to 60,000 acres in four southeast Ohio is a fiscal expenditure that won’t show up in the Wildlife Division’s standard pie chart calendar feature. This property assignment is eagerly being worked on by the Wildlife Division, and represents something unique for the agency and likely will be seen under a different reporting format, Haines said.

“This is the first time we’ve received (General Revenue Fund) money from the legislature,” he said.

Speaking of revenue, those arriving dollars and cents are often difficult to peg. Such unknowns includes calculating how much additional revenue can be expected as the result of the fee increases for certain types of fishing and hunting licenses.

“(Fiscal) 2020 will be the first full year those dollars will be showing up, and we’ll see how much,” Moseley said.

Moseley did say an area of income that is out of range of the Wildlife Division to exercise revenue enhancement is the all-important “Federal Aid” dollars. In the Wildlife Division’s Fiscal Year 2019 pie chart this slice was the largest, beating out income derived from either the sale of fishing or hunting licenses.

In fact, this $23.8 million federal aid ledger notation was nearly equal to combining the receipts of both hunting and fishing license sales.

The thing is, Moseley says, so goes the sale of fishing tackle, firearms, ammunition, and archery tackle so goes federal aid money. That is because a federal excise tax on these products fuels the government’said-in-restoration for fish and wildlife projects is apportioned to the states for approved projects and activities.

Thus with fewer firearms and ammunition being sold, the Wildlife Division anticipates seeing a drop in revenues from this source, says Moseley.

Holding its own is the amount of money the Wildlife Division gets from the collection of a certain portion of the state’s motor fuel tax. This allowance was the Ohio legislature’s acknowledgment how the state’s anglers and boaters buy fuel, too. Consequently, the programs which benefit these end-users should see some of the state’s motor fuel tax money.

In Fiscal 2019 the Wildlife Division was the recipient of nearly $2.4 million in state gasoline sales tax receipts.

In the end, the officials say, the Wildlife Division is tasked not only with minding fish and game resources but also husbanding the dollars and cents that pay for these items.

“It’s just like operating a company,” Moseley said.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com

Ohio's plan requiring coyote hunters to buy a trapping license an epic mistake

The poorly vetted proposal to require coyote hunters to buy a trapping tag first certainly shows how out of step are the Ohio Division of Wildlife and the Ohio State Trappers Association.

Just as the two tried to do in 2018 with a went-down-in-flames attempt to create a season on the taking of bobcats.

You might hear all kinds of stories how wiser state natural resources heads prevailed, with the matter eventually scuttled by the eight-member Ohio Wildlife Council.

Yet the fact is the agency – with blessing of trappers - put the idea on the market and attempted to sell the lemon. Thus the Wildlife Division owns it in larger measure.

So you’d think the couple would have learned from their epic 2018 bobcat blunder. They haven’t, and are now engaged in an idea of equal harebrained gobbledygook. This is a coyote clinker of an idea.

What the Wildlife Division is floating is the leaded balloon concept that hunters – not just trappers – be required to buy a trapping license before being allowed to shoot/kill/take a coyote.

That requirement would lasso not just a determined fur hunter who intends to gut, skin and sell the hide of a coyote but also the casual archery or gun hunter who takes aim at a coyote running underneath his or her deer stand.

Compounding things is the idea of an actual season on coyotes, complete with a closure.

A reason for the season being bandied about is that most of Ohio’s neighbors have coyote seasons. However, that “But, Dad, EVERYONE is doing it” excuse is correctly rejected by any responsible adult. But “responsible” is not always visible in the Wildlife Division’s windshield.

Alas, these two-pea-in-a-misinformed pod just cannot grasp that coyotes are invasive. They are dangerous. They are pests. They are not like other furbearers.

You don’t see possums sneaking into suburban backyards and pilfering puppies let out to do their business. Skunks do not attack Columbus police officers. Fathers in New Hampshire do not have to strangle raccoons that attack their children; like one “Live Free Or Die” Granite State dad did to a coyote on January 20th.

Nor have any trail camera photos appeared on Facebook of a weasel making off with a fawn deer clutched in its jaws.

That is because coyotes are different; a difference the Wildlife Division and the state trappers group stubbornly refuse to acknowledge.

Just as sadly the Wildlife Division never seems to stop putting its fingers into the back pockets of sportsmen, either. Even the $72.6 million the agency collected in Fiscal 2019 doesn’t seem to satisfy Wildlife Division officials.

Instead, these officials are all in for trying to reverse the decline in the number of trapping licenses issued - and the monies derived from them - by exploiting the wallets of hunters who might take pot shots at passing coyotes.

The push to establish a bobcat season was nonsense. And the shove to demand that hunters first take a trapping course and then buy a trapping tag just in order to take a poke at a coyote is a trumpery even more bizarre and outlandish.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com

Man pleads guilty to involuntary mansalughter in 2018 Ashtabula County hunting incident

After pleading guilty to one charge of involuntary manslaughter and another charge of having a weapon while under disability, an Ashtabula County man is facing up to six years in prison and potentially up to several thousand dollars in fines.

All for a fatal hunting incident that occurred Sunday, November 2^nd, 2018 at

about 6 a.m.; one day before the start of that year’s Ohio’s seven-day firearms deer-hunting season.

Pleading guilty to two remaining charges – three other charges were dismissed

– was Anthony Leonard Marcrom of Cleveland.

The plea were made December 18th before Ashtabula County Common Please Court Judge Gary L. Yost.

Sentencing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m., February 24th, also before Judge Yost, said Ashtabula County Prosecutor Cecilia Cooper.

Marcrom pleaded guilty to causing the death of Jared Micah Windler of Saybrook Township.

Based on an extensive investigation led by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources along with the Ashtabula County Sheriff's Department, Windler was struck by a shot fired when Marcrom hoisted via a rope a muzzle-loading rifle into a tree stand, located about 15 to 20 feet from the ground.

This investigation determined that Windler was standing at the base of the tree when the muzzle-loader discharged as it was being pulled through branches.

The projectile struck Windler on the left side of his forehead, killing the man instantly, the investigation concluded.

Cooper also said alcohol was a contributing factor in the incident.

The prosecutor said as well her office will review the required pre-sentencing report before recommending any punishment for Marcrom.

“Our main thought is that this was terrible, horrible tragedy, and nothing we can do, no sentencing that can be given, will bring back Mr. Windler’s life nor ease the grief his family will always feel,” Cooper said.

The muzzle-loading rifle has been forfeited, too, likely to be turned over the Wildlife Division, Cooper said.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

JFrischk4@gmail.com