I don't really want to turn this into any kind of contest, but I understand what you are saying , but I think you totally missed my point. I understand about tourist dollars very well and have degrees in marketing and management. The problem is that all that talk is just "Pie in the Sky" in my opinion. The facts are that the NR license fees have not created any aditional DNR jobs to speak of, in fact I have been told that there are now fewer actual employees in the Fish and Wildlife division than in the past. Not enough money and exiting employees aren't being replaced. Also here in SE Iowa there are fewer motels, restraunts, and just try to find a good sporting goods store other than Walmart. The closest ones are in Des Moines and Iowa City. Not many deer hunters are going to drive 4 hours to spend some tourism dollars in those sporting good stores. I think if you really check that Iowa's gasoline consumption has also dropped. We have an opposit trickle down effect. Because we have fewer rural residents that consum gas, groceries, resturaunt food and the like, we have fewer of these things because there is no one here to support them the other 10 months of the year. With fewer people paying all combined taxes it is more of a burden. We must still maintain the same roads and highways, the same police departments, social services, schools, and on and on, only with fewer people. Drive arround our country side some time and really look at how many people are here. On a 5 mile strech of road from my house to the nearest small town there were once 14 houses with families, now there are 5 and most are older couples without any children on the land, and now it cost way more to plow the snow and gravel that same road and who pays for it? Certainly not the NR hunter. Take a look some time at the amount of land curently owned by people not living on the land in Davis, Van Buren, and Appanoose counties and then tell us how these celeb hunters have promoted Iowa. I'm not saying that these people should not be able to earn a living, but I am saying that they don't give a rats butt about Iowa. The absoulte only reason for them to come here and hunt is to promote themselves and not Iowa and as long as that is the case I can't see why we should make it so easy for them. Ask Bill Jordan or the Durys how many dollars from their Iowa material were used to buy their hugh holdings in Colorado, Illinos, Wisconsin, or New Mexcio. I don't own land anywhere but here, but I am supporting the hunting that they are promoting, or exploting, much more than they are. Just for the record I don't buy any hunting videos anymore. I do beleive that all this promotion has hurt our, the average resident hunter, hunting. Way fewer acres to hunt, leasing ground, more competetion for the deer has definatly hurt our hunting. With more promotion of Iowa deer comes more affluent hunters from other states who want o own they're own "little bit of heaven". This creates more idle hunting ground which then becomes sactuiaries that only adds to our poor buck doe ratio and we residents are expected to pay for more and more antlerless tags to control the problem, along with higher insurance rates. Yes I feel that all this has hurt our hunting and will lead to a down trend in the deer hunting, which will lead to a devaluation of land prices, oh yes it can and will go down, and on down the slippery slope. I am usually not so gloom and doom but this is a bad day. My whole point is that the Govenor tags don't help us in any way and can be shown to actually hurt our economy so lets stop them. Thanks.
