1. Deer baiting is a time-honored practice. For less than twenty years the NHF&G has been keeping track of the number of people baiting by requiring baiters to submit a completed, and signed by the property owners a baiting permit. Over 90% of people that hunt over bait are archery hunters are statistics provided by the Boone & Crockett club, the Pope & Young and Safari Club International. During the time of the required baiting permit Deer hunting by archers has grown over 200% nationally in addition to NH. The NHF&G has absolutly no statistics of the number of deer that are shot by hunters over bait. Unlike when a bear is tagged and checked in the hunter is required to identify the method of take, as to how the bear was harvested by checking a box on the registration paper presented by the CO. Since this is not done for deer NHF&G has no biological or statistical evidence to present about how many deer are harvested by baiting. In 2006 NHF&G limited the number of baits to, two per hunter. This act resulted in many families that only had the head of family as the person submitting baiting permits now having additional members of the family submitting permits. This resulted in the statistic that there was an increase to the number of people submitting baiting permits. When in fact while more people were submitting baiting permits, about the same number of people were baiting in 2006 as there was in 2005.  NHF&G gave me information that in 2006 there were 27,804 archery licenses sold with 2,978 deer harvested which was 10.7% success rate for archers which is only 25% of the three methods to legally take deer, archery, muzzle loading and rifle. The evidence that these figures represent is that archery and baiting are not a threat to the deer resources in the state of NH, but rather an acceptable method of management.   
   
   
2. Contacted the three organizations that are the recognized and highly acclaimed leading authorities on hunting, nationally and internationally, by the hunting and non hunting communities, The Boone and Crockett Club, The Pope and Young Club, and The Safari Club International all view and acknowledge baiting as a fair chase method. So people that say baiting is not fair chase fly in the face of the acknowledged experts within the hunting community on hunting methods.
   
   
3. Over 90% of bait sites, are used strictly by archery hunters. The average archery hunter has an effective killing range of 20 yds. Or less. That is 60’, or less. Due to the low deer densities in many parts of NH and the thickness of the woods it is often necessary to have a designated place that deer will come to in order to have a sighting. Noted deer expert and writer DR. John Ozoga of the University of Michigan, retired, has been able to establish scientifically that deer have the intelligence equal to that of an extremely intelligent dog, they also have extremely keen senses of sight, smell and hearing, and will not come to an area that has any evidence of recent human activity. Setting bait is no guarantee of animals presenting themselves for an ethical shot.
   
   
4. Food plots are the equivalent of spreading bait. Food plots are used only by the people that have access to large tracts of land at their use. The vast majority of hunters do not have access to properties where they will be allowed to establish food plots. By allowing food plots and not baiting there is an inequity between people that do have access to these types of resources and those that do not have access to those types of resources. Most food plots which are usually less than one acre about 200’X200’ are hunted over by people using firearms not archery, which is the reverse of hunting over bait. That certainly is an area that is more easily covered by a firearm than a bait by an archer.
   
   
5. New Hampshire has an unbalanced buck to doe ratio.  Noted Deer Biologists DR. John Ozoga from the University of Michigan, retired, and Dr Lawrence Weihsoon University of Texas, retired, have scientifically established the ideal buck to doe ratio to be no greater than a 2 doe to 1-buck to doe ratio. In many areas NH has as high as a 4 to 1 ratio. To bring the herd in balance it is necessary to reduce the doe to buck ratio to the 2 to 1 ratio. The vast majority of the deer that come into a bait are does, and young deer that are more susceptible to winter mortality. Looking through the deer mortality biology data can provide this information. Large bucks very rarely visit any area that has any human scent during daylight hours and even more rarely shot at bait sites. They did not get to be large old deer by exhibiting careless behavior. Their genes are rarely removed from the herd gene pool by baiting.
   
   
6. Some of the reasons that are being cited for instituting the ban on baiting is to prevent the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease or CWD which is not present in our state and tuberculosis. This claim of a link between CWD, tuberculosis and baiting is not completely factual and is not addressed by this bill. CWD and tuberculosis while spread by close contact of deer; the number of deer at a baited site is a small population from a small area and is done for a relatively short amount of time. With baiting being done at a time of year that there is still a reasonable amount of food easily available. If CWD and tuberculosis were to be seriously managed a very different plan must be implemented. Fist there would be the need to ban all deer feeding year round. During the winter large numbers of deer come to a feeding area from great distances. The chance of spreading the diseases is much greater in this stead. It is done for much longer periods of time, at a time of the year that food is scarce for the deer and travel is difficult often causing the deer to expend more energy resources than is regained from feeding. This encourages the deer to yard together in higher numbers that would occur naturally. Food plots also have the same effect as feeding deer, because the crops often remain well into winter, although with the added negative effect of not lasting through the winter. Food plots are an attractant that last for an extremely long time. They start growing at green up and the deer start feeding in early spring and go through the spring, summer, fall, into but not through winter. The real danger from the spread of CWD comes from game farms, movement of animals between game farms, animals escaping from game farms, and the contaminated deer feed that is fed to game farm animals. There is a much higher threat of CWD being spread to our wild heard by people buying and using contaminated feed than by baiting. Commercial feed, which is what is predominantly used by people only feeding deer, is vastly more popular than any other material, l that people are feeding deer with. People that bait traditionally, and overwhelmingly use apples or corn. Natural foods, not man made foods, unlike people that feed deer.
   
   
7. While this bill may not be viewed as an anti-hunting bill, the way this bill is presented it is aimed at hunters and only hunters, because it only deals with baiting and feeding during the hunting season. The few hunters that oppose it are mostly rifle hunters and less than 1% of archery hunters. Over 98% of the people that hunt over bait are hunting there only with a bow.
   
   The guides of NH realize that their income will be directly affected by the loss of baiting. They also realize that every hunter that no longer uses their services will also result in a loss of revenue for NHF&G. Those people will not suddenly decide to go out on their own, they will go to another state that can accommodate them or not go at all, then we loose more future hunters as the result. Of the hunters that use my services, approximately 85% are either new to the sport or are looking for instruction on how to become observant woodsmen/women and hunters. They are usually very happy to see a deer and often will take the first one that present an ethical shot. The roughly15% that has experience are looking for older animals and are usually firearms hunters. The only hunters that I guided last year that hunted over bait were17 out of state archery hunters that averaged 3.75 days hunting a piece. Their total license sales come to $3264.00. When an out of state hunter goes on a guided hunt and paid for that hunt they expect a reasonable chance at seeing deer if not harvesting one. Baiting, does give them a reasonable chance. Not only is this true, it is what they believe. I have been able to establish that passing bill HB 604 will cost the state  $3264.00 in out of state license sale of the hunters that used my services if the ban is instituted. I have spoken with each one of my past clients and they have informed me that they will not return to hunt in NH if HB 604 is passed. The $3264.00 is only for sales of out of state licenses for people that only use my services. I know where my clients stayed when they were here and I can calculate that at the 8% Rooms & Meals portion of the tax yielded an additional $488.12 of revenue that will also be lost to the state. This does not include the taxes that are generated from meals eaten out or from taxes collected from the purchase of fuel for their vehicles. These figures also do not include revenues that were generated from other family members that were in the area when my clients were in the field with me.
   
   From the 17 hunters there were 4 deer harvested and a total of 26 deer sighted. Twenty-two of the deer either did not present an ethical shot or did not come into the bait. The average time per hunter spent hunting was 39.4hr hunted with a total of 669.4 hours hunted by all 17 hunters. For the four deer that were harvested that comes to an average of 167.3 hrs. hunted per deer. That 167.3hrs hunted per deer is a far cry from the implied perception that this is done only for immediate gratification. The 4 deer shot were 1, 4 point buck that weighed 134 lbs, a 2.5 year old deer, 1, 7 point buck that went 151lbs a 3.5 year old deer, 1 doe that went 123 lbs and was a 5.5 year old deer and a doe that was 114 lbs and was 4.5 year old. Both does had other deer with them that did not present ethical shots, no large bucks were observed with the does. It is very time consuming method to harvest an animal and very labor intensive method to carry 70lb packs a half-mile into the woods 10 times at each site to leave an adequate amount of bait. This must be done 10 days to two weeks prior to any human visits so that all evidence of humans has dissipated. A hunter has to be very stealthy to have a chance at an ethical harvest. The slightest movement seen, the quietest non-natural sound heard or the faintest human scent smelled and the hunter will not be successful. The animals will not appear at the sight and present themselves for an ethical harvest. The bottom line is, that this is not an easy way to hunt. Unlike what the proponents of this bill want the public to believe.
   
   
8. In July of 2006 Vermont instituted a ban on baiting which had disastrous results for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. I contacted the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife and I was able to obtain the following information. In 2005 Vermont sold 23,396 archery licenses. In 2006 Vermont sold 16,865 archery licenses, resulting in a loss of 6,531 archery licenses, which is a 28% decrease in sales. Once the ban was in place the sale of archery and out of state hunting licenses slowed drastically nearly stopping.  I was able to calculate the amount lost of licenses revenues to be $717,755.  As of this writing in some areas Vermont archery sales this year are currently 43% behind what they were last year at this time before the baiting ban was put in place. At this pace of economic impact the state of Vermont may have to reexamine it’s decision to ban baiting and reverse it’s 2006 decision.
   
   In applying this data to NH the results would be as follows.  I contacted   NHF&G and obtained the following information. In 2006 there were
   27,804 archery licenses sold. In 2007 the expected sales would fall by      an estimated 7,772 licenses which is 28%, to a total of 20,032. Which would result in an expected revenue loss of $ 1,044,488. With the existing economic shortfall for the NHF&G they cannot afford any further budget reduction. The unrestricted NHF&G budget for 2006 was approximately $11,000,000, 1,044,488 is 9.5% of the unrestricted budget. How is that money going to be replaced for a department that is already underfunded? In addition with the economic crises we are now experiencing, the state can not afford to loose revenue from other sources such as the Rooms & Meals tax and the taxes on fuel Etc.
   These are real figures based on real loss of licenses sales, which accurately represent what happened in Vermont and what will happen in New Hampshire, unlike the fabricated estimate of the economic impact of being less than $10,000 per year for the next four years. This will be economically devastating to the NHF&G and the state of NH now and for many years to come. With our state and the NHF&G currently in financial crises now, do we really want to listen to proposals that have no biological or scientific facts to support their claims?

In closing I urge the committee to consider the ramifications to the people whose livelihoods will be affected by HB 604 in addition to the significant financial impact to the NHF&G and the state treasury. Then support a recommendation of inexpedient to legislate.

Wayne A. Derby
Licensed NH Master Guide: Hunting Guide Lic. # 23: Fishing Guide Lic. # 36
Leave No Trace: Master Trainer
Wilderness Education Association: Certified National Outdoor Leader & Instructor

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