Status Quo on Geauga Park District Hunting Areas
The Geauga Park District Board of Commissioners recently voted to maintain the same number of hunting locations as last year and avoid a…
The Geauga Park District Board of Commissioners recently voted to maintain the same number of hunting locations as last year and avoid a potential scaling back of the hunting program.
At its Aug. 13 board meeting, they agreed to keep most of last year’s locations in place.
However, The West Woods in Russell Township will not be available for this year’s hunt. Instead, the park district may utilize Big Creek Park in Chardon Township.
“When we do a controlled hunt on Big Creek, we have to close the park,” park district Marketing and Administrative Services Director Paige Orvis said after the meeting.
She said The West Woods has a program going on this year. If Big Creek Park is not available because of a prior reservation, it may be skipped, Orvis added.
Naturalist Paul Pira first gave a presentation urging the park board to reduce the number of properties hunters could hunt on.
“Maybe we should scale back and use the time to evaluate the numbers of property that hunters can hunt on,” Pira said during the meeting. “How many hunters are out there? How can we track them?”
Executive Director Tom Curtin said it will take time to evaluate the program. However, both residents and park board commissioners objected, citing a late-September start date for the 2013 hunting season.
“The board does not wish to scale back the program and voted to keep it running the way it has,” Orvis said after the meeting.
The board also suggested the park district create stricter enforcement of how hunters report the deer they harvest on park district land.
The park district was having problems with hunters not turning in data sheets to the park district to verify how many animals they had killed.
Commissioner Jim Patterson suggested if a hunter in the program does not return his tag to the park district, he may not be considered for a future hunt.
“Don’t go backward; go forward,” Thompson Township resident Lonnie Sparkman told Curtin.
Munson Township resident Dave McNaughton, who lives next to Bass Lake Preserve, spoke about the impor-tance of hunting.
“It’s been in my family since 1932,” he said of his property.
After the meeting, McNaughton said he knows hunters who successfully cull deer on their own property, near Geauga Park District land, and turn in their “deer tags” as required by the state.
However, those residents did not turn in their park district data sheets, since the deer were not taken on park land.
“The deer originated from the park district land, wandered onto the hunter’s property nearby and he took (killed) them,” McNaughton said after the meeting. “Although he turned in his tags, he did not turn in the data sheets last year, as he felt he didn’t need to do so. After all, the deer were on his property when he killed (them).”
McNaughton said he hoped the park district could encourage hunters to turn their park district data sheets into the appropriate park district officials.
“There’s a lot more to the hunt than the hunt itself,” McNaughton said, adding his father got him into the sport.
“The camaraderie and bond of hunting is priceless,” he said.
Information about the 2013-2014 hunting season, including an application, can be found at www.geaugaparkdistrict.org/nrmcontrolledhunting.shtml.
