Hunters tend to take hunting very seriously. As do the government officials who regulate it. Just like baseball fans, hunters are always second guessing the professional managers: the bureaucrats and egg-heads who decide where, what, when and how they can hunt. Most of the time, the hunters kvetch without cause. Some of the time, they’re right: they’re getting stiffed. To wit: “Plantation owners can shoot virtually as many alligators as they want, even from a comfortable distance with a rifle and scope,” outh Carolina’s postandcourier.com reports. “They also can hold safari-style hunts for guests, sometimes for a fee, during the fall hunting season.” And everyone else? “{Regular] people have to apply for a blind draw to win a permit to hunt one alligator, pay a $100 fee, somehow snare the thrashing, quarter-ton reptile and drag it in to be killed with a bang stick or a handgun — as a safety measure to keep hunters from shooting the animals at a distance.” [official rules here] So why is it one law for some Palmetto State gator hunters and one law for others?
Class warfare and political fixing, of course.
One in every three alligators killed during the public-hunt season last year was killed on a private, riverside plantation — a total 225 gators. Berkeley County plantations led the private hunt with 66 alligators, 30 percent of the statewide total.
Three of every four of those animals were killed at one plantation, Buck Hall.
The private land provision was added to the alligator hunting law by Rep. David Umphlett, R-Moncks Corner, who said at the time that it would help large property owners control the number of gators. Umphlett is a part-owner of Buck Hall.
“I don’t see a thing wrong with what we’re doing,” he said last week. “We own our land. We’ve got an investment we’re trying to protect.”
To quote Tonto, what do you mean “we” white man?
