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About The independent. (Vernonia, Or.) 1986-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 21, 1996)
Page 2 The The INDEPENDENT, August 21,1996 INDEPENDENT Serving the upper Nehalem River valley. Published twice monthly on the first and third Wednesdays of each month, by Public Opinion Laboratory Ltd., 725 Bridge Street, Vernonia, OR 97064, as a free newspaper. Editors and Publishers, Dirk & Noni Andersen (503) 429-9410. ’ v ’ fcfD i How A £zvo ufi u/ubtfi If military action matters, take a good look at Kemp A Letter to the Editor in this issue compares Sena tor Bob Dole’s actions during World War II to President Bill Clinton’s actions during the Vietnam war. The let ter stimulated some questions. If a candidate’s military record is a valid measure of character”, should the method used by a candidate to defer or eliminate a call to active duty also be consid ered? If that is a valid consideration, would it also be valid to look at what the candidate did during the peri od covered by the exemption? Jack Kemp, Dole’s vice-presidential running mate, is a case in point. Kemp was a private in the Army Re serve at the time his unit was called to active duty, in 1961 during the Berlin crisis. As a quarterback in the National Football League, Kemp was a wealthy, noted athlete in superb physical condition, but he didn’t join his unit. Instead, he ob tained a medical exemption on the basis that an in jured shoulder made him unfit for duty. Then he played football, throwing the ball for 2,686 yards and 15 touchdowns, leading the San Diego Chargers to a di vision title the same year. Let’s review Clinton’s deferment. As a student, Bill Clinton was neither wealthy nor well-known, but he qualified for, and obtained, a stu dent deferment. He was a good student who earned a Rhodes Scholarship for exceptional academic accom plishment, then used it to attend Oxford University. As a student, he - and many thousands of American stu dents - demonstrated against America’s involvement in Vietnam. The comparison: Clinton had a student deferment and worked hard as a student. Kemp had a medical exemption and worked hard on the football field. Interesting. U/ÉZ.C z re be 8 IK € o a Z Trte .S iòe WALKS, A/M TAY I AZ 6 TO OUT-MA^ZFl/VfA «owe AV THE TRUCK b lb /v ‘T -Ï WoAI< Too W E L C < ! ! B y Dale Webb, m em ber Izaak Walton League, Nehalem Valley Chapter My last column seemed to stir up the dan der of our local district wildlife biologist. We had a two-hour discussion over the phone and I believe we came to the conclusion to agree to disagree. I’m not saying that our district wildlife biologist is a slacker, because I feel he is a dedicated biologist who is trying to do a very difficult job. Our differences pivot on my need for facts and figures; when things don’t add up, I need facts and figures to show me why. So far, ODF&W hasn't been able to sup ply valid answers to the questions. Here’s another mathematical problem for you p ro b le m -so lv e rs out there. ODF&W claims that there are over 8,000 elk in the Saddle Mountain Unit. They also say this ex ceeds the objective for the unit (how they came up with 8,000 I do not know) and this is their justification for cow hunts. The brain teaser is that the ODF&W count of the elk herd for 1995 showed the following composi tion: bulls per 100 cows-20, calves per 100 cows-44. Herd composition counts are con Anyone who is toying with the idea of running for ducted after bull season so the bulls that are mayor or city council in Vernonia or Banks needs to counted are spike bulls that are protected by get down to City Hall now and pick up the nominating the 3-pt. rule, plus the branch antlered bulls that escaped harvest. I feel it is safe to as petitions. It doesn’t cost anything to run unless the candidate sume that most of these bulls would live until spends money on signs and ads, but the value to your the next hunting season, barring a bad winter. If I remember my algebra correctly, the for community is incalculable if you have the desire and mula of X=20/164 x X should give me the time to study issues facing small towns today. number of bulls that exist in any given popula In Vernonia, City Hall is open Monday through Fri tion for X. My calculator says that for a herd of day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Papers must be completed 8,000 animals, there would be 975 bulls walk ing around in the woods come hunting sea and returned no later than 5 p.m. on Aug. 26. In Banks, City Hall is open Monday through Friday son, with most of them being legal for harvest. from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., or call 324-5112 to make oth That sounds great, but we are harvesting only about 400 bulls a year. If we include poaching er arrangements. Papers must be completed and re and crippling loss, and estimate that total bull turned no later than 5 p.m. on Aug. 27. harvest was actually around 600, that would If you’re curious, check it out. It is sometimes hard still leave us with an annual gain in bull popu lation of 375 animals. The flaw is that, in just 2 work, but it’s also a good education. years, the bull population would be nearly double the 975 bulls we began with! We would be harvesting many more bulls and a lot of older bulls - and that is not the case. Audean Wagner is the person whose name was Data I just received on the bull elk tooth supposed to be here last issue, so: Thank you Au surveys done the last two years in the Saddle dean, for your efforts on behalf of flood victims. Mountain Unit, supports that claim. The age of an animal can be determined by counting the File now for mayor, council Ooops! rings on an incisor root tip, much like rings on a tree stump. This has to be done by a lab, though. The data results show that 73% of thé bulls harvested are tw o years of age or younger. That leaves only 27% escapement for bulls past their first hunting season and, if one assumes that very few bulls died of old age, then we would annually recruit 263 bulls into the 3-year-old category if we used the 975 bulls from a population of 8,000 animals. Again, this data doesn’t work; 263 animals is more than half of the legal annual harvest and does not correspond with the tooth survey data. If we change the population size to 5,000 animals in the above equations, the numbers start to correspond to the tooth sur vey data. This would result in an annual bull recruitm ent of 609 bulls, post-season, of which 164 would be branch antlered. This would also correspond to an annual mortality of 600 bulls of which 162 (27%) would have been older than 2 years of age. I expect I will get another phone call. To leave you on a humorous note, here are a few footnotes from a trip that some of our extended family (Bernardis, Wellers, Tituses and Webbs) made to the Three Creeks area near Sisters. To start with, any gathering of such characters all in one spot is a recipe for trouble. Envision my father, the fisherman, oaring an inflatable raft on a beautiful lake with the Three Sisters mountains for a back- drop-and the fish are biting really well. Now envision him with two grade school girls in the boat: He says, “Set the hook" as the poles arc from biting fish, and the girls turn to him ask ing, What's that?" The fisherman’s ultimate nightmare!! Campfires are always the center of evening activities, with roasted hot dogs and marsh mallows and occasional sparks that burn through the lawn ch a irs. T his g ro up of campers, not wanting to be outdone by neigh boring campers, sacrificed a perfectly good awn chair to the fire gods. Well, okay, maybe th e wind had something to do with it. Maybe that was the c h a ir th a t bit my nephew Rob. You didn’t know chairs can bite? W© just ask Rob, I heard it bit him so bad that he passed out from the pain. Luckily, cousin Steve (the fire chief) was there to catch him before he hit the ground. Please see page 3 V * ••• 7 -V* % < e ' A * «■ • - •« * „ 5 K < • t 4 < 4 ’ \ . *
