The INDEPENDENT, October 3, 2012
Where to Find Them
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden
(Dem)
1220 SW 3rd Avenue, Suite 585
Portland OR 97232
Phone: 503-326-7525
223 Dirksen Senate Ofc. Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20510-0001
Phone: 202-224-5244
E-Mail: http://wyden.senate.gov/
contact
Website: http://wyden.senate.
gov
U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley
(Dem.)
One World Trade Center
121 SW Salmon St., Suite 1250
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: 503-326-3386
313 Hart Senate Ofc. Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3753
E-Mail: http://merkley.senate.
gov/contact
WebSite: http://merkley.senate.
gov
U.S. Representative Suzanne
Bonamici, (Dem) OR District 1
620 SW Main, Suite 606
Portland, OR 97205
Phone: 503-326-2901
2338 Rayburn House Ofc. Bldg.
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-0855
Website: http://bonamici.house.
gov
Senator Betsy Johnson
(Dem) Senate District 16
PO Box R,
Scappoose, OR 97056
Phone: 503-543-4046
900 Court St. NE, S-314
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: 503-986-1716
E-mail: sen.betsyjohnson@
state.or.us
Website: http://www.leg.state.or.
us/johnson
Representative Brad Witt
(Dem) House District. 31
21740 Lindberg Road,
Clatskanie, OR 97016
Phone: 503-728-4664
900 Court St. NE, H-373
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: 503-986-1431
E-mail: rep.bradwitt@state.or.us
Website: http://www.leg.state.or.
us/witt
Representative Deborah
Boone
(Dem) House District 32
PO Box 926
Cannon Beach, OR 97110
Phone: 503-717-9182
900 Court St. NE, H-375
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: 503-986-1432
E-mail: rep.deborahboone@
state.or.us
Website: http://www.leg.state.or.
us/boone
Page 3
Letters
Keep it going for at
least 27 more years!
To the Editor:
I always pick up the latest
edition of The Independent
when I am shopping at Jim’s
Market. I pretty much read it all
and I’m sorry to find that it will
only come once a month for
awhile!!
I particularly appreciated
Noni’s views on the Mitt’s “Mis-
steps” exposed last week!
Right On, Noni!!!
We all hope you continue for
at least 27 more years!
John Hiestand
Forest Grove
Will we ever learn to
drive responsibly?
To the Editor:
It is a sad commentary on
our society that folks are in
such a hurry. When are drivers
going to respect others and
learn to drive responsibly on
Hwy. 47?
Matt Hanson
Vernonia
Don’t complain if you
aren’t paying for it
To the Editor:
To Dee Stevens; Maybe if
you owned something, and ac-
tually PAID a City of Vernonia
water bill, then you’d have the
right to compare it to “rape.”
Obviously, you know little about
either situation.
Matt Hanson
Vernonia
We must fight so we
can enjoy freedom
To the Editor:
Well folks, here we are me-
morializing another September
11th, 2001 and the horrible
events of that day in New York
City, the Pentagon, and of
course the brave souls on that
fateful flight in Pennsylvania.
Now I ask you, what has this
country learned from that day
eleven years ago? Not much, it
would seem!
On September 11th, 2001
this country was outraged that
someone or some country had
attacked America in such a
cowardly, senseless way. We
all felt the pain of our brothers
and sisters. The country pulled
together; the battle cry was out
once again, demanding justice
for the innocence lives lost!
Our young men and women
were called to arms, including
members of my own family
(male and female), to defend
the liberty and freedom we all
enjoy in this country. Rights
given to us in the Bill of Rights,
the Constitution, and some of
us still say from “GOD.”
We began the endeavor to
chase down the madman that
coordinated the attack on Sep-
tember 11th, 2001. However,
over the next eleven years, our
country’s leaders took their eye
off the objective and headed in
another direction. Because of
this decision many more lives
were lost and America became
embroiled in two wars in the
Mid-East…one was to satisfy
our need for justice and one
was just because our leaders
at the time thought it was a
good idea. Incidentally, these
wars were supported with bor-
rowed money, mostly from
countries that could care less
about our liberties or our free-
doms!
We send billions of dollars
(once again, borrowed money)
in aid every year to radical gov-
ernments that claim to be our
allies. One of them was the site
of an attack on our consulate
(in Libya) that took the lives of
four Americans, including the
ambassador to Libya, Chris
Stevens, and two ex-Navy
seals. Where was our leaders’
outrage on September 11th,
2012? Are we so divided in this
country over our different val-
ues and beliefs that we no
longer care about American
lives lost! How about the wel-
fare of our interests around the
globe? Are we so complacent
with this leadership that we
agree with them that an apolo-
gy to this radical terrorist group
that attacked us is the right
thing to do! I feel as though we
are being conned, don’t you?!
In the days following the at-
tack in Libya more countries in
the Mid-East joined in with at-
tacks of their own. More lives
are being lost, more embassies
burned and looted. Our flag
has been desecrated and cries
of “death to America” are
heard. The Pollyanna-ish no-
tion by our leadership that,
“This was in response to a
video on the internet!” when the
overwhelming majority of us
had nothing at all to do with the
video, is pure Poppy-Cock (at
least in my mind). This is a
well-organized, premeditated
attack on the American way of
life and our religious freedoms
and values! This all appears, to
me, to be the formation of an
Anti-American Caliphate in the
Please see page 17
Policy on Letters
The INDEPENDENT will
not publish letters with per-
sonal attacks on private citi-
zens. Preference will be giv-
en to brief letters, 300 words
or less.
All letters must be signed
and include a verifiable ad-
dress or phone number.
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
Local streams are finally getting down
to very low levels. The lower Nehalem
Foss gauge was sitting at 98 cfs as I wrote
this article, but seems to holding steady.
The gauge was ground-trued September
20th, so the data is sound. The last read-
ing I heard for Rock Creek was around 2
cfs above the start of our stream curtail-
ment criteria. We are probably really close
to that trigger point, but with the days get-
ting shorter and cooler at night, the stream
will most likely just flat line until we get some rain.
Many people are not going to like what I am going to report, but
it has to be said. The harvest data from last year is now available
on ODFW’s website and the trend of archery bull elk harvest has
continued to climb statewide. Here is some background informa-
tion for those trying to make any sense of the data that I’m going
to present.
In 1996, ODFW implemented a new hunt format for rifle
hunters in many of the eastern Oregon units. The driver for this
change was the realization that the rifle bull harvest was becom-
ing too high for the amount of elk and also the desire to recruit
more mature older bulls into the herds. The mature bull compo-
nent was a direct outcome of the Starkey Experimental Forest elk
enclosure studies. Those studies showed that having older bulls
in the herds led to earlier calf drop and larger calves going into
winter, both of these factors are expected to increase calf sur-
vival, which in turn will allow increased harvest or expanded herd
growth.
To accomplish this goal ODFW implemented a strategy of lim-
iting the amount of any bull rifle tags and, during the same sea-
son, a limited amount of spike-only tags was then followed by a
spike-only hunt as a second season. The effect of this was to lim-
it the harvest of mature bulls and also limit the success of the
spike-only hunters simply because there are a limited amount of
these bulls. The offshoot of limiting these hunts was that many ri-
fle hunters would switch over to archery, which was projected to
have a 6-8% success rate, which was a good trade since that was
similar to the spike-only rifle hunts and far less than the limited
mature bull hunts.
At first the plan worked and the mature bull component grew in
many of the herds on the eastside, then the dynamics of the bull
harvest throughout Oregon began to change. Here is what hap-
pened:
In Eastern Oregon in 1996 archers took 651 bull elk with a suc-
cess rate of around 8%; by 2011 the archery bull harvest was
2,015 bulls, an increase of 209%. Rifle hunters went from a bull
harvest in 1996 of 7,666 bulls down to 3,875 bulls in 2011, a de-
crease of 49.5%. Archery success for bulls climbed to 12.7%
while rifle success rates dropped to around 14.5%, so the suc-
cess gap has nearly closed. Overall, archery hunter numbers in-
creased by 38%; while rifle hunters declined by 53%.
Meanwhile, in western Oregon the same types of results were
Please see page 19