A goal is not a plan. The real question is do they have a plan. For years going back to the days when the DNR had the Deer Advisory Committee to this very moment it has been agreed on that Indiana does not have a State wide deer problem. They have areas where primarily due to access they may have a perceived problem. Allowing rifles does nothing to address this issue unless they have a plan to sharp shoot or allow landowners to do so at will. That does nothing for hunters. Even that will not address urban deer and areas where the landowners will not cooperate. In fact rifles may reduce access and in any event it will not help hunters gain access which is what is really needed. The DNR aside from some management of public lands really is doing little for the sportsmen who hunt private land. The have cut their district biologist, their is no effort to increase private land access. Hunters and landowners are moving quickly towards controlling more and more of the management. I guess if making it easier to kill the fewer deer that one sees then one might be happy. Some believe that our state has more trophy bucks than it used to but that is not something the DNR ever advocated for. Our DNR in the last decade has more than anytime in it history proposed rule changes that have divided hunters and weakened the voice of conservation. The DNR are like those leaders in Washington who have tried to manage a war from afar without understanding the situation on the ground.

At a time when sportsmen need to unite the leadership of Fish and Wildlife as well as the NRC add to the division of sportsmen. Chad Stewart had the brains to bail out.