While the Missouri legislature thinks about mountain lion legislation and how many Conservation commissioners we really need, our near neighbor, the Illinois legislature, is serving up its own sort of wildlife management proposals.
In a proposal called “Double Earn a Buck” proposes that a hunter would have to turn in two filled antlerless deer tags [...]

Deer Season has almost come and gone and I have experienced parts of the hunting experience. I went hunting with my guide, learned what it was like to sit in the woods and wait for that deer, and then I had the great opportunity to experience what happens after the kill compliments of my [...]

Here are some other highlights from the Commission meeting:

Elk and mule deer have been added to the list of animals which may not be killed to protect property without the permission of a conservation agent.
In 2012-2013 deer and turkey hunting seasons, (not this year)

by Gary Sales
I really enjoy your paper.
About the crossbows — I don’t kill any more deer shooting a crossbow than I did when I shot a compound bow. You still have to have patience and also know where your bow is shooting and you still have to have a shooting lane.

Bill -

As I see it, this crossbow criticism business goes back to your taking up gigging frogs. If you’d gone back to the primitive method of grabbing bullfrogs by hand, like I suggested several years ago, you’d have painted yourself as a purist with lasting effect.

It’s not about doing things the hard way versus [...]

By Don Rathert
Emery,
Just a short note to elaborate on the reason I had to go to a crossbow.
You can’t get a permit for hunting with one unless one or two M.D.s write a letter of partial disability. Thank God, the Missouri Conservation Dept. is compassionate enough to give we unfortunates permits to use the weapon [...]

By Tim Huffman
As a writer of one of the controversial crossbow articles, I would like to address the letters to the editor in the last issue. First, “crossbows” was on the list of stories put out by the editor that had been requested by readers for Traveler. I had experience so chose that subject [...]

By Bill Cooper
In my 35 years as an outdoor writer, never have I been the victim of libel until the response of one individual to my crossbow article in the September issue of the Traveler. Libel is a written or printed statement tending to injure a person’s reputation unjustly. This individual strayed far from the [...]

Dear Emory,

If the crossbow story missed the mark so did the respondents. First permit
me an explanation.
I am 66 years old. I built my first bow from a hickory limb, bailer twine
string, early in the Korean War. Around the end of that war an older cousin
from St. Louis gave me a self bow [...]

It was with great interest that I read criticisms of the crossbow hunting article I wrote in last month’s Traveler. Of particular interest to me is Mr. Goodman’s assessment of me and the editor of Traveler, Emery Styron.
Mr. Goodman suggested that the article material was unfit to be printed. [...]