2017-01-17 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 17, 2017 TL: OK. You are not going to turn it down, right? I agree. We have an assortment of information. I think, a lot of people and possibly the county may not be aware of a lot of this and so we’re hoping to put this together and take it to them. Thank you very much. Sgt. Major Tom Campbell of Pohakuloa Training Facility on public opportunities at Pohakuloa. TL: Sgt. Major Tom Campbell is here to share information from Pohakuloa. STC: Thomas Campbell, the PTA Command Sgt. Major. Let me start off with the why? A lot of people don’t know that last year the PT hunting program at PTA was under fire and almost got shut down for two reasons: one was we weren’t following the federal guidelines – rules on access control – the other one was safety. And, so, that’s why the sportsman program started this last season here that was our vehicle to build everybody – to allow access – unescorted access to federal lands. The other one on the safety piece is right now we, we got by with requiring the Hunter Safety Course just as the State does but we’re still lacking on the safety firearms and archery equipment without any availability and practicing with those weapons. So when I got to the island fifteen months ago, I brought some of my guns with me and then I got here and found out there’s nowhere to shoot to include PTA. – I’m an avid shooter and avid hunter. I like how in the heck does this happen. I can’t even shoot on my own land, or not my land, but where I work at and I’m army. So, we started looking into trying to establish a shooting facility but being me and the commander are the only two green suits up there and then we’ve also got the National Guard and the Reserve – the National Guard, or, I’m sorry, the Coast Guard – the Reverse National Guard and the Air Guard on the island and some recruiters – was it really doesn’t make sense to build a range or make the facility available just for that population, so, we’ve looked at broadening this out for the community – the drawback in it, though, goes back to that – access issue and the availability of the ranges. Of course, the readiness of the army and marine, or our military units is priority up at PTA. So it would basically limit the ranges to basically weekends or weeks that there are no units up there training. So I did a lot of leg work over the last year and relied on On-Target a lot for and picked their brains for information. What made it even trickier was in 2016, the Garrison funds were cut almost by 60%. Was hoping 2017 would look better and they were cut again, so, basically I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this out of hide, with no cost to the government and try to make this a self-policing facility. Basically, what we were looking at are three ranges: an archery range, a rifle-pistol range and a shotgun range. On the shotguns is a long pull of course because it requires additional equipment. What we’re looking at PTA is a Sporting Clay Range. We’ve got the Skeet and Trap range there 15