2017-01-17 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 17, 2017 in Hilo – what we’re lacking on the island is a Sporting Clay Range and that’s where the bird hunters can really hone their skills or realistic shoot – shotgun shooting. The rifle-pistol range, though, we are not rifle hunting in PTA right now – I’m trying to fix that but just the availability to bail the shoot and then an archery range is no cost. I’ve got everything to set up an archery range and, right now I’m fighting land use for PTA falls under the U.S. Army Hawaii back on Oahu. And the problem I’ve faced and the reason this has taken over a year to get there is a lot of the decision makers look at the Big Island through Oahu eyes and don’t understand as we all in this room know – there’s a drastic difference in not just the land but also the community as well. I was almost at the finish line and then we had a change of commands and turnover of leadership so now I’m back to trying to express the need, ah, for the – to justify the land use of, but, once I tied it to safety – that rings everybody’s bell. If we’re gonna be slinging arrows and shot and bullets around PTA we want to have the availability to do it safely and also for the rifle shooters. There’s a difference in zero- in at sea level and zero-in at 6,200 feet in elevation. That’s why we were looking at – in particular the rifle-pistol range just so they can at zero elevation with like conditions. I’m really hoping that I’ll have the Archery Range up and going here in the next month. Then right behind that is hopefully we get approval for the rifle-pistol range for the land use is if it doesn’t go through the area that I had drawn out. I’ve got a packet for you Mr. Chairman that I’ll leave with you that’s a draft of our memorandum of instructions. It kind of lays out how the ranges would run and the locations, but don’t pay attention to the locations that I’ve got on there ‘cause it very well may change. If we don’t get the land use, then I’m gonna pursue using an existing range and make that a rifle-pistol range. The drawback to that’s is gonna limit the use – the availability of it even more – that it’ll be limited to basically weekends that there are not units up there training at PTA. I’ve got to keep the cost down and I did this in my last duty station at Fort Hustace, Virginia. We started a hunting program – it couldn’t get off the ground because we didn’t have a range – a public range available at the Hampton, Newport News, Virginia area. Now we took an existing range and made it available for the public and we ran it through our program. That way everybody’s vetted, everybody’s got to shoe the proof of registrations and what have you. It’s also the availability of it - so people don’t drive all the way to PTA to find out they can’t shoot. We are trying to make this thing a self-policing event is that we’re looking at trying to establish a gun and hunt club and through the club would be the ownership of the range or the self-policing of the range. The dudes would go into the maintenance of it and the way I’ve got it set-up is that everybody that would come out to the range has to be range certified through army garrison up there at PTA and that would qualify ‘em to be able to be a range safety officer on an army range. If I’m the first one to show up to the range – I’m the RSO for that range and I’m responsible for the safety of that range. Somebody else comes on after me – I’m still the 16