Gap grows wider

The first week of deer season is a busy time in Morgan County and a small country store serving as a game checking station, such as Stoney Creek in Largent, depends on hunting traffic for an end-of-year income boost.

In Largent this year, Division of Natural Resources (DNR) personnel elected to test deer for chronic wasting disease during the first two days of the season. Testing was not conducted at the store (the game-checking site), but at the Division of Highways garage in Largent.

DNR officials asked Joe Decker, Stoney Creek proprietor, not to check the deer but to direct hunters to the garage. They led him to believe he would receive the deer-kill results following its two-day test program.

For years, Decker has kept charts of the Largent area deer kill, complete with hunters' names, dates of bucks and does taken, along with the number of points the bucks carried. No amazing feat, you may think, but the hunters enjoyed the interesting fun facts. They stopped by daily to see who had gotten what, when and where. They shared hunting tales. They spent money, And, they compared year-to-year hunting stats.

Trouble is, the detailed deer-kill information wasn't given to Decker this year, and a number of hunters were disappointed. It destroyed some of the camaraderie of the hunting season for them.

This disregard for local custom by public employees creates a larger gap in DNR credibility than the gap in Joe Decker's deer chart.

If DNR should test deer in Largent again next year, let's hope they work more closely with Stoney Creek to make deer-kill information more readily available.