CANNED HUNT FARMER SAYS "It's a done deal ......If we get it to the Governor's desk" Is this true? Read this article - note the big money involved and then check David Dimmich (quote above) and check on the internet for the subsidies David Dimmich has already received . Now he is wanting to show a profit from an investment in shooter bucks he has NEVER RECEIVED AUTHORIZATION OR LEGALIZATION for from the IN legislature? This is a poor farmer? Our senators take the working people as fools. I will post the website where you can find the subsidies these guys get - it is all public info. That is why the grandfathering process is being kept anonymous. YOU WON'T KNOW WHO THESE GUYS ARE UNTIL AFTER THEY ARE LEGALIZED and "GRANDFATHERED." Too late to check on the sourcing and financing of their "farms" at that point. I have been able to locate $849,743.00 in subsidy payments (That's our federal tax money, folks!) for David Dimmich of West LaFayette, IN (1995-2004) $12,100.00 of that money was for "Conservation" subsidies. Read that conservation groups? Here is the address to check these guys out (if you can get your legislators to tell you who these guys are) and find out how much money they are already taking out of your federal knickers. NOW THEY WANT TO RAISE AND KILL SHOOTER BUCKS? Like we need MORE deer in this state for the express purpose of shooting for recreation! Financial check site: www.ewg.org The article is below: This article can be found on the internet via google or search or read below for your convenience: OCAHomepage Game Farms Spread Controversy & Fear of Mad Deer Disease Fenced-preserve hunts breed debate Deer farming has grown by leaps and bounds; critics call the whole businessunsportsmanlike. By George McLarenIndianapolis StarNovember 11, 2003 The hunting of semi-wild deer on fenced preserves -- a practice enjoyed bywealthy sportsmen but derided by others as unethical and inhumane -- hasgrown into big business in Indiana. According to state officials, at least 10 fenced preserves are operating inIndiana, with the biggest holding more than 1,200 captive deer and claimingtop-rated shooting bucks are worth up to $15,000. Critics, including sport hunters and wildlife advocates, scoff at those as"canned hunts," with the trough-fed prey given little chance to escape. Butdeer farmers respond that they run law-abiding, legitimate businesses andthat private preserves are not easy hunts. State legislators again considered new rules on the operations this year butinstead handed the controversies to a panel with a broad range of views,hoping the group can reach consensus on what thus far have been divisiveissues. "It's a complicated issue. There is not an easy solution," said DougMetcalf, chief of staff for the state Board of Animal Health. He serves onan advisory panel set up to study deer farming and formulate recommendationsby June. Deer -- almost 5,000 white-tails -- and elk are raised on more than ahundred farms around the state. Farmers see it as a potentially lucrativesource of cash -- one looking to boost his breeding lines paid $75,000 for atop breeding buck; he valued a top breeding doe at up to $7,000. Some sell deer urine as a hunting lure, collect semen to sell for breedingand hope to change laws and allow the legal sale of venison from deer killedin Indiana. Trading in deer also has raised fears over a mad cow-like disease, chronicwasting disease, that has hopscotched around the country from Colorado. The issues are so controversial, state legislators gave up trying to makenew laws earlier this year. Instead, they created the panel, which includesdeer farmers, wildlife advocates, sportsmen, conservationists and stateregulators from the animal health board and the state Department of NaturalResources. The panel -- known officially as the Citizens Advisory Council on CaptiveCervids -- began meeting in late August and is funded by the Department ofNatural Resources and the Indiana Deer Farmers Association. A professionalfacilitator helps guide its efforts. All sides say publicly that they are confident that compromises will bereached. "What we're hoping is we can all be conciliatory so we can make someprogress," said David Dimmich, a Benton County deer farmer who serves on thecouncil. ". . . There's going to have to be some give and take." Recommendations must be approved unanimously by the group's members. "You have people with different things they want to accomplish on it. I hopesomehow we can come to some understanding," said Doug Allman, a committeemember and spokesman for the Indiana Deer Hunters Association. The roots of the situation go back decades, when DNR officials created agame breeder's license intended to allow sportsmen and others to raise birdssuch as pheasant or quail for hunting. DNR officials said no one envisioned the future potential for raising deerprivately or the potential earnings for farmers who did. The number of breeder licenses for deer has jumped in recent years. By theend of 2002, more than 263 deer breeders had received an annual license, up37 percent from 192 in 2000. The state's biggest deer operation is owned by Russ Bellar, a developer fromPeru with a 1,000-acre, fenced spread. He reported owning 1,267 white-tailswhen he filed for his game breeder's license earlier this year. Bellar, who did not return repeated phone calls for this story, reported 41deer lost to wild dogs -- and provided a glimpse into the financial stakesinvolved. The dead deer were valued by Bellar at $278,000 combined, or nearly $7,000each. Bellar valued one at $20,000, a breeding male he described as his"pride buck . . . too valuable to be used as a shooter buck." "Shooter bucks," or animals intended to be hunted, were valued as high as$15,000, while females with good genetic lines were valued at up to $7,000. Bellar told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette earlier this year that he hadpaid $75,000 for a prime breeding buck. His application documented that 96 deer had been hunted at his property in2002, but the records did not reveal his income from those animals. Bellar'sWeb site doesn't list what it costs to hunt but boasts that pro fishermanJimmy Houston and country singer Ronnie Dunn had visited; the celebritiesare shown in photos with large bucks they shot. Hunting behind a fence is legal -- and there are no regulations on how bigthe fenced area must be nor any requirement that the animal has a fairchance to escape. Current laws are murky on whether baiting -- strictly prohibited in the wild-- is allowable in fenced preserves. Bellar's Web site said his propertyfeatures 600 acres of food plots planted for the deer, plus 1 ton ofsupplemental food provided each day. The DNR sets hunting regulations, which govern privately owned deer as wellas those in the public herd. "The current situation is that during the season, with the proper license,you can take deer in an enclosed area. We are not promoting that, but thatis the current situation," said DNR Director John Goss. Allman, the deer hunting association's representative on the advisory panel,was more blunt. "I don't believe there will be a lot of hunters who want to participate inthis. . . . I call it pseudo-hunting," Allman said. "It's like picking out your lobster at Red Lobster." Karin McKenna, a school counselor from northern Indiana, compared the fenceddeer to livestock like cows or pigs. If someone were paying to hunt a cow, "people would think there wassomething pathologically wrong with you. If animals are killed for meat,then humane slaughter should be involved," McKenna said. The owners of a fenced preserve in Owen County say hunting there is not aseasy as it seems. Brad Thurston, a plastic surgeon in Indianapolis, and his wife, Susan, haveabout 1,000 acres of land. The property includes 140 wooded acres inside an8-foot fence and about 100 captive white-tail deer. Brad Thurston noted how skittish his fenced deer were during a tour of theproperty recently. As his modified golf cart motored through the pennedarea, the white-tail deer bounded away if it got too close. "Don't say wild," he said. "That has a different connotation. But they'renot tame." To prevent overpopulation of the pen, he said, some of the animals must bekilled. He allows a handful of acquaintances to enter the pen each year and kill alarge deer that is at least 5 years old. They pay up to $3,500 each --enough, he said, to pay for the annual bill to keep the food trough filled. Critics who say the activity is unsportsmanlike simply don't understand, theThurstons said. "These are not canned hunts. These are not easy hunts," Susan Thurston said. And their animals -- along with most captive deer in Indiana -- were nevertruly wild animals. Most farmed deer have been bred from other farmed deer, several generationsremoved from the wild, said Dimmich, the deer farmer on the advisory panel. "It's more like a livestock situation as we see it. And they're privateproperty," Dimmich said. His 17-acre deer farm north of Lafayette, which he runs with son Zachary,does not include a hunting preserve. The farm is home to about 15 deer andhasn't earned them a profit, he said. "We're probably two to three years away from realizing any profit," Dimmichsaid. He and other deer farmers are keenly interested in what new laws orregulations might come out of the advisory panel's work. But with such volatile topics and members who have been working to achieveopposite goals in recent years, some issues might simply remain unresolvedin the advisory council. "We're committed to the process," said Glenn Lange, the DNR's chief ofwildlife and a council member. "There may be issues that some people at the table say, 'I simply can't livewith that.' And then the council will move on," Lange said.