So, some final perspective from someone that spent most of his adult life around TWRA, and who has been hunting and fishing going on 70 years right now:
As many of you have observed, I don't like some of the things TWRA has done in recent years. The duck blind debacle still sticks in my craw. Allowing our turkey population to go down the toilet in a lot of areas while it was being "studied" will forever be a beef of mine.
But, to call it a dumpster fire is about as dumb a thing as I have ever seen.
When I started working in 1977, we were killing less than 25,000 deer in the whole state. I think I saw where our recent kill was well over 150,000.
Our turkey kill in '77 was right around 100 birds a year. Yes, that is not a typo. We have been in the 40,000 bird range for a long time.
Fishing continues to be pretty remarkable. Even right adjacent to a MAJOR metropolitan area with millions of residents, we still have a fishery that lets certain folks brag on a continual basis on the vast amount of fish they are catching.
Guess what, none of that happens without a lot of EXTREMELY dedicated employees throughout all areas of TWRA. Perfect? Absolutely not! Dumpster fire? About as dumb as the person saying it.
I'm going to offer my perspective as a former TN resident who now resides in SC so I've seen first hand the comparison between a good wildlife agency/DNR and a bad one.
TWRA is fantastic compared to what I'd call an actual dumpster fire here with SCDNR.
Public land hunters in South Carolina are treated like a 2nd tier of citizens by SCDNR. Historically we could not hunt Sundays, only private land hunters could, and we had to fight tooth and nail to get it this past season by getting a law passed to direct SCDNR to let us hunt Sundays.
All we got was a certain portion of Sundays for deer season and some of small game season.
In addition to that, ALL of our National Forest lands, which make up the majority of our public land, saw waterfowl hunting opportunity gutted. We went from being allowed to hunt ducks Monday through Saturday to only Wednesday and Saturday mornings. That was SCDNR's "F*** YOU" to us for getting to do something they didn't want us doing.
Still we can't hunt turkeys on Sundays, while private land hunters can, and private land hunters get an additional 10 days of turkey season, plus the Sundays.
I know of no other state in the country that treats their public land hunters as poorly as SCDNR does to us.
And does it work? Ha! I could go into more detail about how piss poor the management of public land is here, but this is a fishing thread. Let's put it this way, you don't see the YouTube "turkey tour" types going to SC to hunt our public land, do you? But they go to Tennessee a lot. Shoot I've said elsewhere Catman is a good friend of mine and he even has no interest to come here and hunt our turkeys.
I've spoken to SCDNR on the phone and in person to challenge some of the things they are doing and found them to be so arrogant it makes Trump look humble. They literally brag about their college degrees in wildlife biology while overseeing horrible declines in duck and turkey populations. Not even going to mention quail. SC used to be to quail hunting what SD is to pheasant hunting.
Our fishing is good, but so is Tennessee's. And while TWRA has their faults, they do not screw public land hunters out of opportunity like is done here.
Trust me, Headhunter, you have it good there.
Sorry all I know that was a long post, and a bit of a vent, but you realize when you've been screwed by SCDNR for 5 years how good things used to be. I miss living in Tennessee for many reasons and my opportunity as a user of public land and water is one of them.