Speak Out 3/19/14

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Does DAR

lean to right?

I have a question about your opinion page. I have noticed that it contains commentary nearly exclusively by Fox News commentators who seem to have a shall we say "rightward" slant to their opinions. Does this reflect your opinions? You do realize that some of your readers may not agree with these commentators and start to wonder about your politics and using the only newspaper as a political tool instead of a community service. Just wondering...

(EDITOR'S NOTE: It is not unusual for newspapers to take a stance on their editorial pages. After all, that's what an "opinion" page is all about. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is unabashedly liberal as is the New York Times, to name a few, and their editorial pages reflect that. The Daily American Republic leans toward conservative philosophy and our editorial page reflects that view.)

Reader and poachers

On Jan. 23rd the DAR published the front page article called, "Missouri Deer Hunting Reaches Crossroads." Later a caller phoned in about poaching. That caller was correct. Poaching is common here and should not be tolerated. Nobody in this society needs to poach to feed his family. Welfare takes care of that. Many people know people who poach and are afraid to go to court to testify. Even if they did go to court the judge will often throw out the case or hand out a small fine, but poachers need to serve jail time. No doubt EHD played a big part in the 2013 deep population crash, but there is an 800 pound gorilla in Missouri deer management that very few people talk about and that is wild and free-range dogs. How many times do you drive by a home with two or three hounds or two or three mongrels lounging in the yard. Owners will say, "Old Rover is sleeping when I leave for work and sleeping when I get home. He's too lazy to chase deer." Well, Rover is resting during the day and running around all night. Dogs don't have to kill a deer out right. I owned a work-hard Beagle that ran a doe for six hours. When I finally caught up to them the deer was staggering and was covered with slobber back to the milliliter ribs. The dog recovered after a few days and nights of sleeping on the couch and full rich meals, but I suspect that the deer, who still had to live wild, died from that stress. The same goes with coyotes. They take a terrible toll of fawns and are capable of killing a full grown buck. And MDC has a closed season on coyotes? Deer hunters should shoot, trap, poison, snare, run over every coyote they can any time they can. Thank you.

God bless

America

I'm calling about the newspaper. You know I read the DAR every day. I've got a subscription for it. Really like the paper. Really, really, really, truly like the paper and I've read it for 40 years, but you know I love Speak Out and several other items in there, but when they go eight days, sometimes even more, without a Speak Out, the paper just ain't worth fifty-cents. Speak Out oughta be in there every day so people can voice their opinion. Sometimes it's stupidity; then, sometimes, it's not! But, seriously, we like Speak Out. And this is eight days without Speak Out if I ain't mistaken. I'm just gonna cancel my subscription if they don't start puttin' it in cause I love Speak Out! I like it like I do the front page, the obituaries and everything else and the want ads. We all love the newspaper, but when you leave something out for eight days it ain't worth it! Thank you. God bless America and the DAR when they print it right. Thank you.