Once again, a poorly thought out leftist bit of pap becomes law and puts a lawful citizen and business owner in a bind
There’s no reason to make a mountain of a molehill, unless you’re the man who makes a living trapping moles.
David Krick is that business owner and this week, he’s very scared that he might lose his business.
Moles are pesky little creatures. They tunnel their way through your yard, looking for food. They leave behind piles of dirt, or molehills, all over the yard.
You can try a variety of ways to get rid of moles, but unless you kill the moles you’ll only be forcing them into the neighbor’s yard. Once he figures it out, you can bet he’ll force the moles back into your yard.
The ‘Mole Guy’, David Krick, knows how to get rid of moles. He’s been trapping moles for 13 years. He uses a four-pronged trap.
“The mole comes through the ground and puts some pressure through the soil,” he said. “He’s not suffering. It’s the most humane way I know of killing moles.”
It is, however, illegal in Washington to trap moles with a body-gripping device. This week, a wildlife officer followed David Krick to a customer’s house.
“And read me my rights and said that I have to shut down my business,” Krick explained.
This is actually the fifth time the Department of Fish and Wildlife came after Krick since Initiative 713 passed in 2000. That initiative makes it illegal to use body-gripping traps for fun, or to profit from selling the animal’s fur.
But Humane Society spokeswoman Jennifer Hillman said the initiative wasn’t meant to shut down mole trappers like Krick.
“Initiative 713 was never intended to ban mole and gopher trapping,” she said.
Well, gee-golly-wilakers, Jenny, maybe when you all were pushing the POS law through the statehouse, you should of fucking thought of that.
Oh wait, thinking isn’t part of law-making. Sorry, I’ll remember that next time.
I’m not really surprised at this. Back in younger days some two score years ago I hunted quite a bit. Like if I wasn’t in school, I was in the woods with a rifle in my hands. Back in those days we call them game wardens. Generally they were men with no more than a high school education and hunters and outdoorsman themselves. They understood the woods and the sport and that nobody was perfect. Unless you did something stupid or were acting like a gamehog killer, they’d give you a lecture, give you a break and turn you loose having learned your lesson.
Now they’re called wildlife officers and all have undergraduate degrees,at least, because it was necessary to become more “professional”. I get the impression that a lot of them are or would be members of PETA or Earth First or other “environmentalist” groups and somewhere along the line they have been stripped of every shred of common sense.
Ummm, this law isn’t enforced with people who trap moles. Just ask anyone who runs a pest control company.
The law was meant so that trappers didn’t place a steel claw trap out, have an animal trip it, and then stay in it for days starving to death or chewing their leg off. Trapping the animals is fine as long as the death is swift. At least that is what I got from reading the bill.
Shit. I should have added that most workers in the Dept of Fish and Wildlife don’t enforce it. This guy must have been new. Otherwise these pest exterminator companies would be illegal and shut down.