Closure of Felix Canyon Rd, UNIT 32

live4muleys

live4muleys

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Reminder that the Meeting to discuss the Closure of the Felix Canyon Road is Thursday 9AM, in Roswell at the Administrative Center, 1 St Mary's Place.

This closure would effect access to public land in Unit 32. We can't afford to lose access to any public land. Hopefully people can make it there and voice their opinion. You can also email the commissioners to voice your opinion. Here is a link to he commission page.

http://www.co.chaves.nm.us/232/County-Commission

Anyone else have more info on this.
 
Why? My guess would be to lock up prime sheep county that is public. They already have that land swap in place that screwed public hunters; why not try to get it all.... guess it doesn't really matter. The last time I was down there on a sheep hunt they opened up with the .50 cals and mk 19 grenade launchers the day before the hunt. They had to have shot a few thousand rounds over the course of an hour. Had to scare everything out of there for miles. That private mercenarie training range is something else.
 
Casabone ranch said it's for the safety of he's family. Maybe he should be worried of them fifty cals instead.
 
Rancher claims there is so much trespassing but there was not a single call of trespassing to game and fish during the barbary season in 2017.
Hopefully there are some sportsmen groups that have enough guts to fight the closure.
 
Big money has screwed the public land hunter out of access to lots of public land in that area. There was designated BLM access out there a few years ago, and it has been blocked out by the landowner.
To bad public land hunters do not have more political and financial clout.
 
Wow this is ridiculous. Shouldn't the game and fish be able to show no calls reporting trespassing and get this thrown out as unfounded?
 
I have to confess I'm a little bit torn on this one--I used to see a lot more barbarys in this area before they did that stupid unitization agreement. Ever since they did that, I see a lot more hunters and a lot fewer barbarys, so I guess I'm not completely against something that limits access. Seems to me that the unitization just pushed the barbarys farther onto private land where they can't be accessed by public land hunters at all. What am I missing?
 
If they close the road but there is still a way to hike in, then I'm ok with it. However, if that road is the only way to access some of the BLM and closing it will basically make it private, I think it's quite unfair to the public hunter.

>I have to confess I'm a
>little bit torn on this
>one--I used to see a
>lot more barbarys in this
>area before they did that
>stupid unitization agreement. Ever
>since they did that, I
>see a lot more hunters
>and a lot fewer barbarys,
>so I guess I'm not
>completely against something that limits
>access. Seems to me
>that the unitization just pushed
>the barbarys farther onto private
>land where they can't be
>accessed by public land hunters
>at all. What am
>I missing?
 
The land in effect seems to be hike in currently. You will still be able to access the land either way with the road open or the road closed, but it adds and extra 30 miles of driving to access the road.

This is just another step in the wrong directions for public land hunting. If this passes it sets a standard that any rancher who now wants no one to be able to access his PUBLIC lease land can have them close the public county road, and then access to the public land is lost. It is starting to happen more and more. Gates being moved 1/4 mile to now be on private, roads finding a way to close. I am all for private property rights, but I am also exclusively a public land hunter and love it. This is not a Private property issue it is a enforcement issue if what the landowner is claiming to be true is true. Hopefully some of these sportsmen groups take a good long look at what they are here for and fight this. Hopefully they take a look at their Mission and Vision of the organization and do what they claim, instead of taking it in the shorts again from groups like Cattle Growers who are far from a hunting organization.

Can't let them find ways to continue to give us less and less, harder and harder ways to access the public land. I am sure some of you will be like good make it harder to access and I will be the only one in there, but look at the bigger picture and open your eyes to how this keeps adding smaller steps to losing access.
 
I hear you, but I'll also say that it wasn't that long ago that I could hike into this public land and expect to see 50 to 100 barbarys and maybe one or two other hunters. The last several times since the unitization I've seen less than a dozen barbarys overall but average 5 to 10 hunters per trip. Don't get me wrong--I know those hunters have every right to be there and I don't begrudge them that. But it's obvious to me that the barbarys have also noticed the increased human activity, and they've mostly moved out of the areas that they used to inhabit. I don't know for certain, but my guess is they've moved onto the private land where no public land hunter can follow. So the end result of the unitization's "good intentions" was fewer barbarys available on the public land for the public land hunter to pursue. What good does easier access do if the barbarys aren't there anymore?

As for all of your other points about this being a bad trend--I absolutely agree.
 
3 more sections of road that Ranchers are attempting to close in Chavez County. That was my biggest fear with them closing the first section. They will just close more and more sections.
 
LAST EDITED ON Mar-05-18 AT 04:40PM (MST)[p]I was there now at the end of February 21-24 for the Barbary sheep hunt.Private property owners are ruining this piece of public access into one of the best sheep areas.They are land locking a lot of public land and it has zero to do with safety , these ranchers are now competing with each other on the Barbary sheep hunts.Every ranch behind the Diamond A is land locking access and the small piece of BLM to the SW of Jim Boyles land, the wind usually blows out of the west by mid day so his hunters just wait while the public land guys hike up in there and push the sheep right to private hunters! This is taking place through out that whole area behind Tinnie in the Hondo Valley... The county commissioners are in support of road/access closure and driving this.....If they lock out public access to STATE BLM lands they are setting themselves up for a revolt.....State police will be called out there all February long.....Its complete bull crap....
 
Yup. Probably going to see more and more of this the next few years, state-wide. The bootheel has similar access issues, which are only going to get worse. Locals say that the county is running out of money to maintain the roads, so they are going to close them...I speculate that there could be other reasons.
 
It is a total joke how they have locked the public out of thousands of acres there. Dirty politics for sure.
 
And what the hell is the point of BLM and State we can't access! It has took the little areas left and shoved all the hunters into that area.

What's that do? Push all the sheep out of public into the private. Why do you think most of the private lands don't even hunt the first week they let hunters public hunters push them on private.

And I know there were several private land hunters who killed sheep on BLM that got busted.

I mean we have tons of public land being blocked by a very small amount of private. We always get screwed it's so frustrating it's all to do with money. Ranchers always act like the victims. The same victims that will throw an elk tag in the trash instead of taking money for it just cause it's not enough.

We are partially to blame because as long as people continue to pay these ridiculous amounts for tags and hunts this will never Stop unfortunately.

So funny when I was a kid it was all poor people mostly that hunted! Caned soup, burros and a engine block for a heater!!

In any event we have to go full force as a group against this and stop this madness!!!
 
Received an email from NMWF. Regardless of mixed feelings for the organization on certain issues, they are doing something to address this issue.

http://nmwildlife.org/news/sign-petition-keep-public-lands-open-chaves-county/

Petition in Opposition to Road Closures Gains Huge Support

In February, NMWF learned about three public road closures that would severely limit public access to exceptional hunting areas in Chaves County.

Since then, we've worked with local sportsmen and women and held an emergency meeting to address the closures, with more than 70 local sportsmen and women in attendance.

Additionally, we have collected nearly 3,000 signatures from New Mexicans across the state asking the Chaves County Commission to oppose these road closures.

Make sure you sign the petition, attend the commission meeting on March 15th, and read up on the issue!
 
>Received an email from NMWF.
>Regardless of mixed feelings for
>the organization on certain issues,
>they are doing something to
>address this issue.
>
>http://nmwildlife.org/news/sign-petition-keep-public-lands-open-chaves-county/
>
>Petition in Opposition to Road Closures
>Gains Huge Support
>
>In February, NMWF learned about three
>public road closures that would
>severely limit public access to
>exceptional hunting areas in Chaves
>County.
>
>Since then, we've worked with local
>sportsmen and women and held
>an emergency meeting to address
>the closures, with more than
>70 local sportsmen and women
>in attendance.
>
>Additionally, we have collected nearly 3,000
>signatures from New Mexicans across
>the state asking the Chaves
>County Commission to oppose these
>road closures.
>
>Make sure you sign the petition,
>attend the commission meeting on
>March 15th, and read up
>on the issue!

I do have mixed feelings about NMWF, but, they are the only ones I know that fight for public land access. I just signed the petition and shared it on Facebook. It really is obscene the tiny little pieces of private land being used to lock the public out of tens of thousands of acres.
 
Paul,same here. You should see the ridiculous amounts of property used to lock thousands of acres in the Gila !!! I signed it of course but often times it does not help. Also the meeting is of course on a week day. All we can do is try fellas!!
 
Regarding just cutting the lock, this issue is about crooked methods that result in LEGALLY closing roads. Once these actions go through under the radar, it would be ILLEGAL to cut the locks!

We need to do everything we can to fight this crapola!

Carl
 

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