Head south of DuLarge to catch speckled trout until your arms just can’t take it any more.
There’s an old saying that goes something like this: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
But who gets the blame when you’ve been fooled three times?
The question is appropriate because you have been fooled yet again. Or at least you have if, like me, you’re an outdoorsman who voted for Bobby Jindal.
Jindal is the latest in a string of governors who have actively courted the sportsman vote while campaigning only to abandon us like circus freaks after the election.
Remember Mike Foster? He was the first. He campaigned as one of us, a good-ol’ boy who loved to fish from his camp in Grand Isle and hunt ducks with the fellas down at Pecan Island.
But then when the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries faced a severe budget shortfall, the governor sat on his hands, saying he’d wait to see what came out of the Legislature before deciding what to do about the mess.
He wasn’t at all concerned that the DWF was threatening to close wildlife management areas, and seemed not to mind when license fees were eventually raised to fill the gap.
Next up was Kathleen Blanco, who was in over her head like Danny DeVito wearing cement shoes in an Olympic-sized pool. Candidate Blanco loved the outdoors, we were assured, and as proof, she made oodles of photo-op duck hunts with dignitaries while serving as lieutenant governor.
Then, after the election, the new governor quickly awarded the secretary’s job to a man who was more comfortable speaking Chinese than the language of the outdoors.
“MeeMaw” followed that up by sabotaging a push by Sen. John Alario to dedicate a small portion of state sales tax revenue to the DWF so it wouldn’t have to be almost entirely self-funded, as it is now.
Alario had the support of his colleagues, and the bill would have been successful, had Blanco helped push it or even remained silent on the matter. She didn’t do either, and the bill died.
Then Jindal courted the outdoors vote by, among other things, running an ad in which he posed — hatless — with a strap of ducks. Although he admitted his hunting and fishing bloodlines didn’t exactly run deep, he promised to be a strong advocate of our outdoor pursuits.
Many of us believed him, including the publisher of this magazine, who enthusiastically endorsed Jindal during the campaign.
But Jindal wasn’t even through with his first session before he forgot the outdoors community like an amnesia patient off his medication.
Alario again introduced a similar bill, SB 18, which would have given 1/20th of 1 percent of state sales tax to the DWF, so it could finally have the consistent funding source it so desperately needs. The bill passed the Senate 33-2 before Jindal sunk it by announcing he’d veto any bill that included dedicated funding.
Why did the governor do this? We don’t know. He won’t call us back.
Heck, we can’t even get the governor’s press secretary to call us back.
Outdoors community? What outdoors community?
