want to go out and see my spread?" And I said, "Sure, I hadn't been 

 on the ground in Texas much and I'd like to go out and see the place. 

 So,' this was in the spring and there was some old turkey gobblers out 

 thefe strutting and I said, "Gee, I sure love to hunt turkeys. Those 

 old big gobblers really turn me on." He said, "Oh, well stop by the 

 ranch house and get a shotgun there are lots of turkeys on the ranch." 

 I said "Heck, I don't have a Texas license and I don't even know if the 

 season is open." He said, "Well gosh, I don't know if the season is 

 open either." But he said, "You know, we used to kind of obey laws 

 down there then he says they established the golden eagle and the bald 

 eagle act and we couldn't have people on the ranches anymore." So he 

 says, "We've got it all locked up. There's nobody else out here but us 

 ranchers so we don't pay much attention. We run our own now." He 

 had a full time predator control man hired himself so I talked to them 

 and so forth, and those guys are killing lots of raptors. Anything 

 with a wing spread gets clobbered and we're not doing the eagles a bit 

 of good by this restrictive regulation. 



If we were helping the rancher that really had a problem, we'd be 

 saving a lot of raptors and especially a lot of bald eagles in a sitaution 

 like that. So we can over regulate and all the Defenders and 

 Audubonies and everybody else on the east coast can say, "Pass the 

 laws, sock it to'em." But out there on the land is where things are 

 happening and those people back East don't have much to do with it. 

 Now maybe I shouldn't be saying this. Maybe this bad for the 

 sheepman, but by golly, a fellow isn't going to stay out there and get 

 eaten up if there's something he can do about it. And there's 

 something a lot of them can do about it. 



