Guest Editorial: Sentenced to Life in the American Gulag by Captain Ted Peck
I awoke at 3:12 a.m., my 65-year-old body’s biological clock demanding a trip to the bathroom. A moment later back in bed any possibility of returning to the sweet arms of Morpheus dashed with the reality that I was about to become a prisoner for life in an American Gulag.
A few hours earlier I had attended a meeting at the posh $7.1 million U.S. Fish & Wildlife Visitor Center on the Mississippi River just north of Onalaska, Wis. There were about 40 folks in attendance, there to hear about changes which would directly impact any future visits to the Upper Miss Fish & Wildlife Refuge which sprawls over 240,000 acres from Winona, Mn. to Savanna, Il.
This refuge was established in 1924; about 65 years after both sides of my family were drawn to the banks of the iconic Mississippi. One way or the other we’ve made a portion of our livelihood here ever since.
I am a fishing guide on the Mississippi. My first paid guide job here was back in 1964 for which I received the princely sum of ten bucks.
Life took me away from the River for awhile, supporting my family by working as a professional firefighter. This income has been augmented by “side jobs” as an outdoor writer and sometimes fishing guide for 35 years which has flown by on eagle wings.
It seems like yesterday that I was a kid, kicking around the River bottoms and on the family farm between Savanna and Thomson. One of my favorite adventures was duck hunting.
One beautiful late October afternoon found me hunkered in a cornfield with the whistling wings of mallards circling overhead. When they finally came close enough to shoot, legal hunting time had passed.
I didn’t see legendary game warden Paul “Sprink” Hensal until I was almost back to the farm house. Sprink had a well-deserved reputation as a tenacious and very colorful warden.
He had already talked to my Dad before taking my shotgun when I shuffled up to the road gate carrying a single drake mallard. His lecture on shooting late and losing my gun scared the daylights out of me.
I was instructed to be at his house the following Saturday morning at 7 a.m. Sprink said he had already talked with the judge and I had to ride along in his warden car for the next three Saturdays if I wanted to get my gun back.
That short time with this game warden changed my life forever. When he finally gave me the gun back he also gave me a Timex watch - and another stern lecture which ended with “if you always put the resource first, you can never go wrong.”
These words have been my mantra ever since. Like my father and his father before him, I have a profoundly deep respect and passion for life on the Mississippi River.
When I retired from fighting fire with a small pension, returning to the River seemed like the natural order of things. Getting into guiding ‘full time’ to help pay the bills was a natural progression. But Man and the River have different concepts of “full time”. Because the River has been running belly-full all summer, I’ve only been able to guide 18 days.
There were no time conflicts in attending the meeting at the USFWS palace several weeks ago. At this meeting Refuge Manager Sabrina Chandler informed guides and others present that beginning in 2017 fishing guides would be required to pay the government 3% of their gross revenues, plus a mandatory $100 ‘administration fee’.
The Refuge Manager said the authority to collect this money had been a matter of record since 1971, ordered by Congress and upheld by both Republican and Democrat administrations.
Our benevolent government decided to start enforcing this sleeping caveat without exception, figuring assessing 3% of a guide’s wages up front without having to assume any risk, which is part of running a small business, was a sure-fire winner - for the government.
Truth is, this amounts to at least 15-20% of a fishing guide’s profit margin. With all the expenses of insurance, licensure by both states and the Coast Guard, boat payments and unexpected repairs, loss and taxes, taxes, taxes - I figure it costs me about $61 every time I launch the boat. This is before the government announced it was going to be my new, unwanted partner in business for life.
There were seven government justifications for imposing this tax on guides fishing waters flowing above refuge lands. All justifications but one came from projections of future refuge use which have never come to pass.
The unique justification clearly states that monies collected from guides for the privilege of teaching Americans how to fish would be used entirely for administrative costs to monitor the guides!
There is no intent to use this tax for the resource, nor for the refuge users which the USFWS is pledged to serve in their mission statement. This tax exists for one reason only: to feed the insatiable government pig.
The sad thing is, I don’t have a choice in the matter. If my wife and I are to eat, I need to work as a guide whenever the River will let me. With an ever-rising cost of living this means working until I can no longer work - essentially a life sentence with an unwanted partner who assumes no risk and really doesn’t care if I fail.
This government partner has opted not to jump in the seat of a fast tournament boat. There are over 40 fishing tourneys on the refuge every summer. Tourney winners take home more in a two-day event than I can make in 10 years.
The Bassmaster Elite Championship tourney was September 8-11, based out of La Crosse. The total payout is $638,000. If these tourney anglers were held to the same standard proposed for guides, the federal government could realize $29,840 in taxes/fees for this single event!
The USFWS has ceded management of fishing tourneys to the state. Participants do not put the resource first. They remove fish from chosen habitats for eventual release many miles - perhaps even another River pool - away.
These fish will never thrill my clients. They are gone from this resource niche forever.
My thrill will soon be gone too, consumed by the government pig. So much for the pursuit of happiness my ancestors realized on the refuge before it was even a refuge.
The concept that the government works for us is gone. I am a lifetime prisoner of the American gulag, forced to work for the government if I want to eat.
Captain Ted Peck of rural New Albin is an outdoor columnist for the Janesville Gazette, a daily newspaper in Wisconsin. He also operates Peck’s Pool 9 Guide Service and describes himself as a “fourth generation river rat”.
