I have fished below the dam at Lake Livingston since I was a child. I have camped there many many times.

When they have the water flowing, there can be tones of carp, buffalo, and all species of gar stacked up in this small area. There are some very large fish there.

When it is like that it is almost a nightly thing to see several bow fishing rigs launch just before dark. They will fish for white bass etc.... until it gets dark then the lights come on and the bows come out.

The next morning the banks will be lined up with dead carp, buffalo and every species of gar there is. They will have a single hole in their side.

These are fish that are shot then released. It is illegal to shoot them and discard TPWD calls that wanton waste.

Some people will get around the by taking them when they leave and discarding them later. This is still Wanton Waste as you have no intention of doing anything other than tossing them away to rot. Some claim they bury them in the garden for fertilizer........umm Ok sure.

Bow fishing is killing for sport plain and simple. You can try and justify it with myths about how many game fish the gar eat or what ever else a person tells themselves. You may not do it for the thrill of the kill, you may do it for the challenge of the shot. The fact remains that the result is a dead fish that is not consumed, it is tossed out as trash or left where it was shot. That is killing for sport.

The vast majority of the people that bow fish do not consume the fish they kill, or give them to some one who will. We all know this is true.

Let's all be honest about it.

If you have no problem with killing and not utilizing what you kill in a legitimate manner fine say so. Do not try to sugar coat, justify, make up stuff.

Simply admit that you like to shoot animals with your bow and you have no issue with wasting the animal.

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what you have seen is the exact reason i am as adamant about this issue as i am, the way our native species are treated on out public waterways is horrible and illegal and people need to be aware of the issues that are going on, if people were killing deer and letting them rot in a field everyone of you would be up in arms, why are our native fish species any different what so ever?

the conservation of americas largest freshwater predatory fish is in my opinion a very important issue, an issue i think needs to be looked at and readdressed.
if you thought everything was perfectly okay with the way this species is targeted and treated after harvest you wouldn't have a problem with me bringing any of it to light and there being a conversation about it..

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Well I guess using a couple of sticks of dynamite is just plumb out of the question huh?

if i have lost control of my emotions i missed it, all i have done is stated facts and my opinions and you dont like them so you try to discredit me its pretty simple and easy to see to anyone who is not here to specifically fight against me.

Any one been fishing lately?

Come on guys. Enough of the personal attacks. Anti's love threads like this.

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so when faced with facts and logic you stoop to making up stories about me.

i have never had a single problem with anyone on the trinity river, if it makes you feel better to pretend something happened so be it.

you can make up whatever you want about me, you can slander me as a guide, you can say every gar i have ever caught died right after i released it.

you are not going to upset me over social media

your efforts to slander me will put the right people into my boat as a guide, the people that i want to fish with, the poeple who care about conservation who will go out of their way to make sure the guide they use practices catch and release 100% of the time and is conservation based.

no sportsman would ever agree to elongate a harvested animals suffering needlessly
no sportsman would harvest an animal and not harvest every usable portion of the animal
no sportsman would leave an animal they harvested to rot in a field
no sportsman would release an animal with an arrow hole in it
no sportsman would harvest a target species to the point of non sustainability and watch it go extinct without saying something

there is a reason i have put hundreds of hours of alligator gar videos on YouTube for the 11 million people who have watched my videos to see, i am no scared to show the world every second of how i interact with this fish species, my head is held high and i know i am walking the path i am supposed to be walking.

you know why people listened to Steve Irwin? its because he had a gift, a gift that he wasn't afraid to use or share with the world. he had a love and passion for the planet and living creatures so strong people could see it and connect with it.
i have the same gift and passion and I'm going to share it with the world, thank you for providing me more motivation to work even harder to protect this species.

as i stated in that video i am playing a role that seeks to balance the role you and others like you are playing, i respect that you are motivated enough to fight for what you believe in and I'm going to leave it at that.

Henry Martin
Owner of Catching Dinosaurs Guide Service.

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saying your not slandering someone, and then proceeding to do so doesn't make it legal.

anyone can make up anything, and anyone who has been on the river would know that people go way out of their way to not have conflicts with people out there.

are gar extinct yet? Almost as worthless as turtles.

in what way would an apex predator, a keystone species to this region for the last 100 million years be worthless?

everything native plays its part.