ESPN Freshwater

It's hard to live in this world today and not get bombarded in some way with the issues that seem to get meaner and meaner with each passing hour.

It doesn't matter if it's health care, Afghanistan, Iraq, Supreme Court decisions, unemployment, terrorists: you name it, there is cause for all of us to sit back and cast a little, maybe a lot, of worry over all sorts of issues that swirl around the collective world.

As outdoorsmen we've always had the places to get away from that. The front of a bass boat, a deer stand or a duck blind are wonderful escapes to just forget all that nonsense and soak in all the great things that so many of us can say "really matter."

It's hard to worry about those things when the first buck of the season is slipping from tree to tree or flocks of ducks start appearing on the skyline. That is, after all, why so many of us clamor for the weekend.

Unfortunately, some of today's issues seem to be spilling over into our horizon. Our bastion of solace is being interrupted in ways many of us could never imagine. And for the most part our collective group of outdoorsmen is doing very little about it.

I give you just two examples of those things:

• How many of you noticed the creation of Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force? If you are one of my redneck buddies in the interior of the country, you probably didn't give it a second thought. What's ocean policy got to do with us plunking away on the Arkansas or Mississippi rivers?

If you live along the coast and spend your days chasing stripers, redfish or salmon then it could mean a lot. And left unfettered, it's expected to spill over into the inland waterways as well.

This task force -- created by President Obama under the guise of protection -- does not take into account recreational angling in any form. They dump our acts of solace right into the middle of commercial fishing, the same folks that put dolphin in your tuna and would rape many places if left unchecked.

Teddy Roosevelt is turning over in his grave. Recreational anglers who are the backbone of the conservationist arm in this country and the reason we have many of our fisheries have all of a sudden been relegated to unimportant Bubbas making a little noise. Never mind 60 million recreational anglers regularly pump billions of dollars into the country's economy.

But why shouldn't they? Anglers and hunters in this country have been silent far too long. The only ones making any noise is a handful of folks who wield 60 million anglers and 27 million hunters around like a sword. But when very few of us stand up and have their back, our sword becomes a butter knife.

How could anyone take us seriously when we're as quiet as we've become?

Without a voice our pursuits of solace and recreation are not being slowly chipped away, they could be wholesale struck off the books.

There's more to this in Robert Montgomery's story on what is taking place.

But wait, there's more.

• How many of us were distressed to learn that Cass Sustein has been appointed Czar of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs?

If you were like me, you probably said "who?" and "to what?" Sounds like a lot of government gobbledygook. Maybe it's designed that way. But this guy has regulatory authority over the Department of Interior and US Fish and Wildlife Service to name a few.

I spend a lot of my days in solace chasing deer, turkeys and ducks on National Wildlife Refuges. But this Sustein guy believes that animals should have the right to sue me for that practice. He's an avowed animal-rights activist who has stated that in clear terms animals should be able to sue humans.

I bet he believes Donald Duck is an excellent actor as well.

Teddy Roosevelt is spinning right now.

For the rest of us that should be downright scary. None of us can accurately predict what the future will hold for either of those two examples. But where there is smoke, there's usually fire.

Which makes it easy to make this prediction: If outdoorsmen continue to just look at their passions and pursuits as nothing more than solace and refuse to get involved, those things we believe "really matter" could simply go away.

So how do you get involved? For that I'm going to link to a letter from Chris Horton, BASS Conservation Director.

Here's hoping we start pulling together.