14 January 2014

MSC Ice Fishing Tournament - February 9th 2014

Moodus Sportsman’s Club
Tri-Lake Ice Fishing Tournament
Sunday, 
Feb. 9, 2014
6:30 am – 1 pm 

Click here for a printable Tournament application form,
print it out, fill it in and send to address below.


Weather/Ice decision:              4:00 pm Saturday 2/08, pls call 873-3381 to confirm
                                                Rain / no ice date:  February 16th

Tournament Sponsor:              Moodus Sportsman’s Club

Tournament Fee:                      $20.00 per person  ALL PARTICIPANTS MUST HAVE VALID CT FISHING LICENSE  --   LICENSE MUST BE PRESENTED FOR AWARDS.
                                               
Prize Fish Types:                     Bass – Largemouth/Smallmouth, Chain Pickerel or Yellow Perch

Prizes:                                     $1000.00 total purse
                                                First Prize $ 600.00 to heaviest fish caught of the three species
                                                $ 200.00 each to the largest fish in the two other species listed

Registration Forms:                 Available at the Moodus Package Store,
or at the Moodus Sportsman’s Club February 8th  4- 6pm

Our Mailing Address                Check or Money Order must be included with ALL applications
Moodus Sportsmen’s Club       ALL applications must be postmarked by Monday, Feb.. 3rd 2014
P O Box 11
Moodus, CT 06469                    NO REGISTRATIONS ACCEPTED AFTER 6 PM February 8th 2014


Locations:                                Lake Hayward               East Haddam/Colchester
                                                Bashan Lake                 East Haddam
                                                Moodus Reservoir          Moodus

Verification:                             The official weigh-in will be held at the Moodus Sportsman’s Club
                                                at 1:10 pm sharp!

Party Festivities:                      The Moodus Sportsman’s Club will host lunch right after
                                                the weigh in at 1:15 pm and a raffle to follow lunch.

Tournament Finish:                  Please return to the Club by 1:00 pm for final tally, lunch and awards.

Regulations                              Fish must conform to all Connecticut fishing regulations for the area

CAUTION!!!!!!!!!!:                       The Moodus Sportsman’s Club does not represent that the ice is safe in all places on these lakes.  All participants are responsible for their own personal safety.  Pay attention to the channel in the Moodus Reservoir and the springs in Bashan Lake. Pay attention to ice thickness. With the lowering of water levels, certain areas may not be safe!


Click here for a printable Tournament application form,
print it out, fill it in and send to address below.
Moodus Sportsmen's Club
P O Box 11; Moodus, CT 06469

ADDITIONAL FORMS CAN BE FOUND AT THE MOODUS PACKAGE STORE
NOTE: To get notice of next year’s ice Fishing Derby (or for future events) YOU MUST give us your e-mail address. We are trying to discontinue hard copy mailed notices by 2015.
Even if the Tournament is not held this year (due to lack of ice) your email address will help us keep you posted on  last minute condtions and for future notice of events.

January through June Calendar of Events

All Monthly members meetings begin at 7:30 PM
No Sunday rentals from Sept. 1st to March 1st

JANUARY
6      Annual Board of Directors' Meeting
6      Monthly Meeting
        Smelt Trip - first ice in Jan / Feb Sat & Sun
25   Game Dinner - 6:00 p.m.
       Snow date 26th at 4 pm

FEBRUARY
2      Super Bowl Sunday
3      Monthly Meeting
9      Ice Fishing Derby
16    No Ice/Impossible weather Re-schedule Ice Fishing Derby Date
22   Game Dinner - 6:00 p.m.
       Snow date 23rd at 4 pm

MARCH
        DEEP Archery/Bowhunting Course
1      Sunday - 8 am to 4 pm
3      Monthly Meeting
        DEEP Hunter Safety Course
14    Friday - 6 pm – 9 pm
15    Saturday - 8 am – 5 pm
16    Sunday 8 am - 2 pm
22   Game Dinner - 6:00 pm
       Snow date 23rd at 4 pm

APRIL
5      Town-wide Clean Up
7      Monthly Meeting
12    Game Dinner - 6:00 pm
        Annual Raffle
13    Spring Work Party
        9 am start

MAY
4      Children's Fishing Derby
        8 am start
5      Monthly Meeting
        Squid Fishing Trip May / June

JUNE
2      Monthly Meeting
20    Set up for Shad Bake
22    Shad Bake - Week After Father's Day

2013 Connecticut Deer Harvest Stats

For what it's worth, here are the statewide statistics for the year from 1st January through 31st December 2013.

East Haddam's Harvest take by rifle/shotgun was second in the state, topped only by Ashford, with 110 total deer taken.

East Haddam's archery harvest census came in fifth statewide, topped by Newtown (197); Ridgefield (142); Wilton (121) and Waterford (94)

computer coding glitches

I was trying a little html coding cut-and-paste experiment with another entry (about the fishing derby). All the important information took, and a link to a printable Tournament application form was successful, but for some reason, all the right hand column kicked down to the bottom of the page.

So... until I can get this fixed, please bear with us and scroll down to the bottom of the page for links to other sites and the first 4 months of this year's MSC calendar. Thanks

You can e-mail the MSC site maintainer ~ moodussportsman@gmail.com ~ if you've got other questions.
UPDATE ~ Got the glitch repaired now.

01 January 2014

"Targets and Scapegoats"

Article re-posted from:
The Connecticut Law Tribune

December 27, 2013

Read more: http://www.ctlawtribune.com/PubArticleCT.jsp?id=1202635142961&slreturn=20131131104608#ixzz2p4HHxDzu or continue reading it here.

Forecast 2014:
Gun Owners Worry About Enforcement Of Laws
 by RACHEL BAIRD

Although debate over the sale, possession and use of firearms came to the forefront in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, attorneys involved with firearms law know that there were troubling issues even before December 2012. And the rights of gun owners will likely face further attacks in 2014.

Here's one such problem: For years, State Police officers in the Special Licensing and Firearms Unit have issued notices threatening people who are the subject of ex parte restraining orders with arrest for felony criminal possession of firearms — unless they immediately surrendered or transferred their firearms. (Such restraining orders are imposed by the courts in cases where one person may pose a danger to another – often in divorce and domestic violence situations.)

The threat of arrest was baseless as a matter of law. State and federal laws, in accord with the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, require notice and opportunity to be heard on restraining orders before criminal liability attaches to the continued possession of firearms. Until the Connecticut legislature enacted Public Act 13-3 on April 4, 2013, no one took notice of this abuse of authority because it was easy enough for owners to retrieve their firearms from federal firearms licensees when the ex parte order was dissolved and no restraining order was entered.

But the expansion of the types of firearms defined as assault weapons under PA 13-3, and the prohibition of their transfer after April 4, has left more than one owner unable to reclaim his or her firearms. An assault weapon, once transferred to a federal firearms licensee, cannot be transferred back in Connecticut. So when owners who received the threatening notice could not retrieve their firearms after April 4, the long-standing State Police practice of unjustly threatening certain firearms owners with criminal liability for continued firearms possession was exposed.

The chaos in the Firearms Unit will become even more apparent after Jan. 1, 2014, and doubtless be attributed by apologists to the burdens placed upon State Police in implementing complex new laws. But the new statutes have simply exposed what any attorney with a firearms practice in Connecticut has known for years: the Firearms Unit does not know the law, and holds local police departments, the legislature, courts, and ultimately firearms owners at its mercy because few have the courage and confidence in their own knowledge of the law to question State Police about firearms matters.

Put simply, a transfer of property executed under threat of unlawful arrest and prosecution by a sworn law enforcement officer is not a lawful transfer. If the property were anything other than firearms, the dispossession of private property by state-sponsored extortion simply would not be tolerated.

For now, the Firearms Unit has grudgingly modified its unlawful, misleading notice. The document now includes, as a basis for the threat of arrest, a check mark placed by the court on the ex parte order requiring the surrender or transfer of firearms.

But the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, which oversees the State Police, is still wrong. Under the law there is no such criminal liability for failure to surrender or transfer firearms under an ex parte order. The matter is civil. And so any threat of arrest constitutes an abuse of authority. The courts participate in this abuse by using an ex parte order judicial form that allows judges to deprive firearms owners of property, sometimes permanently, with no notice or opportunity for hearing.

"Assault Weapons Ban"

One day a firearm is not an assault weapon, the next day it is. This past spring, firearms became assault weapons because they were specifically and arbitrarily named as such in state law or because they have certain characteristics. Whether by name or characteristics, if a firearm is defined as an assault weapon, it is subject to prohibitions on transfer and possession and must be registered before Jan. 1, 2014.

However, one portion of chapter 943 of the Connecticut General Statutes exempts a firearm that is not banned by name, but still has the characteristics of an assault weapon, from the prohibitions and registration requirements, as long as the firearm was manufactured prior to Sept. 13, 1994.

In an Oct. 11, 2013 letter to attorney David Clough, Reuben Bradford, who was commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection until he retired in late December, opined that every firearm which would otherwise qualify as an assault weapon is exempt from the prohibitions and registration requirements if the firearm was manufactured prior to Sept. 13, 1994.

But that's not correct. If the firearm is banned by name, then its manufacture date is immaterial. The Sept. 13, 1994 date applies only to exempt assault weapons banned solely because of their characteristics.

Firearms owners who have relied on Bradford and the Firearms Unit for direction in complying with the new gun laws risk mandatory jail time. On Dec. 22, a detective in the unit issued a partial retraction of the commissioner's opinion, and so the State Police may finally be on the right track.

What the last two months have shown is that firearms owners cannot trust what the Department of Public Safety says and that courts will not care where private citizens got their information and why they didn't follow the law.

If the property were any other than firearms, the ambiguity in the law would inure to the benefit of the law-abiding individual. But because the property is firearms, the only sure thing is that if firearms owners are arrested it will mean a high bond and front-page news.

Criminal attorneys will need to familiarize themselves thoroughly with this issue.

Targets And Scapegoats

The stock market crash of 2008 was not the cause of the chaos in the financial sector. The chaos existed long before the crash. Bernie Madoff might have gone on profiting for years. But the market crashed. The quicksand on which his success was built became apparent, and Madoff was exposed.

Likewise, the Newtown shootings and the heavy-handed gun control legislation that followed did not cause the current chaos and confusion among the state's firearms owners. Rather, those developments have only served to expose enforcement problems that have been lingering for years.

The Firearms Unit has operated with impunity for years, acting as the expert in gun matters, ostensibly educating local police departments, elected officials, prosecutors, and the courts.

Now the failure to interpret or follow the laws as written has been exposed. And as we proceed into 2014, the light cast on the Firearms Unit will burn brighter.

Here's one prediction for the coming year:

Law-abiding firearms owners will ultimately pay the price and serve as targets and scapegoats for a reactionary government caught in a quagmire of its own making.

When the registration records of assault weapons are tallied after Jan. 1, 2014, there will inevitably be differences between the list of assault weapons registered and the list that already exists in the state database of long-gun purchases voluntarily reported by retail gun stores prior to April 4, 2013.

When that happens, state and local police will come knocking on the doors of law-abiding citizens to interrogate, inspect, and threaten arrest if registration records do not match the purchase records. The problem is that reporting private sales of long guns prior to April 4, 2013, was not required. And so, for many firearms there is a record of purchase but no record of subsequent sale.

Just as the public safety commissioner and the Firearms Unit have got it wrong on other issues, state and local police will get it wrong when they presume that records of pre-April 4, 2013 purchases and post-Dec. 31, 2013 assault weapon ownership registrations will match. The next step on this slippery slope will be to require law-abiding citizens to prove a negative: that they do not own a particular firearm linked to them through a pre-April 4 sale reported voluntarily to the Firearms Unit.

That sort of conduct hacks away at the Fourth Amendment. Whenever a piece of the Fourth Amendment withers on an extremity fed by fear, the entire body suffers.

Infringement of constitutional protections will not end with the search for unregistered assault weapons. Soon enough, the path cut through such protections will be trod for other reasons, unforeseeable but certain, and that should concern everyone, not just firearms owners

Rachel Baird is a Torrington, CT attorney whose practice includes representing owners of firearms. [Article re-posted with the author's knowledge and consent]