Excellent Hugh the berries are doing well and you are a oak my friend.
Brad I think highly of you and understand what you mean and know that you are reminding us of nature and the deer and animals no doubt cause us loss. I wanted to say this to you so that you would know that I mean no disrespect to your comment my friend.
I have had poaching on my mind strong and I now that their are friends on here that understand me.
I believe that God took into consideration natural loss of plants to the other animals and acts of nature. However ginseng thrived with the animals all down through the generations until now.
However since the poachers have got so brutal digging before the pods even form in the tops it has got to where if you are not a very skilled hunter like me and many of our brothers on this site that you have no hope of doing well in the wild.
A while back some one told me that I should not be hurt at poachers because they may be poaching to feed their family's. I thought about that for days, every single day. Then I came to a conclusion. Most all states have food stamps and welfare. If a man is with a job and in so bad of shape that he can not live then he can sign up and draw them to get by. I am not saying that a man should not work he should, but if he is down on his luck I mean. I have been a hard and diligent worker and firmly believe in working, but if something happened and I fell on hard times I am not a bit above asking for help if I truly need it.
But their is Black Cohosh, Blue Cohosh, Goldenseal, Blood root, Wild yam, Queen of the meadow, Heart leaf, Star grub, and many more roots, herbs, barks etc. They can dig them before ginseng season and survive. It is not because they can not make it. It is because of this. GREED 100 o/o Greed.
Poachers are greedy and they do not respect no one not their neighbors not their own young children or their grandchildren because of their greed. They do not care to go into the National Parks, into your back yard or any where else no where is off limits to them at all.
Most of the time I just do not even talk about it. I try to keep myself and be quite, but lately I am really sick of Poaching. Dealers buying out of season. People trading drugs for ginseng. The poaching diggers them selves getting a 3rd of what they could get if they would only wait and dig in season. It is insanity.
Some One Some Authority needs to do something about it and wake up out of their sleep. They are slumbering and folding their hands together to sleep and complaining that the ginseng population is vastly decreasing ? Really ? well lets do something about it SERIOUSLY You can call the authorities and people over the ginseng and nothing is done.
I see no effort being made at all. You can tell them who is doing the poaching, where they are doing it at, who they are selling it to and nothing. Just that the word is being passed along. My God the ginseng will be destroyed before the word is passed to where ever it needs to be passed to. Graney gear is letting the wild ginseng be annihilated. What can we do ? Who can help ? I can not help because I am not herd or at least I am not herd by some one who can do something their hands are tied as mine are because I know that they care so I do not know who to confer with about it.
Latt instead of a reality show I wish they would actually and truthfully do just that. Get some one who has the guts and the back bone to actually put a stop to foolishness and I would join you and them and go into the woods and through their front doors if we had the authority to put a stop to it, but they will not do it or enforce it for someone else to do it.
Their will soon be nothing left to dig at the rate that things are going.
Billy.