<p>There's the faintest hint of a deer track in the muddy trail outside Glenn Dowling's office, and the sight of it sets him off.</p><p>For 10 minutes, he rattles off the steps he'd take if he were on a hunt, finishing with tips on the ideal spot to set up a deer stand.</p><p>"I hunt animals on its terms," he says, a hint of disgust in his voice. "I use information about animals that I learned instead of conforming animals to my schedule."</p><p>He's upset. He just spent an hour and a half shooting holes through a proposal to allow hunters in Georgia to put grain, apples or any other type of bait in a feeder to lure game animals to a killing ground.</p><p>The practice, known as baiting, makes it much easier for hunters to rack up deer kills each hunting season, and that's what appeals to backers of the idea. It also means bigger profits for landowners who run south Georgia's huge hunting plantations as well as more money for the grain distributors looking to sell more corn.</p><p>To opponents, ranging from the state Department of Natural Resources to Dowling's Georgia Wildlife Federation, the proposal verges on blasphemy. They say changing the law _ which requires that feeders be at least 200 yards away from hunters _ transforms hunting from a skill to just a kill.</p><p>"The sport is called hunting, not killing," says Dowling, the federation's executive vice president. "They want to guarantee a kill for some fat cat from up north or out west. And if you teach a kid that, you don't teach them all the ethic to hunt. It's dumbing down a generation of hunters."</p><p>A similar proposal last year survived in the state's Republican-controlled House Rules Committee, but was hastily recalled before it came up for a vote.</p><p>This year, the proposal has re-emerged in another guise. The brunt of the measure would give the state new power to issue an annual permit for "quality deer management" to landowners. Buried deep in it is language that would give hunters the ability to use the feeds as deer lures regardless of how close they are to hunters.</p><p>"The whole thing is giving property owners the right to manage the deer populations," says state Rep. Gene Maddox, a Republican veterinarian from the south Georgia town of Cairo.</p><p>It also could help small landowners who don't have enough property to install feed plots, argues Reggie Dickey, president of the Georgia Hunting and Fishing Federation.</p><p>"If you hunt over a food plot in 100 acres of pine, that's bait. You could put tower stands on them and hunt over them," says Dickey, president of the federation. "There's no difference doing it that way than a small landowner who doesn't have enough land for a food plot."</p><p>Besides, he argues, "a lot of people hunt over bait now, this would just make it legal."</p><p>So far, with Georgia's 2007 legislative session set to end in the next month, the measure hasn't reached a vote yet and opponents say they're confident it's been thwarted this year. They've hounded lawmakers with pictures of feeders that have lured coyotes and other predators, and bombarded them with research that suggests the feeders could spread disease.</p><p>Still, the critics are less than pleased they're having to fight the same battle each year.</p><p>"If we could get this one issue to rest forever, we could get a lot more positive things done," Dowling said. "It's a disease. It's a parasite that keeps coming up _ and we keep having to get rid of it."</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x1cdd1c8)</p><p>HASH(0x1cdf904)</p>
