Joan Hurlock, who is only the second woman to serve on Idaho’s Fish & Game Commission, is up for her confirmation hearing in the Senate Resources Committee this afternoon.  “I would like to correct the record, set it straight and have you hear it from my mouth, what I’m about,” she told the Senate Resources Committee. Holding up a printout, “My first one was in 1999. Here’s my record of my hunting and fishing licenses. So, OK, got that out of the way.”

Hurlock noted, “There is a group that has set out to gather information about me, to have me not confirmed.” She said 400 people have signed a petition against her, but suggested none of them have ever talked with her. “Because generally, the people that have taken the time to actually speak with me … they come away with a different perspective of who I am.”

She said, “The Fish & Game code does not say you must have hunted and fished in Idaho your entire life, it does not say that. And in fact just because you’ve hunted and fished every day of your life in Idaho, that does not mean you’d make a good commissioner. People eat every day of their lives, but that does not mean they are good cooks.” She said her main reason for wanting to serve on the commission is her love of Idaho, and her desire to preserve and expand wildlife opportunities for the state's youth. "My children were born here," she said.

Questions from the committee so far have included her stance on wolves; she said she wishes they hadn’t been reintroduced, and supports managing them aggressively down to the minimum level permitted. Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, said, “I would love to be able to shoot a wolf any time, anywhere with anything. … Can I do that?”

Hurlock responded that as a legislator, Brackett could get the law changed to allow that. “As it stands now, you can’t just hunt them by any ways, any means, any time – you have to have a hunting license and a tag. If you want to trap them you have to take the wolf trapping class. There are seasons for them. So as much as you would like, and I understand that, you can’t – unless you guys get together and rewrite the law and say you can.”

Hurlock also noted that she’s the only commission member who’s taken the F&G wolf trapping class, and that this spring, she’ll become a hunter education instructor.