SALT LAKE CITY -- The "hunt" proposed for Antelope Island wildlife still isn't sitting well with Davis County officials, and even some of its young people. County Commissioner Dannie McConkie related the case of a 9-year-old Farming-ton boy who wrote a letter deriding the proposal. Calling S.B. 187 the "Bambi Bill," he told Davis County legislators Thursday that "I talked with a mother in Farmington. Her son wrote a letter, saying it's not right that we kill Bambi.

"He wrote that we're doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons," McConkie said. "This smacks of elitism.

"You are sacrificing trophy deer here (on the island) when there are trophy deer all over the state of Utah. It's just harder to hit those animals. This is not a real hunt," he said.

Steve Roberts, a Bountiful native and now assistant director of the Utah Division of Parks & Recreation, also expressed concerns about the bill.

"I grew up near the shores of the Great Salt Lake. There have been misperceptions and mis-representations. Every four to five years this issue rears its ugly head," he said, saying it's been an issue since the state took over the island in the 1980s.

"The Division of Parks and tour board strongly oppose this bill," he emphasized.

"Financially, the way I understand the bill, the money (collected from a hunt) isn't going to be utilized on Antelope Island or by the parks system," said Steve Rawlings, Davis County clerk/auditor, who was in attendance at the meeting.

"It's a bad bill for Davis County. It doesn't fit in line with the decisions that were made a few years ago on the long-range plans for the island. It's to benefit a few people and it's an elitist type of recreation," Rawlings said.

"We're trying to protect that island as a tourist site. If you start opening it up to hunting, it certainly works against that," he said. In addition, the hunt would clash with the annual buffalo roundup, intended as a way to control the buffalo population, even raised as a safety concern with the bill proposed.

"Is that a hunt? If you're going to hunt, hunt," he added.

Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, said local legislators were considering proposing amendments to the bill that would allow coyote hunting in Snow Canyon (near St. George, where bill sponsor John Hickman is from) and only a primitive hunt, with a buck knife, and wearing a loin cloth, to show how ridiculous it is."

The bill proposes a lottery system, with "hunters" coming from those willing to pay the highest price.

tbusselberg@davisclipper.com