Why is bear baiting any different than fly fishing? Both lure wild creatures to food with trickery. Maine can’t ban fly fishing, though; too many yuppies saw “A River Runs Through It.” But fly fishing is catch and release, right? How many released fish die due to improper handling? Even the ones that survive get hooked many times over.

Talk about cruelty to animals.

Those elitists drive me nuts. The referendum is being proposed by cappuccino-sipping, Patagonia-wearing, micro-brew-drinking generation X-ers who live in Portland. Portland is not Maine. Portland is Boston and New York City.

The people in the southern third of the state have no right interfering with what folks farther north do for business or pleasure, any more than northerners have the right to say southerners can’t drive their BMWs or wear brown socks with their sandals on Old Orchard Beach.

I don’t ride a bike. Maybe I’ll propose a ban on bikes at the coast. Or why not ban loberstering because it is cruel to boil them alive? Think that would irk a few people?

“Common sense” is such an oxymoron because precious few people possess it.

All the bleeding heart liberal crusaders should donate their trust fund money to Ducks Unlimited or the National Wild Turkey Foundation. Better yet, hike the Appalachian Trail while the rest of us work three jobs. Just remember to travel north to south. They wouldn’t want to end up in the north in autumn … folks up there are weighing bears left and right.

Keith DellaValle, Rangeley