Hunting––
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1992:
The Michigan Public Broadcast-
ing System on September 24 aired the final
episode of Michigan Outdoors, a weekly
hook-and-bullet show that had an audience
of 200,000. The show died after host Fred
Trost said in a product review that Buck Stop
Lure Co. used cow urine in a deer scent, lost
a $4 million defamation suit the firm filed
against him, and declared bankruptcy. Trost
was also forced to suspend a magazine he
published, Michigan Outdoor Digest, circu-
lation 40,000. The latter had also been in
trouble, having been sued for copyright
infringement at one point by the Michigan
United Conservation Clubs, whose in-house
magazine is called Michigan Out-of-Doors.
Buck Stop said Trost’s attack on its product
caused sales to drop 65%. Trost, mean-
while, pledged to regroup, find backers,
and get back on the air.
Cleveland Plain Dealer hook–and–
bullet writer D’Arch Egan exposed the cruel-
ties of catch-and-release fishing in detail on
October 9––including the internal injuries
walleyes and other deepwater fish suffer
from decompression when abruptly hauled
up from the depths, as well as the fungal
infections many fish develop from being
handled. Two weeks earlier, Egan reported
that bowhunters spend, “on average, more
than 40 days each year shooting their bows,
and bowhunt more than 16 days each sea-
son.”
Deer reportedly devastated the
marijuana crop in Brome-Missisquoi,
Quebec, last summer, causing some of the
growers to take up jacklighting (illegal night
hunting). While marijuana-growing is illegal
in Canada, the weed has long been recog-
nized as one of Brome-Missisquoi’s top 10
agricultural commodities in terms of dollar
volume.
The N.Y. Dept. of Environmental
Conservation recently held hearings on a
plan to reintroduce wild turkeys on Long
Island, for eventual hunting. Never mind
that Long Island has the greatest population
density of anywhere turkey restoration has
even been attempted, and that turkey hunt-
ing is the most risky kind of hunting for
both participants and anyone else who hap-
pens to be within shotgun range.
One hunter was killed by gun-
fire, one died of unknown causes, and two
more were critically injured on the opening
day of the Utah deer season.
A group of hunters found a 57-
year-old New York woman on October 16,
hours after she fell off the back of a moving
Amtrak passenger train near Price, Utah,
while looking for a restroom––but they left
her to suffer with multiple injuries in sub-
zero weather. She was eventually rescued
by a coal train crew.
Northwest Territories wildlife
officials are reportedly re-examining the
stories told by six tourists and their half-
dozen Inuit guides last spring, after they
shot five internationally protected polar
bears. The tourists paid $10,000 apiece in
April to take a three-week trek across the
Canadian Arctic. The Inuit guides shot
polar bears for meat, they said, after the
expedition ran out of the seal meat they
brought to feed their dogs.
French animal protection advo-
cate and former film star Brigitte Bardot
swore out a complaint October 12 against a
neighbor who allegedly invaded her proper-
ty to hunt boars.
Commercial bird-hunting, a tra-
ditional occupation of Bedouin Arabs, is in
steep decline because the most coveted
birds are getting scarce. The bird-hunters
traditionally sell their kills mainly to small
restaurants in Cairo and Alexandria.
