Hunting
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:
The hook-and-bullet lobby is out to get
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Mollie
Beattie, the first nonhunter ever to hold the post,
Dennis Jensen reported October 1 in Vermont Sunday
Magazine––but few of the lobbyists he interviewed
dared identity themselves. “There’s the good-old-boy
network out there,” said former Vermont Fish and
Wildlife Department commissioner Steve Wright.
“And the fact that she is a woman. Many of these
guys have never worked with a woman in a powerful
position and just don’t know how.”
Legislation for Animal Welfare asked
members to help re-elect Ohio state senator Roy Ray,
targeted for defeat by the gun lobby over his opposi-
tion to opening a dove season. Dove-hunting propo-
nents, says Defenders of the Dove Campaign coordi-
nator Ritchie Laymon, “plan to bring their bill up on
the floor of the Senate after the November elections,”
as uncommitted representatives, “once safely back in
office, can vote for the interests of the wealthy hunt-
ing lobby and against the wishes of most Ohioans.”
Falling for two decades, the North
American wild duck population rebounded this year
to 71 million, up 24% from 1993, as waterfowl took
advantage of habitat created by mid-1993 Midwestern
flooding. Although the rise is probably temporary,
hunters are screaming for reversal of the lower bag
limits in effect since 1988. Even at the present lim-
its, up to 10% of the duck population will be shot.
British Columbia has cut the bag limit on
wolves from ten to “only” three.
Nova Scotia natural resources minister
Don Downe on September 22 vetoed a proposed
spring black bear hunt, but indicated he might
approve one next year if sufficiently pressured.
“Hunters are always telling me they had
to shoot a bear because it attacked them,” says
Michigan conservation officer and bear relocation
expert Jackie Strauch. “But when you examine the
wound, you find out the bear was shot in the
hindquarters. Either the bear was backing into them,
or it didn’t happen the way the hunters say it did.”
The American Humane Association o n
October 18 airdropped hay to horses and five llamas
who were left in the San Juan mountains––often teth-
ered to trees––by hunters fleeing an early blizzard.
Some hunters skied back later to retrieve the animals.
The British Field Sports Society o n
October 15 imposed a five-week ban on deer hunting
against the 600-member Devon and Somerset
Deerhounds club, for taking six minutes to kill a stag
brought to bay by hounds in a river. The BFSS par-
tially blamed hunt saboteurs for causing the delay,
using the case to boost an anti-hunt sabotage bill now
before Parliament. Meanwhile, a bomb on October 2
wrecked the car of “a well-known member of the
Three Shires Hunt Saboteurs who lives in Milton
Keynes,” according to a Hunt Saboteurs Association
press release. “No consideration was shown to mem-
bers of the public in the immediate area, which on a
Sunday morning would have included children.”
A sign at the Parachute Creek hunting
ranch in Rifle, Colorado, reportedly proclaims, “A
bull elk is harder to find than a good wife.” How far
the clients take the analogy is a matter of conjecture.
Shawn Peach, 29, of Ellington,
Connecticut, was seriously injured on October 2
when a fellow bowhunter mistook him for a deer and
shot an arrow into his chest. Bowhunter Robert
Ruffolo, 42, of Prosperity, Pennsylvania, got a
similar message from higher authority the same day,
when lightning knocked him out of his tree stand.
