Recreational animal-killing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Six percent of all Ohio
traffic accidents, 1989-1994, were
deer/car collisons. The Ohio
Division of Wildlife says the deer/
car crash peaks reflect “increased
deer movement associated with
breeding.” Fifty-two percent of all
deer/car crashes came in October,
November, and December, coinciding
with the hunting season; 25%
occurred in November alone, the
peak month for hunting. The peak
hours for deer/car accidents were 5
a.m. to 7 a.m., when the most
hunters were in the woods, and as
many deer were hit then as in the
seven hours from 5 p.m. to midnight.
At least 33 states are
holding special youth hunts this
f a l l. In New Jersey, the National
Rifle Association and Friends of the
NRA will stock seven wildlife areas
with pheasants on November 2 for
its second annual Take A Kid
Hunting Day. Arkansas is offering
hunting opportunities for six-yearolds.
Pennsylvania is holding a twoday
squirrel hunt on October 12 and
14––targeting squirrels, a spokesperson
said, because “they are easy
to find” and “not impossible to hit.”

Added state game commission representive
Bruce Whitman, “I
wouldn’t say we’re wrong in pushing
hunting any more than the education
department is wrong in pushing
education.”
Twice in five years, a
Florida governor has named a
crony with a history of alleged
hunting law violations to the
Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish
Commission, which oversees hunting
law enforcement. Joe Bruner,
43, of Destin, appointed by Lawton
Chiles in July, was arrested in
Louisiana for illegal hunting in1988
and 1990. In 1991, former governor
Bob Martinez appointed Joseph
Spicola, who was twice fined for
illegally baiting doves, and was
caught violating conflict-of-interest
laws in a previous public postt.
Disregarding veteran
pigeon shoot protest organizer
Steve Hindi’s advice to demonstrate
in the town of Hegins,
Pennsylvania, rather than at the
62nd annual Hegins Labor Day
shoot itself, so as to keep the several
thousand hecklers who come each
year to harass demonstrators away
from the shoot concession stands
and increase the numbers of state
troopers who are needed to provide
security, The Fund for Animals proceeded
with the traditional combination
of civil disobedience and bird
rescue. Twelve activists who locked
themselves together on the killing
field delayed the shoot for some
time, but all the birds were released
to be shot. Shoot participation was
down from 250 to 170 this year, and
the number of birds shot at was
down correspondingly, to 4,124
from 5,106 in 1995. Fourteen percent
were killed outright; 64% were
wounded by the gunners, then killed
by teenaged “trapper boys”; 13%
were wounded but not promptly
killed by the trapper boys; and 9%
escaped alive. The percentages were
all closely comparable to those of
past years. Fund volunteers
retrieved 111 wounded birds for veterinary
care––usually quick euthanasia.
One spectator was charged with
cruelty for stomping a pigeon to
death in the parking lot. Another,
Scott Bradley, 19, of Minersville,
Pennsylvania, was charged with disorderly
conduct and cruelty three
weeks later, after the Fund published
a photo of him biting the head
off a pigeon and offered a reward of
$500 for his identity. “I wanted to
shoot, but I didn’t bring enough
money,” Bradley told Yvonne Latty
of the Philadelphia Daily News.
Outfitting 10 hunters
with portable cardiac monitors,
Dr. Barry Franklin of Royal Oak,
Michigan, found they drove their
heart rates to 108% of the maximum
achieved on treadmills while just
walking in the woods; 114% of
treadmill max upon seeing a deer;
and 118% of treadmill max after
shooting a deer. Other researchers
have noted similar results in studies
of male heart rates during foreplay,
sexual intercourse, and ejaculation.
While other states contend
with deer overpopulation,
caused by years of pushing bucksonly
hunting so that the winter herd
consists predominantly of ever
growing numbers of bearing does,
the Utah Wildlife Board on August
27 changed hunting rules in hopes of
increasing the annual puma kill from
circa 450 to 600, in order to make
more deer available as targets.
Afraid that the winter
carrying capacity of the habitat has
been exceeded, the Alaska Department
of Fish and Game is trying to
get hunters to kill at least a third of
the estimated 60,000 caribou in
Game Management Unit 13, north
of Anchorage, including at least
10,000 cows. GMU 13 is just south
of GMU 20A, where the department
massacred wolves 1993-1994 to
boost the caribou population.
Texas, where 56,746
fewer people hunted in 1995 than
in 1991, will permit hunting at a
record 39 state parks this year.
Texas still has just over one million
licensed hunters, but they make up
only 6% of the state population, the
same as for the whole U.S.
Representatives from 34
chapters of the Make-A-Wish
Foundation met July 31 in Phoenix
to discuss policies on sending seriously
ill children on hunting trips,
the source of national controversy
when a 17-year-old boy was sent to
hunt Kodiac bears in Alaska last
May. The meeting was inconclusive.
The Pittsburgh chapter of
Make-A-Wish will send another 17-
year-old to Alaska to hunt moose on
schedule, said chapter director
Michele Atkins in late August.
Objected frog-killer Dan
Z o c c o, 45, to the imposition of a
five-gallon limit on the number of
frogs a hunter can kill in a night
within the Big Cypress National
Preserve, a part of the Everglades,
“They’re throwing us out of our
playground.” The National Park
Service acted because frog slaughter
for resale was depleting the food
supply of endangered marsh birds.
Outdoor Life senior editors
Steve Byers and Will Bourne
resigned on July 25 when vice president
Jason Klein of the parent
Times-Mirror Corporation killed an
opinion column by Tom Beck, a
hunter who criticized bear-baiting,
the subject of November referendums
in five states.
The Humane Society of
the U.S. failed to gather enough
s i g n a t u r e s to place a measure to
abolish dove hunting on this year’s
Ohio ballot, but Save The Doves,
an independent group, by August 1
had gained half the signatures needed
to put the measure on the 1997
ballot, and had 15 weeks left in
which to gain 75,000 more, assisted
by 1,200 volunteers. Dove hunting
has been legal in Ohio only since
November 1994. More petitioners
are welcome at 1-800-868-DOVE.
Big game hunters killed
50,000 large mammals in British
Columbia last year––but ever more
of them are tourists. Resident hunting
license sales have fallen 37% in
15 years. Bear Watch and the Western
Canada Wilderness Committee,
claiming 78% public support according
to polls, began petitioning on
September 9 to place a ban on bear
hunting on the next provincial ballot.
Thirty advocates of deer
hunting with dogs turned out on
September 21 to ask the Arkansas
Game and Fish Commission to keep
International Paper from enforcing a
prohibition against the use of dogs
taller than 18 inches while hunting
on company land. International
Paper, which allows hunters to use
493,000 acres in Arkansas, banned
large dogs due to complaints about
dogs attacking livestock on neighboring
property.