North Dakota rejects initiative that would have banned canned hunts of deer & elk

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2010:
(Actual press date November 3.)

BISMARCK–North Dakota voters on November 2, 2010 defeated
Initiated Measure 2, which would have banned shooting elk and deer
inside high-fence enclosures.
With 434 of 505 precincts reporting, the attempt to ban
so-called canned hunts trailed by 24,911 votes, failing by a margin
of 56% to 44%.

“Measure 2 pitted proponents of ‘fair-chase hunting,’ as
advocated by conservationists such as Aldo Leopold and Theodore
Roosevelt, against livestock producers, shooting preserve
operators, and landowners who said a ban would violate property
rights,” said Brad Dokken of Associated Press.
Roger Kaseman of Linton and Paul Germolus of Bismarck formed
North Dakota Hunters for Fair Chase to seek passage of Measure 2
after a similar proposal was defeated by the state legislature.
Kaseman and Germolus coordinated the collection of more than 13,000
petition signatures to put Measure 2 on the ballot, then withstood a
legal challenge contending that the petitions were improperly worded.
“We gave it our best shot,” Kaseman told Dokken as the
results came in. “We were outspent. We didn’t have the money to run
a campaign,” Kaseman said. “Where we ran campaigns, like in Cass
County, Fargo, and Grand Forks, we won. But we just didn’t have it
to carry over to Bismarck and Minot.” The Humane Society Legislative
Fund lent support to Measure 2 only in the last week of the campaign,
airing television ads beginning on October 28. A similar strategy
succeeded in neighboring Montana in 2000, where Initiative 143 was
proposed by traditional hunters, approved by voters, and withstood
five years of lawsuits seeking to overturn it as an alleged violation
of property rights.
Kaseman, 64, told Dokken that North Dakota Hunters for Fair
Chase would be dissolved, and that he planned no further efforts to
ban high-fence hunting.
There are 103 elk and deer farms in North Dakota, regulated
by the state Board of Animal Health, deputy state veterinarian Beth
Carlson told the state Legislative Management Committee in September
2010. The Board of Animal Health declined to prepare an economic
impact assessment for Measure 2.
North Dakota Game & Fish Department assistant wildlife chief
Greg Link told the committee that only about a dozen of the elk and
deer farms offer fee-based hunting. Most of the rest appear to
supply hunting operations in other states.
There are more than 7,000 deer-and-elk breeders and 2,600
hunting ranches in the U.S., as a whole, according to a 2007 study
by the Agricultural & Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University.