Hunting & Fishing
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:
Fed up with poachers, the Plaquemines Parish,
Lousiana district attorney’s office two years ago began
offering people convicted of hunting and fishing offenses
the option of contributing to an equipment fund to help
game wardens in lieu of paying higher fines. The 1991
receipts bought walkie-talkies and a video camera.
Receipts rose to $5,125 in 1992, and were mostly spent on
a $4,000 night vision scope, to detect jacklighters.
The Lousiana House of Representatives on
May 14 killed a bill to require hunters under 16 to pass a
gun safety class.
Allen Sarratt, of Camden, Tennessee, killed
his son Brent, 12, and daughter Kelly, 15, with a single
shot on May 17 when he slung his loaded deer rifle over his
shoulder as he started down the steps of their home and it
discharged.
Three Pennsylvania hunters were shot by mis-
take on May 1, the first day of the month-long turkey sea-
son, but none were killed. This was the first year that
turkey hunters were required to wear bright orange.
Shot in the lower abdomen by squirrel hunters
while bicycling at the Buzzard Ridge Wildlife Area on
October 22, 1992, Michael Cavanaugh has sued Jackson
County, Iowa, for failing to adequately warn non-hunters
that hunting was going on. Cavanaugh suffered what the
suit terms “permanent, partial functional impairment.”
Anthony Roberts, 25, balanced a fuel can on
his head May 1 during initiation rites for Mountain Men
Anonymous near Grants Pass, Oregon, challenged a mem-
ber of the macho club to shoot it off with a bow, and lost
his right eye for his trouble. He then nearly killed himself
by trying to pull the embedded arrow back out.
John F. Reina, 41, Louis E. Filardi, 29, and
Loreto J. Rufa, 38, were charged with attempted murder
on April 25 in Mineola, Long Island, for allegedly shoot-
ing rival lobster trapper Able H. Miguel, 43, of Kearney,
New Jersey, in a territorial dispute near Sands Point, N.Y.
Fifty fishing worm pickers rammed each other’s
vehicles May 5 in a fight over territory near Georgetown,
Ontario, until a van carrying a propane tank exploded;
they then jumped out and fought with steel pipes and clubs,
sending 13 people to the hospital.
Quebec has banned fishing with live minnows,
not because it’s cruel, but because some of the minnows
escape and go on to eat stocked trout fry.
Kansas is the latest state to permit coursing
pens, in which hunters “train” their dogs by setting them
upon captive foxes and/or coyotes. Sometimes the prey
animals are “rescued” for repeat use; other times, the pack
tears them apart alive. Such operations have become com-
mon all over the South, and are licensed in Florida, but
have only recently spread to the Midwest.
On May 2, during a Compuserve Pets Forum
computer network exchange, Michigan Outdoor Journal
columnist Roberts Howard told hunter Kevin Walker to
quit arguing with anti-hunters, because, “Actions speak
louder. Next time you are harrassed while hunting,”
Walker continued, “look around and be certain you are not
observed and buttswipe the malefactor. Place unconscious
form on ground. Retire quickly…Remember, even Jesus
advocated carrying sword under proper conditions.” One
John F. Tamburo responded, “Why break a perfectly good
weapon? Take aim and use the gun as it was designed.”
A bill to allow mourning dove hunting in Ohio
cleared the state House of Representatives on May 6, 51-
45, but supporters postponed the Senate vote when Senator
Grace Drake of Medina, Wayne, and southeastern
Cuyahoga counties declared May 19 that she would oppose
dove hunting, in line with calls from her constituents,
which were running 251-31 against it. Drake was believed
to be the swing vote. The Akron Beacon-Journal, one of
the two biggest newspapers serving her constituency,
reported that letters were running 73-2 against dove hunt-
ing. The hunting lobby had described the dove hunting bill
as a critical test of strength that it expected to win.
Hours after the Ohio state Human Relations
Commission sued the 50-year-old Midland Sportsmen’s
Club for racial discrimination, and one week after long-
time club president James Boyle of Vanport Township
admitted blacks were not invited to join, the club admitted
a black police officer.
The Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s
Clubs is opposing a state bill to prohibit spotlighting
deer during deer season. Jacklighters now use
lights––legally––to find deer after dark, then shoot them
illegally and either report them as having been killed the
next morning or don’t report them at all.
Vermont state police on May 22 arrested Scott
Clark, 27, and Russell Mcallister, 33, for using a pipe
bomb to catch 10 trout near the Brockway Mills hydroelec-
tric dam in Rockingham. They then threw a second bomb,
which didn’t go off.
Thwarted in trying to get authorization to sell
moose hunting permits from the state legislature, the
Vermont Fish and WildlifeBoard voted 7-0 on May 19 to
issue 30 free moose permits this fall instead. Moose have
not been hunted in Vermont since 1896.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has
moved to restrict deer hunting in the Post Oak Savannah
region, where intense pursuit of does as well as bucks cut
deer numbers from 560,693 in 1986 to 249,753 in 1991.
Quebec will not issue doe permits in the
Eastern Townships this year (just north of Vermont) due
to protest from farmers in the wake of numerous confronta-
tions with hunters during last year’s three-day doe season,
which coincided with fall plowing. The Eastern Townships
deer density of 14 per square kilometre may be the greatest
in the province. Doe hunting has not been allowed there on
a regular basis for more than 30 years.
Outgoing Canadian prime minister Brian
Mulroney was lambasted in papers across the country in
early May for shooting a small boar in an apparent “canned
hunt” near Moscow with Russian premier Boris Yeltsin.
The Traverse City, Michigan council voted 6-1
on April 13 to set aside 500 acres of the 1,240-acre Brown
Bridge Quiet Area, a public park, as a no-hunting zone.
Local hunters are reportedly irate, as they now have only
67,000 acres of state and municipally owned land left in
Traverse County to hunt on.
