News

Wisconsin Court Ruling

MADISON, WISCONSIN -- On April 6, 2004, for presumably political reasons, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the appeals court reversal of the order of lower court barring the sport shooting of a non-game species in Wisconsin. See it here.

Even though Wisconsin maintains a separate and official "game" list, in which the mourning dove was statutorily removed in 1971 when the state legislature officially declared the mourning dove as the state's Bird of Peace, the Court could not determine that the terms "game" and "non-game" to be mutually exclusive.

Excerpts from Supreme Court ruling:

"On April 16, 2002, the circuit court granted WCCCD's request for declaratory and injunctive relief, concluding that § 29.014(1) is ambiguous and that the legislature has not clearly authorized the DNR to set a hunting season for mourning doves, a "nongame species" regulated under Wis. Stat. § 29.039(1).

While it may seem odd, considering these terms in their normal, everyday usage, that a bird which is not a "game bird" may nevertheless be a bird that is "game," we are not applying the ordinary meaning of words.

Although section 29.039(1) does not explicitly empower the DNR to set open seasons for "nongame species," it may nonetheless implicitly empower the DNR to do so because § 29.039(1) permits the DNR to regulate the "taking" of "nongame species."

An analysis of the use of the word "take" in chapter 29 compels us to conclude that "take" or "taking" includes those activities delineated under the definition of "hunting" in § 29.001(42), such as killing, shooting."

With that, all non-game species of birds in Wisconsin are now considered game under a broad ambiguous definition.

With this ruling, there is no longer a need for a protected "non-game" species list in Wisconsin as the DNR has the authority to set open seasons for the purpose of shooting and killing [traditionally protected] species under the protective definition of non-game. Dove shooting proponents have now set their sites on protected Sandhill Cranes...they say there are "enough" of those to hunt.

In 2003, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reported that only 8 percent of small game license holders participated in Wisconsin's inaugural dove season. Survey results by the Department reported that those participants spent an average of four shooting days and bagged an estimated 202,000 mourning doves - this estimate does not include the 30 percent loss rate. The doves were hunted primarily on local private land [with little or no "economic" travel] over crop growing fields and watering sites (toxic lead shot is still legal and primarily used to hunt doves).

SPC NOTE: According to state and federal surveys, the percentage of the population recruited to buy hunting licenses (an antiquated form of funding designed to give preferential or interest priority to consumptive paid licensed use) consistently drop each and every year. With these long-term trends, radical interest groups have become aggressive and want to "face-off" with the public to take whatever they want. With the failure of more conventional ideas to reverse trends, they are grabbing for misguided "recruitment tools" (i.e. targets) and have become more extreme on their wants and intentions. A zealous minority want to show they can "win" and have "political power" over the majority - silence and eliminate the general public's wishes and concerns.

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