News

Wisconsin: Dove Hunt Takes Aim at
Concepts of Respect and Harmony

Published August 30, 2003. By David Giffey. The Wisconsin Capitol Times.
Dove Hunt Takes Aim at Concepts of Respect and Harmony

In these days with peace and plenitude in short supply, there is an especially perverse aspect to the bizarre reality that as of Monday, hunters in Wisconsin will legally begin killing and, presumably, eating mourning doves.

Who or what is to blame for allowing this to happen? Why has Wisconsin's official bird of peace, the harmless creature whose song is often the first sound we hear in the morning, been reduced to the status of "prey"?

The mourning dove hunt is not designed for people who hunt for food. The hungry can't afford to waste 50 cents per shotgun shell on an elusive 2-ounce piece of "small game." "I think it's going to be very hard to find someone around here who's shot a dove," says my friend and neighbor, a lifelong trapper and hunter.

Thanks to the peaceful symbolism of the mourning dove, I was moved to use its shape in designing the effigy mound built in 1989 by scores of us veterans, families and friends at the Highground, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Project outside Neillsville in Clark County. The late John Beaudin (Wa Kanja Hoohega), an American Indian veteran, dedicated the dove mound with the words: "Leave your troubles and cares there on the mound as you walk away renewed and refreshed." Since he spoke, the ashes of dozens of people, including John's, have been scattered on the dove mound.

Many, perhaps most people in Wisconsin, opposed the mourning dove hunt, to no avail. Wisconsin Citizens Concerned for Cranes and Doves fought the hunt in court. But the Department of Natural Resources, lobbied by militant hunter groups like the National Rifle Association and the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, facilitated the hunt while the state Supreme Court denied an injunction to stop it.

The dove hunt has been on the minds of hunting zealots for years. In 2000 Rep. DuWayne Johnsrud, R-Eastman, went so far as to have 24 dead doves shipped to his office for a taste test. To protest his crude promotional stunt, I followed my nose to his third-floor chambers in the Capitol that day. I was amazed to see Johnsrud's suite packed with legislators and reporters eating those tiny imported carcasses.

The subtle, worrisome impact this hunt will have on many of us is likely to be lost on the militant hunters.

However, if dove-hunting zealots have intentionally chosen to take a stand with this absurd violation of respect and harmony, the hunt becomes more than simply a thoughtless mistake. It becomes a revolting insult to the idea of peace.

In spite of the hunt, it will remain impossible for most of us to separate our longing for peace from the presence of mourning doves in our landscape. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are critically dependent upon the landscape, with doves, for health and well-being.

As novelist Raja Rao wrote in "The Cat and Shakespeare," set in India during World War II: "For four months we had no rains. People said of course it's the wars; what is there to be done? You cannot commit such crimes and expect the rains to fall as usual."

Vietnam veteran David Giffey, of rural Arena, is an artist, writer, and member of Veterans for Peace.

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