News

Dove Fight is About Right to Hunt

Published September 16, 2005. By Richard Allen, Attorney at Law. Editorial. Clare County Review.
Dove fight is about right to hunt

That blockheaded headline was over Eric Sharps Outdoors column in the August 25th Free Press. Sharp, who is the outdoor writer for the paper sees this November's referendum on dove hunting as "us" meaning any kind of hunter vs. "them" meaning people who don't want song birds killed. That's the kind of thinking that is almost certain to keep hunting in the barely tolerated basement of public activity.

What does it mean to be "barely tolerated?" It means having hunting relegated to an occasional article in the Sports section. It means the two major daily newspapers in an outdoors sports state each having just one writer covering all outdoor sports. It means major outdoors organizations asking hunters to hid, not flaunt, dead deer because of the adverse public reaction. It means that as hunting ceases being respected by the people that make the decisions in this state that support of gun ownership, which is linked to hunting, is threatened. It means having hunters held in contempt as downscale rednecks who like to shoot songbirds in the name of sport. That's what "barely tolerated" means.

Sharp makes the same mistake that so man hunting spokesmen do. He takes the position that if you hunt anything, you must be prepared to hunt everything. Or at least support the people that do.

By his reasoning, if I hunt partridge and occasionally pheasants I must support  people that want to hunt doves or bears. Even if I find it stupid and repugnant to kill bears or songbirds, I'm supposed to support the people that do just because they wear the title "hunter."

What Sharp is really proposing is the Maginot Line defense. All hunters massed together to fight any regulation of what can be killed in the name of sport, regardless of what it is. As he puts it, "...Many Michigan hunters who pursue deer, bear, rabbits and other species apparently decided that it's somehow unmanly or unsporting to shoot doves even through doves are the most popular game bird in America....it's a silly position and one hunters have to get over unless they want ot help people whose stated objective is end all hunting..."

So, there it is. Even if you find it unsporting to kill a popular songbird you're supposed to vote for dove hunting this November in the spirit of hunter solidarity. After all, it's just another "species."  We'll leave the "manliness" of hunting out of the equation as being too stupid for comment.

This puts hunters in the position of blindly supporting the killing of anything, since not to would be helping 'those who's stated objective end all hunting.' Presumably, if someone were to get a referendum on the ballot for hunting sparrows and robins, hunters would have to vote for it since the Humane Society and PeTA would be opposed.

If hunting is to survive in an urban age where people no longer kill their own chickens, and would rather look at deer than shoot them, hunters are going to have to develop some political sophistication.

It isn't us versus them. We [hunters] are not a solid monolithic block that wants to kill anything the State of Michigan allows us to kill. Because you hunt deer or partridge doesn't mean you have to support and admire the louts that pile garbage in the woods so they can shoot a bear from a tree stand or kill squirrels and crows.

The majority of the public doesn't hunt. They do vote. The people that they vote for make the laws that allow hunting to exist. If hunters ignore the tastes of non-hunters and regard them as enemies because , like PeTA, they don't like killing doves they're picking a fight they can't win.

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