What Good Can Come From Legislating Fair Chase?

By Tom Remington

A nasty and heated debate has already begun in North Dakota over a proposed ballot initiative that is intended to put an end to high-fence hunting. The Attorney Generals office has yet to come up with a title for the initiative and the petition, which will need 12,844 legal signatures, hasn’t received a single signature yet.

There already seems to be some issues regarding the wording of the proposal. In a previous article I wrote, the Chairman of a group called the North Dakota Hunters for Fair Chase, Roger Kaseman, who is sponsoring the bill along with 29 others, has stated that the intent of the ruling was to close down hunting behind fences.

Measure aims at hand raised, hand fed trophy elk and deer set up as targets behind escape proof fences for any guys with a fat wallets by 100% guaranteed success shooting preserves, aka, the killing fields. Troy Lee Gentry killing a tame bear named Cubby in a 3 acre enclosure is an example.

But Shawn Schafer, a deer grower and member of the North Dakota Deer Growers Association, says the language of the initiative could be interpreted that would prohibit even the local butcher from being able to dispatch an elk or deer for butchering.

I earlier contacted Mr. Schafer and asked him to explain his reasoning. He first pointed out the language of the proposal.

“guilty of a class A misdemeanor if the person obtains fees or other remuneration from another person for the killing or attempted killing of privately-owned big game species or exotic mammals confined in or released from any man-made enclosure designed to prevent escape”

He later added a better explanation.

If my neighbor were wanted to buy a cull animal to butcher we would have to let it go into the wild before we could kill it, or if I haul a load to the butcher and we unload them into his man made slaughter house that he built to prevent animals from escaping, we are in violation again.

I intend to present the wording of this proposed initiative to some lawyers I know and see if they can reach any of the same conclusions.

Regardless of the language, the debate has already begun and it is already dividing the hunting community. If you don’t believe me, take a side journey over to the NoDak Outdoors forums and read the debate there. Already some members have been banned from posting anymore. Not a pretty sight and something that is sure to continue to fester.

There are differing views as always when discussing hunting ethics and in this case, high-fence hunting. Although there is the issue of disease, each side laying claims for and against the argument of how the diseases are spread, property rights, business opportunities (money motivation) and fair chase, is there any common theme to this debate?

The one common theme seems to be fair chase and the ethics of such. We all have our perceptions of hunting ethics and at times we become witness to individuals and groups who seem to want to sell their form of hunting discipline as the most righteous of all. This creates a firestorm.

In the debate of fair chase, I quite often hear hunters say that the practice of hunting on ranches is bad for the hunters’ reputation and will damage hunting heritage. But does it really?

It does when organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) wage propaganda campaigns full of lies in attempts to convince the public that all ranch hunting involves drugging an animal and turning it lose in a one-acre pasture to be killed by someone posing as a hunter.

That sort of thing is far from the norm and anyone today would be hard pressed to find such an operation. So, does ranch hunting or high-fenced hunting put a “black eye” on the hunting industry? It might be more like a speck of dirt that got into the corner of the eye causing some irritation.

I can’t whip out any glorified polls to try to convince readers that other issues carry far greater potential to blacken the eye of hunters. In my travels and the people with whom I talk to everyday, I hear a much different story when it comes to such things as hunting ethics, fair chase and issues that are harmful to the hunter.

Tops on that list would have to be land trespass. I hear it every day. Earlier this summer, I talked with Bob Duncan, wildlife director for the Virginia Department of Inland Game and Fisheries. He emphatically stated that the issue of trespassing was the number one complaint against hunters. In an article I wrote about Virginia’s problems with hunting with dogs, we discussed the anger of landowners that comes from hunters dogs running all over their land. We also discussed land trespass in general and he concurred that land trespass was probably tops on the list even without the dogs.

There are other issues like road hunting, shooting from vehicles, poaching, drinking and hunting and you add to this list whatever else you would like. So, where on this list of things that makes hunters look bad, does high-fence hunting fall?

Many have argued that our society is such that when any issue affects them personally, they have a right to propose a law to stop it. Of course as Americans, we the right to petition the government and rally the people to effect change but is the end result of this kind of effort worth it?

First let’s put things in a bit of perspective here. We are talking about high-fence hunting. In North Dakota, I believe there are over one hundred ranches that raise elk and deer as livestock. Of those there are somewhere around a dozen or so ranches that offer people the opportunity to shoot one of their animals.

I have heard those adamantly against high-fence hunting likening it to prostitution. Do I really need to explain the differences between prostitution and the social black eye compared to high-fence hunting? Prostitution affects every citizen of the country either directly or indirectly. Is this true for high-fence hunting? How many people even know what it is? Even those who have heard about it, have never visited one.

The end result, should the proposal be enacted by the people, would be that at least a dozen or so people would have to stop selling hunts on their ranches. If the language of the proposal be determined by a court to also include harvesting of elk and deer for meat purposes only, the numbers out of business grow substantially.

There’s a definite property rights issue to discuss as well. Many non-hunters get upset when people begin proposing laws that take away their rights and freedoms as a landowner. In this case, we have a group of hunters pushing for legislation that would strip a landowner of a right because of hunters wanting to protect their image, believing they are saving their hunting heritage.

One has to be honest and ask the question, are hunters going to alienate themselves against the landowners enough over this that landowners will revolt and post their farm lands, barring any hunting? Don’t laugh! I have already heard landowners in North Dakota and other states who have said that if hunters push this kind of stuff, they’ll no longer allow hunting on their lands.

Case in point. Many states are at a point where landowners have discovered that they can pay their taxes and make a few bucks selling leases to hunters. In some cases, some of these farmlands are fenced in. When these landowners see that hunters are trying to strip them of their rights to use their land to make a buck, it’s going to come back and bite them in the backside.

I was recently accused of promoting high-fence hunting. That is as far from the truth as one can get. I am for property rights and I don’t believe that any positives that can come out of mandating against high-fence hunting will outweigh all the negatives. And this applies to both hunting and non-hunting issues. I love hunting and will do what I can to protect and promote it but I am also an American. Hunting ethics should be taught from a young age. This education will become a family tradition that is passed on from one generation to the next. This approach will have much greater more positive results than creating a law where no law is really necessary.

I believe that the cause being waged by those obsessed with fair chase will not stand up to the results that will come from it. It amazes me that those who are going to the time and expense in order to dictate their fair chase ethics on others, for the purpose of protecting their image, can’t see that there are far bigger issues threatening hunting today than a few high-fence hunting ranches.

It makes me ask the question, what’s really behind this proposal?

Tom Remington