The buck stood at the edge of a picked cornfield about 250 yards away. Even at that distance I could see he was a definite “shooter.” Rather than skirting the field and coming by my stand just off of the corner, he cut straight across the middle. What to do? I picked up my rattle-bag and cracked it as hard as I could. He stopped and turned his head in my direction. I hit the rattle-bag a second time and he came on a steady trot in my direction. Once he reached 100 yards he slowed to a fast walk and started to swing downwind. Long story short – he stood 80 yards downwind of me, hardly moving a muscle for almost five minutes. His only movements were his ears searching for “the two bucks he had just heard” and his nose waving in the breeze scanning for other supporting evidence. He turned and slowly disappeared over the ridge.
So it’s especially rich that Pacelle had a blog post this week titled, “Cruelty and Ideology Masquerading as Science.” Pacelle takes issues with the recommendations of some wildlife experts that Mainers be allowed to use baiting in order to hunt bears. HSUS is pushing a ballot measure to ban this practice next month.
But who’s letting ideology drive their point of view?
On one hand, you have wildlife biologists defending the use of Maine’s practices on scientific grounds. According to the experts, baiting is needed because black bears are hard to hunt, especially in Maine’s dense woods. Banning baiting will make it harder to hunt them, and therefore there’s a likelihood of unwanted bear-human encounters increasing. See New Jersey, which after banning bear hunting entirely re-instituted hunting a few years ago following problematic encounters.
On the other hand, HSUS is trying to silence the expert voices. The group has filed a lawsuit against Maine to try to stop state employees from speaking out against the measure. (State officials have even received threats.)
While experts line up on one side, on HSUS’s side there isn’t exactly what you’d call a grassroots campaign. Over 96% of the funding for the Maine ballot group has come from HSUS or its lobbying arm. The ballot group’s leader, Katie Hansberry, is an HSUS employee and lawyer from Massachusetts, and Pacelle, who has been going door to door in Maine, is a lobbyist who lives in Washington, D.C.
Hopefully Mainers tell HSUS they can handle their own issues just well enough. And hopefully they see that this ballot campaign isn’t about trying to make hunting “fairer” or easier—HSUS has an ideological opposition to hunting and wants to make it more difficult, even if the consequences aren’t so great for residents. Read more
