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09-21-2004, 09:16 PM
Article published Sunday, September 19, 2004
2 Michigan issues on hunting making news
Two Michigan hunting issues have been in the news in recent days, and they require some comment, lest readers lose their way amid manipulated sound-bites.
The Michigan dove-hunting season: Well, it's a start. On Sept. 10 the state became the 41st to allow hunting doves, but the season records should include an asterisk.
The footnotes would say the season is on only in six border counties next to Ohio, and will be under review for three years.
The limitations were put into play because politics, the so-called art of the possible, demanded it.
Nothing else. The only way to even get dove hunting on the books with Gov. Jennifer Granholm's signature was with the limits.
But let's save the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and others untold dollars that could be better spent on many critical, real issues instead of wasting them on this trumped-up non-issue, made an issue only because of the likes of anti-hunting activist Wayne Pacelle.
He has been prowling the state, trying to whip up support to make dove hunting a ballot issue.
Since when, for starters, does everything have to get approval of a majority of the voting populace? If that were the case, any minority issue, no matter what, could be down the tubes.
The dove issue has been beat to death time and again in states where establishing a dove hunting season has been proposed.
Bottom line is, hunting of doves has no measurable effect on populations of these super abundant gamebirds, which number around 400 milion nationwide.
In fact, during the 10 years of dove hunting in Ohio, dove numbers actually have increased.
Doves live little over a year, on average, whether they are hunted or not, and nature, through unfavorable weather, predation and disease, among other calamities, takes doves by the millions. Untold others die in crashes into power lines, picture windows and skyscrapers. That is one reason why doves have evolved to breed like rodents.
There is no unregulated passenger pigeon-like slaughter of doves, in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, or anywhere. If you don't like hunting doves, or eating doves -they are quarter-pound delicacies - don't do it.
But if your neighbor does, so what? No harm done. And there is no what-next in this issue. No hunting of robins, sparrows or other songbirds.
Critics aside, hunters are generally sensible, sound, moral, tax-paying citizens and next-door neighbors.
Suggesting such silliness to the gullible, however, is a specialty of the likes of Pacelle, who preys on public ignorance and who oozes emotional warm-fuzzies. He always is ready for the microphone and center-stage.
He is a career animal rights, anti-hunting, anti-fishing activist who has parlayed his way from small beginnings up to the well-paid post of president of the Humane Society of the United States. Handsome and well-groomed, his usually well-modulated spiel always seems so reasonable. He takes a snippet of truth or fact and molds and expands to suit his own chapter and verse. He is trying to force Michigan hunters and wildlife managers to reinvent the wheel, as he has in every state where the issue has come up. Divide and conquer is his motto.
Next year it may be your bear hunting, or grouse hunting, or trout fishing that Pacelle and followers are after. He does, by the way, consider fishing at least as cruel and inhumane, maybe moreso, than hunting. He told me so in an interview years ago. He just is smart enough not to bite off more than he can chew. And he is as patient as a bowhunter on a deer stand, biding his time, one issue at a time.
So maybe Michigan hunters and wildlife managers will have to reinvent the dove-hunting wheel after all, and re-explain all this in hopes of convincing the public of Pacelle's sleight-of-hand follies. Pacelle, after all, does not care about substantive issues of conserving wildlife habitat for all wildlife, curbing impacts of pollution, and so on. All he cares about is winning. And keeping his salary.
Lowering Michigan's youth hunting age for big game: This new proposal, approved by the state House and under consideration by a Senate committee last week, would lower the minimum legal age from 14 to 12 for hunting deer, bear and elk.
State Rep. Sue Tabor, a Republican from Eaton County who led the bill for the trial dove seasons, also is leading the charge on this bill.
An avid hunter herself, Tabor contends that some youths are losing interest in hunting because they have to wait too long to hunt, so other actvities grab their attention. She also contends that getting youths involved at a younger age teaches lifelong lessons in natural resources stewardship and encourages youths to get active and stay active in the outdoors.
As proposed, this bill, House Bill 4225, still requires youths to be accompanied by a parent or other adult when hunting. Which is exactly where this responsibility and judgment call belongs.
In the extended Pollick hunting clan, for example, some of the boys and girls began deer hunting in Ohio at age 12 and 13, others at 15.
Zero problems, other than very fatigued kids at day's end. Judgment. The parents assumed the responsibility, made the call. Ohio has no minimum age for any hunting, though, as in Michigan, young hunters have to first pass a hunter-education and safety course. And Ohio youths also must be accompanied by an adult.
In an amazing display of showmanship, the aforementioned anti-hunting Pacelle has wheedled his way into the press to weigh in on this issue too.
Of course he opposes it. But since when is he any more of an authority than you or I on whether our kids are ready to hunt deer at age 12 instead of 14? See where this is going? It's a wake-up call.
Careful, Michigan hunters and wildlife managers, it's a sound-bite jungle out there, and Pacelle and his followers are as smooth as their silk suits.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Pollick is The Blade's outdoor writer
» E-mail him at spollick@theblade.com
» Read more Steve Pollick columns at www.toledoblade.com/pollick
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040919/COLUMNIST22/409190414
2 Michigan issues on hunting making news
Two Michigan hunting issues have been in the news in recent days, and they require some comment, lest readers lose their way amid manipulated sound-bites.
The Michigan dove-hunting season: Well, it's a start. On Sept. 10 the state became the 41st to allow hunting doves, but the season records should include an asterisk.
The footnotes would say the season is on only in six border counties next to Ohio, and will be under review for three years.
The limitations were put into play because politics, the so-called art of the possible, demanded it.
Nothing else. The only way to even get dove hunting on the books with Gov. Jennifer Granholm's signature was with the limits.
But let's save the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and others untold dollars that could be better spent on many critical, real issues instead of wasting them on this trumped-up non-issue, made an issue only because of the likes of anti-hunting activist Wayne Pacelle.
He has been prowling the state, trying to whip up support to make dove hunting a ballot issue.
Since when, for starters, does everything have to get approval of a majority of the voting populace? If that were the case, any minority issue, no matter what, could be down the tubes.
The dove issue has been beat to death time and again in states where establishing a dove hunting season has been proposed.
Bottom line is, hunting of doves has no measurable effect on populations of these super abundant gamebirds, which number around 400 milion nationwide.
In fact, during the 10 years of dove hunting in Ohio, dove numbers actually have increased.
Doves live little over a year, on average, whether they are hunted or not, and nature, through unfavorable weather, predation and disease, among other calamities, takes doves by the millions. Untold others die in crashes into power lines, picture windows and skyscrapers. That is one reason why doves have evolved to breed like rodents.
There is no unregulated passenger pigeon-like slaughter of doves, in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, or anywhere. If you don't like hunting doves, or eating doves -they are quarter-pound delicacies - don't do it.
But if your neighbor does, so what? No harm done. And there is no what-next in this issue. No hunting of robins, sparrows or other songbirds.
Critics aside, hunters are generally sensible, sound, moral, tax-paying citizens and next-door neighbors.
Suggesting such silliness to the gullible, however, is a specialty of the likes of Pacelle, who preys on public ignorance and who oozes emotional warm-fuzzies. He always is ready for the microphone and center-stage.
He is a career animal rights, anti-hunting, anti-fishing activist who has parlayed his way from small beginnings up to the well-paid post of president of the Humane Society of the United States. Handsome and well-groomed, his usually well-modulated spiel always seems so reasonable. He takes a snippet of truth or fact and molds and expands to suit his own chapter and verse. He is trying to force Michigan hunters and wildlife managers to reinvent the wheel, as he has in every state where the issue has come up. Divide and conquer is his motto.
Next year it may be your bear hunting, or grouse hunting, or trout fishing that Pacelle and followers are after. He does, by the way, consider fishing at least as cruel and inhumane, maybe moreso, than hunting. He told me so in an interview years ago. He just is smart enough not to bite off more than he can chew. And he is as patient as a bowhunter on a deer stand, biding his time, one issue at a time.
So maybe Michigan hunters and wildlife managers will have to reinvent the dove-hunting wheel after all, and re-explain all this in hopes of convincing the public of Pacelle's sleight-of-hand follies. Pacelle, after all, does not care about substantive issues of conserving wildlife habitat for all wildlife, curbing impacts of pollution, and so on. All he cares about is winning. And keeping his salary.
Lowering Michigan's youth hunting age for big game: This new proposal, approved by the state House and under consideration by a Senate committee last week, would lower the minimum legal age from 14 to 12 for hunting deer, bear and elk.
State Rep. Sue Tabor, a Republican from Eaton County who led the bill for the trial dove seasons, also is leading the charge on this bill.
An avid hunter herself, Tabor contends that some youths are losing interest in hunting because they have to wait too long to hunt, so other actvities grab their attention. She also contends that getting youths involved at a younger age teaches lifelong lessons in natural resources stewardship and encourages youths to get active and stay active in the outdoors.
As proposed, this bill, House Bill 4225, still requires youths to be accompanied by a parent or other adult when hunting. Which is exactly where this responsibility and judgment call belongs.
In the extended Pollick hunting clan, for example, some of the boys and girls began deer hunting in Ohio at age 12 and 13, others at 15.
Zero problems, other than very fatigued kids at day's end. Judgment. The parents assumed the responsibility, made the call. Ohio has no minimum age for any hunting, though, as in Michigan, young hunters have to first pass a hunter-education and safety course. And Ohio youths also must be accompanied by an adult.
In an amazing display of showmanship, the aforementioned anti-hunting Pacelle has wheedled his way into the press to weigh in on this issue too.
Of course he opposes it. But since when is he any more of an authority than you or I on whether our kids are ready to hunt deer at age 12 instead of 14? See where this is going? It's a wake-up call.
Careful, Michigan hunters and wildlife managers, it's a sound-bite jungle out there, and Pacelle and his followers are as smooth as their silk suits.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Pollick is The Blade's outdoor writer
» E-mail him at spollick@theblade.com
» Read more Steve Pollick columns at www.toledoblade.com/pollick
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040919/COLUMNIST22/409190414