So I knowingly injected myself into the debate about shooting penned animals a couple of weeks ago. To that extent, I have no one to blame but myself for the fact that I spent the last hour responding to Mr. Albert Rasch again. Below is that response:
I’ll start by saying that I have no financial interest of any kind to any type of penned animal shooting operation. I’d hope that anyone else who comments here will make clear if they have the same unbiased starting point.
In a piece by Field and Stream a couple of years back they interviewed an elk guide who had led hunters into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Seeking a more regular income stream he took a job at Big Velvet Game Ranch in Montana. Here’s the quote from that piece:
What disturbed him most, though, was the contrast between real elk hunting and what was being fabricated at the ranch. “If the clients told me that they wanted it to be like a real hunt, the first day I’d drive them around a part where there were no elk, and we’d walk downhill along the ridges awhile. Then the next day, we’d drive up and get one.” Their primary interest lay in what the animals would score on the Boone and Crockett scale, says Butler. “The experience just doesn’t mean anything to them.”
This is the essence of my point. Killing an animal that is artificially restrained isn’t hunting. Maybe it seems like hunting, particularly to someone who doesn’t know any better, but it’s not. Attending fantasy camp doesn’t make you a major leaguer, and it’s only providing a distant approximation of the major league experience.
But perhaps there’s a better analogy. After all, besides some 50 year olds with tired legs, no one takes those guys seriously. But let’s say, hypothetically, that I want to run a marathon. I’m going to get the T-shirt, the 26.2 sticker, the whole nine yards. But there’s a problem… I work full time and spend a great deal of my free time hunting and fishing. So I can’t really train to run the marathon. I figure I’ll just get someone else to drive me 22 of the miles and I’ll run the last 4 and trot across the finish line with a great time. Should anyone question me I’ll just point out that I did run 4 miles and “We runners need to stick together”. I’ll probably also point out that, “Running a marathon is what you make of it”. Then I’d go around telling everyone I completed a marathon.
But we all know what would happen don’t we? No one would take me seriously. It’s absurd. Runners would be appalled at the mockery I made of their sport. I’d skipped all the commitment and skill and cheapened what they dedicate themselves to and take very seriously. Perhaps more important, if I was taken seriously I would be showing young runners that cutting corners is no problem as long as you reach the desired result.
But there’s a reason that this discussion is more important than my hypothetical marathon. Unlike marathons, people and organizations are actively trying to destroy hunting. They look for every window they can find to make inroads with public opinion. So be honest with yourself, what could possibly be more damaging to the reputation of real hunters than this? From the same Field and Stream piece:
Doug Schleis, publisher of Wild Idaho News, wants the ranches outlawed. “The essence of elk hunting in our state is the experience of wild country and the effort it takes to hunt an elk,” he says. “Of 17 shooter-bull operations in Idaho, only six are bigger than 450 acres. We have one as small as 10 acres, one at 25 acres, one at 60 acres. The hunting public here doesn’t want this place to become like Texas.”
If the public really understood that people were shooting elk in a 10 acre pen (and it IS a pen if it’s 10 acres) do you think they’d support that activity? Seriously think about this. We are not guaranteed the right to hunt in this country. It is subject to the will of the people, and 95% of those people are non-hunters (stat from this month’s SCI newspaper).
Mr Rasch objected to my characterization of his thesis as, “If it’s killing it’s hunting.” He thought my example of hanging pound puppies was ridiculous. It was. It was supposed to be. The point was that I could pick an example that someone might claim is hunting, but it’s obviously not. The importance is that now we’ve acknowledged that just because someone claims it’s hunting doesn’t make it true. Or, to put it slightly differently, hunting may not be simply what you make of it. So if we agree that some killing isn’t hunting, then it’s just a matter of where you draw the line. We may all disagree on where that line is, and it’s no doubt a difficult question to answer. But there is a bright line answer available to us: killing an animal that cannot escape your boundary is where I draw that line.
I don’t expect this discussion to change anyone’s mind. It won’t change Mr. Rasch’s, and it probably won’t change mine. Several of those who commented did so without even reading my piece, so I think it’s safe to assume that they’re not looking to challenge their own beliefs. So be it. I told Mr. Rasch that I would engage in this discussion only so that someone would lodge an objection on the behalf of real hunters in favor of real hunting, at least as I see it. A wavering reader should understand that the readership at The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles do not present the only viewpoint available to sportsmen. I would even make the claim that they don’t represent the opinion of a majority of hunters.
So I’ve posted why I don’t think shooting confined animals is hunting. In a perfect world I wouldn’t care though. Frankly, if you want to go out to the south 40 and shoot a Herford and call it hunting, what do I care? Well I care because I want to protect real hunting and the image it invokes in people. I want my kids to have the freedom to hunt like I do. Free animals, wild country, – the way it should always be.
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