While whitetails continue to thrive and overpopulate much of North America, mule deer, those majestic, antlered icons of the West, have fallen on hard times. Numbers are falling. Utah hunters tagged 85,000 mule deer in 1983, but just 19,000 last year.

Biologists and hunters struggle to assign blame. Certainly habitat is being lost to human developments such as housing, highways, resorts, farming, ranching and energy development. Invasive weeds like cheatgrass and cedars take some of the heat, too. Even an increase in elk in places has been blamed for declines in mule deer.

And then there are the predators.

Since the last wolves in the lower 48 were killed in the 1930s, biologists have been steadily educating the rest of us that predator control really isn’t the key to healthier big game numbers. Yet small test studies in which overly abundant coyotes were trimmed have show significant increases in fawn survival. Would this work on a large scale?

We’re about to find out.

Utah’s governor has signed two pieces of legislation that will raise $500,000 from a $5 increase in hunting licenses and $750,000 from general sales tax revenue. The money will be paid to hunters to the tune of $50 per coyote bountied to the state. According to Utah Sportsmen For Wildlife President Byron Bateman, Utah’s deer numbers “…are dwindling despite tens of millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours to protect winter habitat, fence highways and improve conditions for Utah’s deer.”

So now a fairly intensive effort to control coyote numbers will be tried. Traditional wisdom holds that bounties on predators are a waste of money, so it will be interesting to see the effect of this program. The coyote control program will be centered around rural, private contractors who will be compensated on performance-based programs.

I, for one, can’t wait to see the results.

# # #

Two things in hunting are guaranteed: fenced game farms will be its ruin and fenced game farms will be its salvation.

And therein lies the debate.

And what a heated debate it is. People pick sides, call names, turn red, fuss and fume while anti-hunters sit back and smirk.

A nation divided against itself cannot stand. And our nation of conservation hunters is already weak because we are but a loose confederation. We sign no loyalty oath, pay no annual dues, elect no officers. We are joined by nothing more than the hunting licenses we buy, our individual love of Nature and our dedication to interacting with Her as hunter-gatherers, omnivores with as much right to hunt and gather our daily bread as any falcon, wolf or spider. Each of us reconnects with the great outdoor world, the real world that sustains us all, when we hunt. Hunting restores our spirits as much as our muscles.

Oddly, we have no argument with berry hunters getting strawberries from a Pick-Your-Own farm. We never howl when mushroom hunters gather their morsels from a supermarket shelf. But when someone shoots a whitetail on a 7,000 acre, fenced “game farm,” we condemn them. Only “wild” deer should be hunted.

What is the difference?

“If you have to ask that question,” purists say, “you’ll never understand the answer.”

Let’s try anyway. The following are common arguments for and against fenced hunting and “game farms,” defined as any human-controlled operation that breeds, feeds, raises, shelters, guards or otherwise manipulates wildlife (including semi-domesticated representatives of classically wild species.)

Pro: Fenced Game Farms

1. Protect habitat that might otherwise be converted to monocrop agriculture or subdivisions.
2. Provide places to hunt in areas that might otherwise be tightly posted against hunting.
3. Increase numbers of hunt-able species like pheasants, quail, whitetails.
4. Provide optimum habitat/nutrition/predator protection so bucks can grow to maximum potential.
5. Keep game (behind fence) from wandering onto highways or into poachers.
6. Give physically challenged hunters an option to be successful.
7. Provide training for novice hunters.
8. Reduces numbers of “hunters” on public lands.

Con: Fenced Game Farms

1. Animals behind fences aren’t wild or natural, giving “hunters” an unfair advantage.
2. “Wild” animals shouldn’t be contained or blocked from free migrations.
3. Shooting game over piles of feed or inside fences isn’t fair chase.
4. Fencing game results in unnatural genetics with animals unable to move freely.
5. Providing easy game on farms lulls hunters into thinking all is well and wild habitat doesn’t need to be protected, defended or enhanced.
6. Game farms ignore less popular species.
7. No one has the right to pen any wild species.

Some folks suggest a Mind Your Own Business approach to game farms. You hunt your way, I’ll hunt mine. But this ignores society’s penchant for passing laws (some by citizen initiative) telling other people what to do. Anti-hunting organizations hope to eventually have all forms of hunting outlawed. Do game farms give them ammunition to use against us?

What do you think? Is there room for game farms? Will private property soon be the only property on which we can hunt? Will animal rights activists get all public land closed to hunting? If it’s wrong to hunt four square miles of dense habitat behind a fence, then is it wrong to hunt on a four-square mile island? If it’s wrong to hunt over a pile of corn, is it wrong to wait beside a half-acre of turnips? A 40-acre corn field?

Most importantly, is there any way for the hunting community to stop infighting and come together on this and similar ethical issues so we can concentrate on the more serious need to enhance habitat, manage wildlife, educate the ignorant general public and prevent more anti-hunting legislation?

# # #

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to live under the jurisdiction of an official government religion, check out the State Legislature in laid-back, tolerant California.

According to a recent article by Marisa Lagos in the San Francisco Chronicle, “…40 lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom” called for the resignation of California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel Richards, saying “his actions showed he is not fit to lead the commission… because he does not represent Californians’ belief that mountain lions should not be hunted.”

According to a March 3 article in the Washington Post National on-line newspaper, Newsom questioned the wisdom of having a hunter as the head of an agency responsible for natural resources. Never mind that hunters largely fund the Fish & Game Department through license dollars and excise taxes paid on firearms and ammunition.

The impetus behind this “political correctness” attack came after Richards, on his own time, journeyed to Idaho to indulge in a legal, ethical, fair chase hunt for a free-ranging Idaho mountain lion. He killed a large male lion, ate some of its flesh while still in Idaho and, one assumes, preserved its skull and hide. Predictably, Californian animal rightists went ballistic and began calling for his ouster.

One expects such attacks from PETA, HSUS and similar radical anti-hunting factions. What’s deeply disturbing here is that elected officials in California now think they have the power to dictate what other citizens may do or to make California laws applicable in other states.

Let us suppose that Richards had gone to North Dakota and smoked a cigarette in a small-town restaurant. Would not the California Legislature then need to ask for his resignation because smoking is not legal in California restaurants?

The creeping Big Brother sentiment inherent in this situation is just the latest in a long line of insidious infringements on personal freedom that should frighten every hunter, fisherman, farmer, dog owner, carnivore and freedom loving citizen of the United States. It more than hints at how fragile our freedoms have become in the face of political correctness and the morals police. It dramatizes how quickly and brazenly religious fanatics—through intimidation, harassment, threats and tyranny of the masses—are willing to deny any and all “non-believers” their rights “… he does not represent Californian’s beliefs.”

The State will now dictate what we are to believe? Didn’t a certain number of pilgrims once sail away from England because they did not represent that government’s beliefs and were being persecuted because of it? Didn’t a few rabble-rousers named Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson and others go to war because they did not want to represent King George’s beliefs? Didn’t they establish a new nation, conceived in liberty? Or were they dedicated to the proposition that all men shall bow to the tyranny of certain politicians?

I don’t know what is more appalling about this situation: That freely elected state government legislators imagine they have the right to control others, or that voters are willing to let them.

# # #

Unprotected farmland washes away, taking wildlife and tax dollars with it.

Across many parts of America your hunting rights are literally washing away.

This cornfield near the South Dakota village where I was raised epitomizes why we’re losing hunting opportunities – and why the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands are critical.

Wildlife can only live where it finds suitable habitat. Farm fields left so barren and unprotected that the soil washes away are a disaster. The farmer loses soil. Pheasants, deer, rabbits, songbirds, etc. lose shelter and forage. Fish habitat gets choked by the silt that washes into streams and lakes. Homeowners lose buildings to floods. Taxpayers lose money cleaning up the siltation and pollution. Hunters lose game to hunt.

Hunters have been fighting to minimize soil loss and maximize wildlife habitat for more than a century. We’ve spent billions protecting and restoring wetlands, grasslands and forests. Money from hunting license sales and gun taxes has bought and restored abused farmlands, turning them into National Wildlife Refuges, State Wildlife Management Areas and the like. But it isn’t enough. It can’t be enough. Hunters can’t raise enough money to offset losses when commodity prices encourage farmers to plow, plant and harvest more.

But farmers have to make a living. They have to pay taxes on their land. The CRP, conceived by hunter/conservationists and pushed through Congress by hunters in 1985, has been one of the most successful programs ever devised for protecting soil and wildlife for everyone. It pays farmers rent on some 40 million acres of fragile farmland they voluntarily put back into protective grass and tress. This has cut soil erosion by 450 million tons per year and increased whitetails, mule deer, sharptails, prairie chickens, cottontails, meadowlarks, bobolinks and dozens of other mammals and songbirds. Pheasant populations have grown 22 percent. Some 2 million additional ducks are being produced on CRP lands annually. This increase in wildlife has increased outdoor recreational spending in the U.S. by $300 million per year. Water quality has improved. Runoff pollution from pesticides and herbicides has abated. Fishing has improved. Flooding has decreased. The benefits to society go on and on.

But record high prices for corn and soybeans, used both as food and fuel, are encouraging farmers across the nation to plow up not only their CRP acres, but old pastures and native grasslands that have never been farmed. Who can blame them? After losing money on farming for decades, they finally see a chance to succeed. Unfortunately, the increase in crop production means an accelerating decline in habitat for all kinds of wildlife, especially nesting ducks on the northern plains. Currently, CRP land enrollment is down to 30 million acres. On September 30, 6.5 million acres more are scheduled to expire. Fields will be plowed and sprayed. Wildlife will die.

But there’s good news! Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever and similar hunter/conservation groups have been sounding the alarm and lobbying Congress to bolster CRP funding. Thanks to their continuing lobbying efforts, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack on March 2, 2012, announced 1 million acres of new lands will be admitted into CRP. The question is, with crop prices where they are, will any landowners sign up? The new CRP payments have been increased to $150 per acre, but cash rental payments for cropland easily double that in many parts of the country.

Unfortunately, increasing demands for food and fuel (ethanol) impinge directly on wildlife habitat.

P.S. Have you seen all the ads in support of CRP from PETA and the Humane Society of the U.S? Neither have I. Those groups continue to spend their millions running ads criticizing hunters and asking for more donations so they can continue criticizing hunters. That’s a great way to create more wildlife.

# # #

The Evil Crossbow Isn’t the Real Danger

Can you believe some folks want to hunt deer with crossbows?

Can you believe some folks think this is evil?

I don’t know what it is about hunting tools that set some people foaming, but for as long as I’ve been paying attention, rifle hunters have been whining about bow hunters. “They scare all the game and stink up the woods. They get too long of a season. They wound too much game.” In turn, “traditional” bow hunters complain about compound bow hunters who in turn grouse about muzzleloader hunters or handgun hunters …

And now they’re all complaining about crossbow hunters because crossbows are “Too easy to use! They’re too accurate. A crossbow is like a rifle. It’s not fair!”

Uh, what? Unfair? Some people are using centerfire rifles to target elk 1,200 yards away, and we’re worried about crossbows throwing bolts that poop out before 100 yards?

Meanwhile bears, cougars and wolves hunt with unlimited tags and no closed season. Idaho’s Lolo elk zone in 1995 harbored about 18,000 elk. Today it’s lucky to support 1,800. Yellowstone Park’s northern herd has plummeted from 20,000 to 2,000.

Moose in Yellowstone have dwindled from 1,000 twenty years ago to fewer than 200 today and I doubt there are truly that many. Across most of the West, mule deer populations are steadily declining as more suburbs, summer homes, giant windmill farms, airports (Denver,) Interstate highways, golf courses, ski resorts, energy exploration roads, drilling rigs, oil pads and corn fields sprawl across the land. The CRP fields that re-invigorated sharptail grouse and pheasant populations are being plowed into dust. Our few remaining virgin prairies are being sacrificed to $10 a bushel corn.

Friends, we don’t need to be squabbling about how we hunt. Rifles, handguns, long bows, quadruple-wheeled short bows, spears or slingshots. It doesn’t matter. Wildlife managers can set and adjust seasons and harvest quotas and the number of permits necessary to maintain healthy numbers of most species. How you collect your fair share is between you and your ethics (I’m not advocating poisoned bait here.) What our Game Departments can’t control are weather, disease, habitat loss, predators and gullible citizens trying to micromanage wildlife by emotion.

Urbanization has lulled many of us into a false sense of security. We live in our artificial world of plastic and electronic images. Wildlife thrives unmolested “somewhere out there.” Just confess your love for animals, wear a Save the Whales T-shirt, recycle a soda can now and then and everything will live happily ever after.

We hunters know better. We are out there in the mud and blood. We see the disappearing habitat. We know the history of our conservation battles and understand the ramifications of human activities. As a group we have saved and restored North America’s wildlife abundance. The science of wildlife management, financed and supported politically by the shared, limited harvest of Nature’s annual production, has been the most remarkable success of the environmental movement. We have protected millions of acres of wildlife habitat.

But today new pressures from a surging human population threaten all of this.

Now is the time to educate or friends and neighbors about disappearing wild habitats. Now is the time to fight for scientific wildlife management and wise land use. Now is the time to expose the lies of the animal-rights movement, which squanders hundreds of millions of dollars for no positive impact on wildlife. We are in a race against overwhelming demands for limited natural resources.

We have no time to quibble over our hunting tools.

# # #