Animal Rights Groups Challenge Waterfowl Hunting By Tony Dean
Back in 1990, when I began producing Dakota Backroads radio, I produced a program on the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). It was a show critical of them, and the Manager of an Aberdeen, SD radio station called that day to cancel the radio series. When I asked why, he said it was because he was offended by the way we "talked about the Humane Society." He noted that the local Humane Society did good work and I had no business attacking them. When I tried to explain that the HSUS was not related to his local group, he must have turned his hearing aid off, and it would be several years and a new manager later before our radio show would again play on that station. Truth is, the HSUS is an animal rights group and are more anti-hunting than most. They claim 7 million members, which is about half the number of licensed hunters. Yet, I wonder how many of them are as committed to ending recreational hunting as two of their Senior Vice Presidents, Wayne Pacelle and John Grandy. My guess is that many are attracted to their stands on factory farming as well as honest feelings about cruelty to animals.
Pacelle is no stranger to the anti-hunter battles. For years, he held forth as Executive Director of the Friends of Animals. My friend, Ted Kerasote, wrote extensively about him in his book, Blood Ties, a marvelous work that examined hunting from several perspectives, including through the eyes of Pacelle, a dedicated anti-hunter. Ted later told me that Pacelle, in spite of their differences on hunting, was hard not to like.
I feel the same way about John Grandy, and among hunters, I am not alone.
Jim Phillips, a hard core waterfowl hunter and a former Associated Press conservation and environmental reporter, says he got to know Grandy when he covered those subjects in Washington, DC. And, says Phillips; "he has always been far more honest and forthcoming than any Washington-based US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) bureaucrat or NGO conservation types. He knows where the bodies are buried and is aware of the frauds and scams perpetrated on the public. He sometimes exaggerates in public forums, but what partisan spokesman doesn’t?"
My visit with Grandy came about as a result of a faxed news release from the HSUS announcing a new report that promised to reveal "massive under-reporting of waterfowl left to languish and die." Curious, I ordered a copy, which, after a careful reading, convinced me that it was just a rehashing of a variety of scientific papers, which ranged mostly from 20 to nearly 50 years old. The study author was Robert Alison, Ph.D. HSUS calls him "a Canadian waterfowl biologist, international waterfowl expert, and former waterfowl hunter who has written for Outdoor and Hunter magazines. I’ve never heard of him, nor do I recall seeing his byline on articles in any of the outdoors or hunting magazines…and I read most of them.
I’d have no trouble picking this report apart because it’s obvious that it’s entire purpose was to convince non-hunters that even "skilled hunters wound five ducks for every 10 killed outright and that novice hunters wound between 5 and 15 ducks for every ten killed outright."
"I found Alison’s effort pathetic," said Phillips. "It lacks the rigorous mathematical analysis and emotional detachment necessary to be considered scientific. It panders to the starry-eyed innocents who believe that someday the lamb will lie down with the lion and the homeowner with the termite."
So, when I called Grandy and suggested that the study wasn’t, in fact, a study, but a rehash of outdated studies in which the author merely drew conclusions that supported a pre-conceived view of waterfowl crippling, his response verified the honesty that Phillips told me I could expect.
"I agree, I looked at it and thought much the same thing," he said. "I gathered from my reading of it that the reason for it would be that there are not a lot of studies on this…and that these kinds of studies are not done very much by the hunting community as you know."
Grandy is partially correct.
Shotgunning expert Tom Roster has gathered more data on waterfowl hunters and their shooting abilities than anyone alive. He lives in Klamath Falls, OR where he continues to research non-toxic shot. He’s a highly skilled shooter who, on behalf of the Cooperative North American Shotgunning Education Program (CONSEP) as well as the USFWS, has conducted nearly all of the research projects on lead and non-toxic shot done to date. His work has been considered controversial in the past, though it shouldn’t have been. During the Reagan years, high-ranking officials who were opposed to the shift to non-toxic shot spent much time and effort aimed at discrediting Roster and ultimately succeeded in having his contracts with the USFWS, terminated. But, while information can be suppressed for a while, political administrations are not forever and Roster’s test results eventually went public.
To date, there have been 16 tests utilizing real hunters shooting lead and steel shot pellets at real birds with trained observers recording the results. Of those tests, one showed lead shot to be more efficient, another favored steel but all of the rest showed no statistical difference between them. Roster supervised all of the tests except for one, which was conducted in Louisiana. Since their release, no organization or individual has questioned the validity or scientific manner in which the research was conducted. And no researcher has a larger database on hunters and their shooting skills than Roster, who says his includes over 100,000 shotgunners.
Roster, an avid waterfowl hunter, agrees with HSUS charges that depending on hunters to accurately report crippling rates is not reliable. He said his research showed that hunters typically underestimated the numbers of birds hit but not retrieved, while trained observers watching those hunters, generally recorded higher rates of wounding.
However, while Roster believes the true crippling rate is higher than the generally accepted 20 percent figure used by the USFWS, it’s not near as high as the crippling rate of up to 45 percent claimed by the HSUS study. Unlike either the USFWS figure, which depends on hunters voluntarily reporting crippling losses, and the less honest HSUS report which extracts what it wants from decades-old studies, Roster’s data base is comprised of hunters who were watched by trained observers.
Roster says most shotgunners aren’t very good, and most are proficient out to only about 28 yards; that many could shoot better but don’t because of poor ammunition selection, failure to pattern their shotguns, and shooting at birds beyond the effective range of the choke or pellet used.
"If the average hunter would invest some of the money he spends on gadgets on shotgun shells instead…and put in the practice time, he could easily lower his crippling rate," said Roster.
Even so, the level of waterfowl wounding rates seems to depend on the perspective of those considering them.
Grandy calls them "excessive," Roster says they’re too high. They’re both right.
A few years back, a major pro-hunting organization did their own study, surveying non-hunters, attempting to learn if there is an acceptable crippling rate. The study indicated that to be about 10 percent. Not surprisingly, that’s the same figure that CONSEP board members endorsed at a meeting held in Bismarck. That is an attainable goal, but only if shotgunners are willing to practice, and it would help if ammunition makers quit suggesting in their promotional material, that their new loads will reach out and kill at the old lead shot ranges. That might be smart short-term marketing…but for hunting, it’s an approach that could spell long term disaster.
The HSUS takes resource agencies to task on their website. More hunters ought to. Several years ago, I questioned the advisability of the regulations proposed to reduce the size of the mid-continent snow goose flock. I worried about the ethics of electronic calls and predicted that it would be a matter of time before they became legal for fall snow goose hunting and even for Canada geese. Guess what? Waterfowl managers are already talking about using electronic calls in the fall. I questioned the use of unplugged shotguns, reasoning that additional shots would encourage shooting at birds that are out of range, thus increasing crippling rates. One snow goose task force member rationalized when I pointed that out, that the purpose of the effort was to reduce the population. He didn’t seem concerned whether the birds died quickly or slowly. I questioned also the "no limit" approach, regardless of the well-meaning intent, suggesting they sent the wrong message to hunters. I raised questions about the use of the "spin" term, "conservation season." Letters from some waterfowl managers belittled my views. History has exonerated those beliefs. After three seasons, the flock hasn’t been appreciably reduced; most birds bagged are juveniles and you can’t reduce a population without taking older, breeding birds. Meanwhile, many landowners are opposed to spring hunting because fields are usually wet at that time, and participants continue to drop off. Moreover, many skilled goose hunters believe that all the spring season has done is make the birds more difficult to hunt during the traditional fall season.
It’s important we address crippling rates because hunters should be controlling this debate, not anti-hunters. In fact, many hunters may not be aware of the wake-up call phoned in from Australia, where two of 10 states saw ballot initiatives that placed an outright ban on duck hunting. The issue was crippling. Grandy hesitated to call the Australia duck hunting ban a national movement, though, he said, there is a continuing effort there to do so, and he believes societal values in America are changing enough to the point where a ban on waterfowl hunting in the United States isn’t inconceivable.
"The thoughts of Americans regarding the acceptance of duck hunting are changing," Grandy told me. "I go back to my own experience hunting ducks and candidly admit to you that I didn’t give it much thought. I was brought up as a duck hunter by my Dad. We had a duck blind down on Back Bay. I studied a lot about duck hunting, and it was during the early part of the 1900s when market hunting morphed into a real aversion to market hunting. Duck hunters then fought the market hunters…but that was really a part of social evolution then, and I think what we’re seeing now is a continuation of that social evolution…and I’m proud to say I’m encouraging people to think about this. I have a 9-year old son and I don’t believe that teaching him that killing ducks for fun is OK as recreation. I think that’s the way social evolution is going and I applaud and encourage it."
But, most Americans live in urban areas and most studies on hunting say it is a sport of small towns and rural areas. Moreover, as people crowd into metro areas, is it not possible that they’ll lose touch with the land, and thus, lose a concern for resources?
"I concur with that," said Grandy. "I think building a social conscience about natural resources, and how to maintain it is, is a key social question. I hope we don’t have to resort to having people kill animals as a way of doing that. I reject the kind of premise you enunciated that we ought to allow people who want to kill ducks to do it when the rest of the world says it’s not something we ought to condone."
Would it be fair to say he would prefer to see all waterfowl-hunting end?
"Yes, absolutely, because it is largely an antiquated recreational activity. I think waterfowl hunting is responsible in large part for waterfowl not having as much support as they ought to among the public."
What?
He explained.
"Waterfowl hunting stops most people from being able to see and identify waterfowl," he explained. "Ducks and geese all fly away when you get within 40 yards because they’re used to being shot at. The vast majority of the public that doesn’t hunt ducks or geese never gets to see and identify with them in the way we see and identify song birds in our yards because waterfowl are so scared of us."
But what about the countless species that aren’t hunted that exhibit the same wild characteristics? Bald eagles or other raptors?
"I’ve got Cooper’s Hawks that land in my back yard," he said. "Don’t belittle my remarks with inappropriate analogies. I hunted most of my young life. I don’t think there’s any question that most ducks flush at 40 or 50 yards because they get shot at."
What about ducks in the spring, several months after the hunting season. Are they not just as wild?
"Of course," he said. "They have memories."
I do not cower in fear of animal rights groups because I believe their views are clearly apart from mainstream America, but hunters need to be aware of what the HSUS is trying to do. Of the slightly more than 14 million hunters in America, less than 2 million hunt waterfowl and many of those hunt only geese. The HSUS is focusing on what is perceived as a weakness, one that can be easily exploited before non-hunters. They will argue that while the USFWS sets some species-specific seasons, they allow pre-sunrise hunting. They will argue that hunters can’t identify waterfowl species and that duck and goose hunters will shoot at any goose or duck that appears to be within range. And they’ll continue to suggest that crippling rates are worse than the figures suggest, accounting for more waterfowl than the 2.3 million birds thought to have been lost to lead poisoning before non-toxic shot was mandated.
Finally, they will argue that in spite of declining waterfowl hunter numbers, because there’s no on-going effort by management agencies to reduce wounding, crippling rates will rise. They point to what they call, "vigorous efforts by states to counteract declines in hunter numbers by recruiting children into hunting, and claim that will increase the likelihood of crippling because young hunters lack shooting skills. They conclude that if those losses were included, the actual size of the US duck kill would increase by 25 to 67 percent.
It’s apparent the HSUS will focus their attack on hunting by concentrating on what they believe is the easiest case to carry to the non-hunting public; the inability of hunters to kill waterfowl cleanly.
It’s a shame that waterfowl managers enact regulations that make it easy to criticize waterfowl hunting. The truth is, that they, like the HSUS, often view the world through a straw.
