BigGameHunt.net Hunting Forums

[moderator]

February 2004 Poll:

Should voters dictate hunting methods?

In recent years it has become accepted practice that hunting methods can be decided by popular vote. For example, this year Alaska and Maine voters will be deciding whether or not bear baiting is an acceptable hunting method.

By using ballot initiatives, hunting methods are decided by non-hunters, because most surveys rank non-hunters as eighty to ninety percent of the population. Is hunting and game management by ballot acceptable or fair? If not, what process should be used to fairly regulate hunting methods on a regional and national basis?

[saskie]

I think such decisions are best left to professional wildlife managers (notice I didn't say "bureaucrats" or "politicians") They have a better sense of what the game population can withstand and adjust the regs accordingly.

[expatriate]

In this day in age, voters are too easily led astray on subjects like this. Today's vastly urban, non-hunting society is too likely to vote based on poor information when it comes to hunting. Look at what happened to fox hunting in Britain.

[cdhunt]

letting the voters decide is like sticking your nose into a subject about which you know little or nothing about. (this includes the voter population on all subjects)

[expatriate]

Wow. I don't know that I'd go THAT far. Democracy still has a purpose, and it's a dangerous thing when government decides that the People are too dense to know what's good for them. There's a whole host of examples fom the 20th century alone where that happened with one dictatorship or another.

However, there's definitely an issue with growing voter ignorance in today's society. When it comes to issues, more and more people don't want to invest the time and mental energy to gather data and sort out the issues. When it comes to news, they want a mental McDonald's -- something fast and easy, where somebody else has done all the analysis for them.

So politics is becoming less and less about information and more and more about marketing. You see more and more arguments being made that have no logical support whatsoever, but are packaged to appeal to an ignorant populace. It saddens me to see a nation starting to look at its democratic responsibilities as inconvenciences.

[bitmasher]

I think decisions about hunting methods should be left to game management boards who's members are chosen by elected officals.

The decision to allow or ban a hunting method should rest firmly on whether or not the animal is treated ethically prior to the hunt and receives a clean kill during the hunt. Any hunting method should also be judged by whether it allows hunters to be more discerning about their kill as opposed to other methods. Hunting methods that allow a hunter to be more discerning should be favored, because they reduce the likelyhood of a hunter killing a sow, cow, or doe with young or even killing the wrong game (brown bears instead of black bears).

Anti-baiters focus not on whether the animal is killed cleanly or whether a method improves a hunters ability but rather on this mystical idea of "fair chase". With marketing and good spin-masters, I'm convinced hunting abolitionist can show that no chase is fair.