When he introduced a bill this winter
to enshrine the right to “hunt, fish, trap and harvest wild game”
in Idaho’s Constitution, Republican Rep. Marv Hagedorn faced a
telling question.
What does it mean to “harvest” game?
asked one Boise legislator.
After a brief, manly silence
during which the hunters, farmers and gun owners in the room
stifled their laughter, Hagedorn offered a quick definition.
In a state where hunting remains a rite of passage,
Idaho’s cities (and its Legislature) are increasingly filled with
people unfamiliar with common hunting terms, let alone the setting
of seasons, disposal of gut piles or proper care of weapons afield.
“Urban Idaho now has the majority population of the
state,” says Hagedorn, who grew up in a rural mill town. “People in
the Treasure Valley (Boise) don’t get it.” The story is similar
across the Rocky Mountain West, where the number of sportsmen
declined 15 percent between 2001 and 2006.
Feeling
harassed by animal rights groups, threatened by ballot initiatives,
and increasingly competing for space outdoors with family hikers,
many sportsmen would like to make hunting a constitutional right.
But such amendments raise thorny political and legal questions and
could even threaten hunting by undermining regulatory systems that
protect wildlife from the rampant over-hunting of a century ago.
“In my opinion, we’re trying to fix something that ain’t
broke,” says former Idaho Department of Fish and Game director
Steve Huffaker. “We’ve got the right to hunt and fish as long as
we’re willing to play by the rules and manage for the common good
instead of the rights of the individual.”
After
a wave of anti-hunting ballot measures in the mid-1990s,
including a successful bear-baiting and -hounding ban in Oregon in
1994 and one that failed in Idaho in 1996, about a dozen states
began to look at ways to protect hunting and fishing — including
writing them into their constitutions — in the face of changing
public attitudes.
By 2005, the National Rifle Association
was on board, working with sportsmen’s groups to craft a model
“right to hunt” amendment that would put hunting on a par with the
right to bear arms. The NRA’s version would allow states to adopt
“reasonable” hunting regulations, protect traditional methods of
hunting, including bow hunting, and declare hunting the preferred
means of wildlife management, as opposed to contraception or
government sharpshooters.
Darren LaSorte, the NRA’s
Institute for Legislative Action hunting policy manager, says that
the term “reasonable” allows states to regulate hunting as they
currently do while staving off opponents like the Humane Society.
“Unlike a lot of other things, people are truly trying to
ban (hunting),” LaSorte says. “No one is trying to ban golfing, no
one is trying to ban basket-weaving.”
The NRA-led effort
to define hunting as a constitutional right has divided hunters
along familiar lines, pitting hunting groups with strong
libertarian leanings against state wildlife agencies and
hunter-conservationists. Opponents fear it would leave wildlife
agencies open to attack from all sides. Poachers or out-of-state
hunters could claim that the hunting right trumps state regulations
that limit the number of deer hunters can shoot each year or cap
out-of-state licenses. Or conservation groups could use the right
to hunt to stop grazing, ATV use or even development where it might
interfere with wild game. Worried that fishermen could demand more
water in rivers, Idaho irrigators even insisted on an exemption
from minimum stream flows.
Though at least 10 states now
mention hunting rights in their constitutions, the amendments have
yet to gain much traction in the West. Hagedorn, backed by the NRA
and conservative hunting groups, did not get far with his own bill
this year. Two slightly different versions found little support and
were held in an Idaho legislative committee.
Bill McLean,
an NRA member who, as chairman of the Arizona Game and Fish
Commission, helped kill a version in Arizona, says that the
constitutional route could have limited his commission’s ability to
revoke hunting licenses — taking away some of its independent
authority to regulate wildlife and handing it over to partisan
legislators.
Some Idaho and Arizona lawmakers sought a
compromise, something less than a fundamental right. But the NRA is
not interested in a watered-down version.
The
NRA’s involvement and its legislative push during a
presidential election year lead some to see the “right to hunt”
amendments as political litmus tests gauging support for the
organization’s agenda — particularly in Western states where the
threat to hunting is minimal.
“I once supported it
because I support hunting and fishing,” says Idaho Sen. David
Langhorst, a Boise Democrat and vice president of the National
Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses. But now he says the issue is
being used as a wedge, much like abortion.
Montana
skirted the politics in 2004, by voting to protect a “harvest
heritage” in the state Constitution, rather than a fundamental
“right to hunt.”
Utah went a different route, making it
more difficult to pass anti-hunting ballot measures by requiring a
two-thirds majority on any constitutional amendment that relates to
fish and game. Hagedorn is considering a similar measure for Idaho
for next year.
Chris Marchion, past president of the
Montana Wildlife Federation, believes hunting should remain a
privilege — one that is democratically allocated. Montana’s
hunting heritage amendment is meaningless, he says. “Any hunting
activity is only going to be tolerated as long as the general
public tolerates it. The best thing to do is to make sure that
hunter behavior is good, that what we do is sustainable.”
The author is an independent journalist in Boise. He
publishes PaleoMedia.org.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Life, liberty and the pursuit of … game?.
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