As a hunter, fisher and
full-time outdoor writer, it pains me to admit that most
hunting-and-fishing magazines are right down there with supermarket
tabloids.
You can tell the really important articles by
the number of exclamation points after the title, as in:
“Sportsmen’s group in all-out battle for shooting and hunting
rights!!!”
Fact-checking departments are unheard of. Pay
is abominable. The few writers who attempt to report real issues,
such as damage to the land by extractive industries, are usually
encouraged not to name names, unless they say something nice, and,
at best, are on their own if there’s legal action.
Aldo Leopold’s lament more than half a century ago is truer now
than then: “The sportsman has no leaders to tell him what is wrong.
The sporting press no longer represents sport, it has turned
billboard for the gadgeteer.”
There is a group trying to
elevate hook-and-bullet journalism — the 2,000-member Outdoor
Writers Association of America. I’ve been part of it since
1975, and I serve on the 23-person Circle of Chiefs, the
outfit’s conservation conscience. But a nasty incident at the
Outdoor Writers annual conference in Spokane last June resulted in
145 individual members and 41 supporting members (including Nikon,
the National Wild Turkey Federation, the National Rifle
Association, and Safari Club International) canceling their
memberships. As a result, the 77-year-old group is said to be
“imploding.”
I can’t agree. But first, here’s
what happened: In 1996, the Sierra Club — now an Outdoor Writers
supporting member — asked me to write an article for its
magazine, Sierra, about why sportsmen and environmentalists need to
work together toward common goals. The editor called my piece
“Natural Allies,” and the club used the same title for an effective
outreach effort to sportsmen. Even today, the club passes my
article around as part of its Natural Allies program, and it did so
at the Outdoor Writers conference.
This infuriated
National Rifle Association president Kayne Robinson, a featured
speaker. Referring to my nine-year-old article — which
he’d been angrily slamming against a table — he
embarked on a rambling harangue about how the Sierra Club was
abusing the NRA, “attacking” its board, and plotting “to hoodwink
hunters into voting for gun-ban candidates.”
I
hadn’t mentioned the NRA. Nor had I “attacked” its board.
What I had done was report how sportsmen hop into bed with their
worst enemies, voting some into public office purely on the
strength of pro-gun rhetoric and service on the boards of groups
like the NRA. I did this by reporting the abysmal environmental
voting record of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, currently a NRA board
member. There’s no more vicious enemy of fish and wildlife in
Congress, yet just before the 1994 elections, Outdoor
Life magazine told its readers that Young “is your kind
of politician,” that he “fights the good fight,” and that “you’d be
hard pressed to find a more fearless Washington advocate of the
sportsman’s life.”
After Robinson’s tantrum, the
board of Outdoor Writers of America wrote him a polite, almost
apologetic letter, explaining that maybe this wasn’t the way
to behave toward a fellow supporting member. That letter, if you
can believe it, is what triggered the exodus. It was said to be
another coup in the takeover of Outdoor Writers by the “green
mafia,” “Bush bashers,” and “liberals pushing their political
agenda.”
Basically, the resigned members see the
environmental movement as a plot to steal their guns. And
basically, I see their departure as wonderfully cathartic.
Leading the effort to start a new non-liberal,
non-conservation-minded writers‚ organization are resigned
Outdoor Writers members Tony Mandile, who writes tips on how to bag
deer; Burt Carey, president of the Western Outdoor Writers
Association; and Bryce Towsley, who writes for North American
Hunter, a magazine that recently announced it “will no longer
accept manuscripts and/or photos from members of Outdoor Writers
because [board members] have not issued an apology to the NRA nor
immediately distanced the organization from the Sierra Club.”
Mandile warns that “the crooked greenie-weenies are the
real enemies.” Carey complains about the “Chicken Littles of the
environmental left,” “green-whackos,” and
“preservationist-socialist trends [in] courting hunting [sic] and
anglers.” And Towsley blames “left-wing tree huggers” for his
unproductive deer hunting and conservationists for “hijacking”
Outdoors Writers.
I wish all resigned members good
fortune. And I hope they find enlightenment. As I’ve told
them, I have always believed that outdoor writers who come out
against fish and wildlife conservation are in the wrong business.
To me, it makes as much sense golf writers coming out against
grass.
Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). When not on the road, he lives in Grafton,
Massachusetts.
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