I’m a hunter, and I
believe that the recent decision by Montana’s officials to
postpone a bison hunt near Yellowstone was a stroke of bold
leadership. It was also downright gutsy and the right thing to do.
It earned Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and the state
game commission a lot of uninformed criticism. They’ve been
charged with knuckling under to animal rights groups from out of
state and with “alienating hunters” who dearly wanted to bag a
bison.
That’s not what’s going on. At the
game commission hearing where the decision was made by a 4-1 vote,
hunter after hunter from Montana — including Joe Gutkoski of
Bozeman, who was once featured in Field & Stream magazine as
“The Toughest Man in the Rockies” — spoke out against the
proposed hunt and urged a postponement. I did the same.
Why? Because I want to hunt truly wild bison someday, and I want my
son to hunt wild bison someday. But that won’t happen
overnight.
As nearly all the hunters speaking at the
commission meeting pointed out, before we can have a fair-chase
hunt for bison, the magnificent animals need to be managed as
free-ranging animals and given room to roam. Management of bison
needs to be transferred from the Department of Livestock, where the
animals don’t belong, and turned over to the Montana
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Bison are wildlife, and
they need to be allowed to migrate out of Yellowstone National Park
to their traditional winter range.
When they try to cross
the park boundary now, state agents haze them back or shoot them.
Sometimes, the slaughter is horrendous — 1,100 animals during
the winter of 1996-97. This year, only three have been killed, yet
this is no way to treat a magnificent wild animal.
Killing bison that stand their ground with docile dignity and
calling that a hunt would once again bring an outcry from the
public. That’s what happened in 1991, and the national
protest then caused Gov. Mark Racicot to bow to pressure and cancel
a bison hunt.
As State Game Commissioner Tim Mulligan
said at the recent hearing on this year’s proposed hunt:
“This wouldn’t be a slow beginning to bison hunting; it would
be a swift end.”
What really chafes hunters isn’t
Gov. Schweitzer or the commission, but some people in the livestock
industry. Steve Pilcher, director of the Montana Stockgrowers
Association, said he’d like to see a “free-ranging bison
hunt.” But as long as bison might carry a disease —
brucellosis — that threatens Montana’s cattle economy,
he added, he’s against it.
This, even though there
is no known case of bison transmitting disease to cattle in the
wild. Paradoxically, the livestock industry also continues to
support game farming where the spread of disease is prevalent. What
Pilcher really reveals is that no fair-chase hunt will come into
being as long as the Department of Livestock and the cattle
industry maintain control over the fate of 4,000 bison.
A
bill before the state Legislature called the Montana Wild Buffalo
Recovery and Conservation Act, would help create a long-term,
sustainable hunt. Backed by the Montana hunters of the Gallatin
Wildlife Association, the legislation would classify wild bison as
“valued native wildlife,” turn management over to the Montana
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and protect private
property rights and the cattle industry’s disease-free status
through cooperation with the Department of Livestock under existing
law.
Best of all, bison would be allowed to roam onto
their winter range, and hunters would be able to hunt bison that
get to behave like wild creatures.
One of the most
encouraging things to emerge from the recent commission meeting was
the mostly high level of debate. Hunters emphasized not only their
concern for wildlife, but also for the manner in which they pursue
prey. Of course, there were those still entrenched in the “old
ways,” who took the opportunity to take verbal potshots at others.
One commissioner — the only one opposed to
postponing the hunt — managed to bring New York City, Hitler
and Nazis into the discussion. However, most everyone else seemed
to have in-depth knowledge of the issues and wanted to find real
solutions, such as creating a larger area for bison to roam and
instituting a full public hunting season. It’s not here yet,
but as Gov. Schweitzer likes to say, we’re closer to “a new
day in Montana.”
David Stalling is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News(hcn.org). He lives is the president of the
Montana Wildlife Federation and lives in Missoula,
Montana.
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