It started over the
long Labor Day weekend and went on from dawn to dusk — the
constant report of gunfire echoing against the Organ Mountains here
in southern New Mexico. Another dove-hunting season had descended
upon us, and all lovers of wildlife could do was wait for it to end
while so-called hunters blasted into smithereens as many birds as
their permits allowed –15 per day, 30 in possession at any one
time. As I listened to the barrage of gunshots, I must admit I
wondered about the mental stability of those shooters.
I
know that many responsible hunters exist. Members of my
father’s family, who live in upstate New York, were avid deer
hunters. They owned a hunting cabin in the Adirondack Mountains,
and trophy heads featuring huge antler racks were proudly displayed
on the walls. But they also utilized everything they could from
those kills, making hundreds of pounds of venison steaks and
roasts, and, according to the stories, using the intestines to make
sausage.
I’ve been a hunter, but never that kind of
devoted hunter. It only took one incident to convince me I was not
a killer for sport. I was a teenager when I shot a cottontail in
the woods of northeastern Ohio, but when I went to pick up the dead
rabbit, it was gone. The wounded animal had dragged its bloody body
into a dense thicket where I couldn’t reach it. Although
I’d never intended to skin the rabbit to bring it home for
dinner, the idea of leaving an animal to suffer and die in the
underbrush made me feel sick. I decided then that if I wasn’t
going to kill for food, I couldn’t be a hunter.
The
naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch once said, ”When a man wantonly
destroys one of the works of man we call him vandal. When he
wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him
sportsman.” I may not be that radical in my assessment of
hunters, but I’ve begun to think that hunting doves brings
out the worst in people.
A few days after the season
began, my dog and I went for a hike in the desert behind a mountain
outside of Las Cruces. The first thing I saw was what looked like a
tornado of turkey vultures – 15 or 20 birds spiraling at
various heights above the desert floor. Then, not 20 yards off the
paved road near a new subdivision called Tierra Escondida, we came
upon hundreds of 12-gauge shotgun casings, an empty 24-pack of beer
and a dozen assorted wings and other body parts of decimated doves.
Whoever had hunted here had blasted away, relishing something other
than the taste of succulent dove meat.
That’s
what’s unsettling. How do you educate these people? And what
can be done about them? If officers from New Mexico Game and Fish
had made contact with these shooters, the hunters could be cited
only if they failed to possess valid licenses and stamps for that
specific area. If game wardens returned later and found that the
site had not been cleaned properly, the hunters could be cited only
for littering. But short of having psychologists doubling as
conservation officers, there’s no way to determine a
hunter’s motivation. Even if an officer could cite somebody
for an illegal motive, what would it be — taking too much pleasure
in the kill?
Perhaps if the requirements for getting a
license were more stringent, some of these miscreants could be
weeded out of the system. Maybe if all applicants were required to
take the hunter education class, which is mandatory for potential
licensees under the age of 18 here in New Mexico, people would balk
at the inconvenience and lose interest in dove hunting. Or perhaps
we need a more draconian measure — banning dove hunting in the
state, as Michigan did in 2006 — to reduce drastically the number
of shooters who kill doves for target practice. But as it stands
now, anyone 18 or older can go to a local Wal-Mart and buy a
license.
I favor a ban on dove hunting, but there is no
chance one would ever pass in this gun-loving “land of
enchantment.” All I can do is wait out another
September-December hunting season, and pray that my dog and I
don’t happen upon too many other scenes of slaughter.
Robert Rowley is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado
(hcn.org). He is a freelance writer and photographer in Las Cruces,
New Mexico.
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