Bad News Bear Hunters

Tom Beck, Colorado's bear biologist until he retired three years ago, told me this: “What aggravates me most is that wildlife professionals accept the hunters' claim that bears can't be hunted without bait. Every [bearbaiting] state says its woods are ‘too thick.' I don't believe anyone who says you can't hunt bears in the fall when they're on berries or nuts. You can predict where they're going to be, and if you're a woodsman, all you have to do is scout those places. After we banned baiting, it took only two years for our hunters to get to the point where they were killing more bears than they were before. They learned how to do it. There was this large pool of hunters convinced—mostly by the outfitters—that you had to hunt with bait or hounds. These guys didn't want to spend the money on hounds, and they were opposed to using bait. When they learned the truth, the number of bear hunters skyrocketed.” From 1989 through 1991 (the year before Colorado outlawed baiting) an average of 6,460 hunters killed an average of 471 bears. From 2002 through 2004 an average of 11,472 hunters killed an average of 656 bears.

It's true that when baiting is outlawed, the kill rate per hunter declines. But all this means is that more hunters can participate without harming a population. “Why should the kill rate [quantity], rather than the quality of the hunt, be the measure of success?” Beck asks. “How fulfilling is it to shoot a bear with its head in a barrel of jelly-filled doughnuts?”

In the mid-1990s Beck and I did business with Outdoor Life magazine because of its new editor, Steve Byers. Periodically, and always briefly, the big hook-and-bullet magazines get religion and hire smart, tough editors who understand the real threats to fish and wildlife and dare to challenge readers to thought and action even if it means offering them facts they don't want to know. “You don't lose readers by pissing them off,” Byers used to tell me. “You lose readers by boring them.”

Through a mutual friend and publisher I urged Beck to submit a piece on bearbaiting to the newly reformed Outdoor Life. He did; Byers loved it and scheduled it for the September 1996 issue. But the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance (then called the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America) got wind of the article and, although it hadn't read it, prognosticated that it contained dangerous and seditious opinions. Accordingly, the group fired off mass mailings, warning the faithful about another foot-in-the-door plot by the vile and ubiquitous anti-hunters (“antis”), who wouldn't rest until they'd outlawed all hunting and fishing. In the hot breeze from alleged subscribers, the magazine's owner, Times Mirror, folded like a paper parasol; and on July 24—at virtually the last possible instant—Byers received an order to kill Beck's piece. Byers and his assistant, Will Bourne (later hired by Audubon), quit in disgust. When the big metro newspapers reported the reason for their departure, Times Mirror folded again, rescheduling Beck's piece—but this time alongside an obsequious defense of baiting.

According to the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the Safari Club International, the effort to ban bearbaiting is entirely the work of the antis. The truth is that it's mostly the work of ethical, enlightened hunters smart enough to know they have a major image problem and that bearbaiting is making it lots worse.

Just after Colorado had banned bearbaiting, Bill Montoya, then director of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, admonished the Sportsmen's Alliance for reporting that the recent closure of his state's baitless spring bear hunt was also the work of the antis. “The article is a great disservice to the sportsmen of our state and to all of your readers,” he wrote. “None of your imaginary ‘antis' were present or heard from. . .

Your article, however, has done more for the cause of the ‘antis' than any adjustments we could have made to the bear season. Without their saying a word or lifting a finger, you have given them complete credit for eliminating a season when in fact they were not involved. . . . We have observed the groups you purport to oppose, using demagoguery to increase membership and raise funds, but are very disappointed that [the Sportsmen's Alliance] apparently is using the same tactics of paranoid disinformation.”

In 2003 the Sportsmen's Alliance was at it again, along with the NRA and the Safari Club. Together these self-proclaimed defenders of hunting torpedoed legislation that would have banned bearbaiting on federal lands. The Don't Feed the Bears Bill (HR 1472), introduced by U.S. Representatives Elton Gallegly (R-CA) and Jim Moran (D-VA), had wide bipartisan support. Almost half the House had signed on as cosponsors. No one had thoughts about banning any sort of fair-chase hunting; supporters merely wanted to end the ridiculous and dangerous double standard that allows only bear hunters to feed the bears.

The bill was being pushed by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which, unlike other anti-hunting groups, is politically astute enough to understand that it has zero chance of stopping fair chase. So it targets only the worst abuses, such as wolf and grizzly control in Alaska, canned hunts, and bearbaiting. Ironically, this strategy continuously puts it squarely in the camp of enlightened hunters worried about the declining image of their sport. “We have not pushed legislation to ban deer hunting in any state, for as long as I can remember,” says Wayne Pacelle, the HSUS's president and CEO. “It's all about these extreme practices. The bill was looking like it was inevitable. Then the NRA, the Sportsmen's Alliance, and the Safari Club got involved. In all the years I've worked in politics and with Congress, I've never seen a grosser example of mass timidity.” Chastened by all the shrill talk about anti-hunting plots, cosponsors started pulling their names off the bill; eventually the House voted it down, 255 to 163.

The HSUS's involvement in last year's Maine bearbaiting referendum, which would also have banned bear trapping and hounding, was a strategic mistake. Maine hunters are paranoid enough about people from “outa-state,” but mention “outa-state antis” and all rational conversation ceases. If the HSUS hadn't shown up in the flesh, the Sportsmen's Alliance of Maine (SAM) would have claimed it was directing the effort from away. SAM organized the opposition, which called itself Maine's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Council.