Guns and Greens

The Sierra Club launched a similar effort in 1996 when it assigned me a piece for Sierra entitled "Natural Allies." Four years ago the club became a "supporting member" of the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA), which represents 2,000 of America's most prominent hook-and-bullet writers and editors, and which is currently experiencing the worst crisis in its 77-year history. The trouble started last June at the OWAA's annual conference in Spokane, when the Sierra Club distributed copies of "Natural Allies" as part of an ongoing program by the same name.

The program had worked well enough everywhere else. For example, in South Dakota the Sierra Club has teamed with 17 rod and gun clubs (affiliates of the South Dakota Wildlife Federation) to push for the designation of 71,000 acres of wilderness in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. Such is the level of trust that the Sierra Club's regional rep, Heather Morijah, now sits on the federation's board. When I asked the federation's director, Chris Hesla, why South Dakota sportsmen favor wilderness when so many others do not, he said: "Most of us understand that some places need to be set aside, and certain uses restricted. We want to save those last frontiers."

So there was the Sierra Club last June at the OWAA conference, reaching out to hook-and-bullet writers and editors, sponsoring a stunning presentation that drew a standing ovation from 700 dinner guests, working the crowd, handing out copies of "Natural Allies." Alas, the longevity of the piece says less about its quality than the fact that so few writers are pushing an alliance. But it is among the few articles I've written that has drawn only one angry response, and this is a full eight years after publication.

During the Sierra Club's presentation, National Rifle Association president Kayne Robinson (formerly the GOP chairman of Iowa) kept slamming his copy of the story against the table and cursing under his breath. When Robinson addressed the conference, he railed against all sorts of alleged slights and injustices to hunters, such as the way the Clinton administration had kicked them off "millions of acres." (At this point Mike Dombeck, former chief of the U.S. Forest Service, poked OWAA board member Tony Dean in the ribs and asked him what the hell Robinson was talking about. Later, at a press conference, Robinson was unable to come up with an example of a single acre the Clinton administration had closed to hunting.) What really outraged Robinson, however, was my article. He called it a Sierra Club plot "to hoodwink hunters into voting for gun ban candidates" and an "attack" on NRA board members, including Don Young.

I had never thought of myself as anti-gun. I own six shotguns, two rifles, and two pistols; I'm an avid hunter and shooter; and I have a Class A Large Capacity License to carry concealed weapons. Nor did I "attack" members of Congress who serve on the NRA board. What I did was report facts about them Robinson doesn't want the public to know—most notably their voting records—and only to illustrate how easily sportsmen are seduced by their worst enemies. I didn't mention the NRA. Through many drafts my editor, Joan Hamilton, asked me to provide more about the enormous contributions sportsmen have made to conservation. At Hamilton's urging, I added long paragraphs on how sportsmen created the national wildlife refuge system, eliminated market hunting, and restored waterfowl, elk, deer, antelope, and wild turkeys.

I doubt many Sierra Club staffers are as well armed as I am, but there is no evidence they are anti-gun. For example, Bart Semcer, the club's full-time coordinator for sportsmen outreach, told me this: "If we're not working with the hunting and fishing groups, we're nowhere. We support fishing and hunting, and we have no position on guns. In fact, our neutrality on the gun issue allowed us in the 2002 House and Senate races to endorse more than a dozen candidates who had an A-minus or better rating from the NRA."

So what's the noise from the NRA really about, and what's the NRA really about? Despite its in-your-face presence in conservation circles and its appearance in the National Wildlife Federation's "Conservation Directory," the NRA has nothing to do with conservation. In fact, it can be counted on to be on the wrong side of every conservation issue, from the Alaska Lands Act, to nontoxic shot for waterfowl (now mandatory), to the rule to protect roadless areas in national forests, which is supported by 84 percent of American hunters. The NRA is just one of the bottom-feeders that dwell in the deep gulf between sportsmen and environmentalists. If sportsmen get too close to the environmental community, they'll perceive that it has no secret anti-gun agenda, and the NRA will have a tougher time frightening them into joining up.

The big news, however, was not Robinson's predictable behavior. It was the passionate, though mixed, reaction of hook-and-bullet editors and writers. First, the OWAA board of directors voted 11 to 5 to send Robinson a mild, polite complaint about his "harsh criticism of fellow OWAA supporting member Sierra Club." Scores of OWAA members weighed in on the side of the board. "The NRA's campaign to 'propel hunter rights into the public arena' stinks of opportunism," wrote Rich Landers of The [Spokane] Spokesman-Review. "Robinson is trying to recruit uninformed hunters with the same big talk and promises a pimp uses to lure vulnerable girls into his realm. Some 12 million to 15 million American hunters are not NRA members, and this is no time for them to change their minds. Now, more than ever, a sportsman who is not an environmentalist is a fool." But 430 OWAA members signed a letter of protest, demanding that the board apologize to Robinson. When this didn't happen, 101 members, including 22 supporting members—among them Remington Arms, Nikon, and the National Wild Turkey Federation—canceled their memberships. North American Hunter magazine informed the board that it "will no longer accept [new] manuscripts and/or photos from members of OWAA because you have not issued an apology to NRA nor immediately distanced the organization from the Sierra Club." When I asked editor Gordy Krahn if his publication would also be rejecting advertising from OWAA supporting members, he said, "Well, er, we haven't discussed that yet." OWAA board member Tony Dean says this: "If we capitulate to all this pressure, we might as well fold the OWAA."

Here's a question environmentalists need to ask themselves: Are Music Man figures like Kayne Robinson and Don Young, who stomp and shout and warn sportsmen of sin "right here in River City," smarter than us? I can't think the answer is yes, but they certainly are more politically astute. They know what sells and what scares.

Herewith, a strategy for leveling the field. First, leave your personal values out of it. It's okay to detest blood sports; it's even okay to detest people who engage in blood sports. But it's not okay to sacrifice vanishing fish and wildlife to make political statements. There are plenty of real enemies out there without concocting new ones. If you truly want to save and restore fish and wildlife, you'll welcome and recruit help where you find it. If you have a hard time working with people you consider morally tainted, consider that virtually no game species is hurt and most are helped by legal hunting and fishing, and that powerful, ruthless special interests depend on and perpetuate the rift between environmentalists and sportsmen. Adopt the philosophy of Winston Churchill, who, when questioned about throwing in with Stalin, replied: "I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."