Hunting Opponents Plot Effectively California Officials Claim Urbanites Overrule Country Folk

Anti-hunting organizations have devised a formula to end big-game hunting one piece at a time, wildlife officials say.

The plan is working throughout the West.

“What you have is the city people telling the country people what they can do,” said Bob Stafford, California Fish and Game Department black bear coordinator. “As society becomes more urbanized, people think you don’t need to go hunting.”

The latest example in California is the 58-42 percentage ballot defeat of the proposal to return mountain-lion management to the DFG, and the next showdown in the West will be over bear hunting with dogs in Washington, with a similar measure expected in California next year.

The mountain-lion proposition won in 33 rural counties by a collective 67 percent vote, but lost in 25 urban counties by nearly the same percentage. In Modoc County, population 9,678, California’s most remote area, the proposition won with an 80-percent vote. But in San Francisco, population 723,959, the vote was 75 percent against.

“The cultural differences (between people who live in cities and those in country towns) are very difficult to overcome,” said DFG director Jacqueline Schafer.

An old political trick is to split the public in half, making sure to take the largest half. This is the winning strategy anti-hunting groups have used in California and other states.

In Colorado, voters passed a ballot measure that eliminated hunting bears with dogs or bait, and in the spring season. That was followed in Oregon with a similar measure that eliminated the use of dogs and bait on bear hunts.

In Washington, an initiative will likely appear on the fall ballot that will ask voters if dogs and bait should be permitted on bear hunts, and in Idaho, Michigan and Massachusetts, signatures are being collected for similar propositions.

If the proposition passes in Washington, it would leave California as the lone state in the West with a significant bear population to allow the use of dogs on hunts. Dogs have never been legal on bear hunts in Montana or Wyoming, primarily because of the presence of grizzlies.

Wayne Pacelle, former director of the Fund For Animals, said in a recent interview that while the organization’s ultimate goal is to end all hunting, it pursues its goals one piece at a time, trying to defeat the elements it finds most objectionable. He said the use of dogs on bear hunts was one of those elements, and that all bear hunting could be defeated in California.

The issue isn’t over species’ health, Stafford said, but whether the public views hunting as ethical.