Roots, Respect and social permission to hunt

Yet another political dust-up over trapping appears headed for the November ballot here in Montana.

If memory serves, this will be the third such effort to ban trapping (on public land) by way of a popular vote on a ballot initiative in the past several years.

An old aphorism has it that: “friends come and go. But enemies accumulate.” The persistent efforts by anti-trapping advocates who continue counter-attacking after serial failures can be rationalized by supporters of trapping in several self-justifying narratives.  What cannot be explained away, however, is the existential threat posed by an accumulation of persistent enemies to a way of life like trapping that lingers from yesteryear at the rural margins of the modern urban society.

Ironically, leaders of the modern trapping industry have made a great effort to stop accumulating new enemies. During my tenure on the Montana Wildlife Commission I participated in two regulation-setting cycles for trapping. In both cycles the Montana Trappers Association presented a plan of self-regulation and trapper education that I could not improve upon. I’m confident the majority of trappers adhere to the Association program and have not been the impetus for the recurring political attacks by trapping opponents.

That doesn’t matter much, however, if you fall victim to the 10-percent rule: that 10 percent of trappers will cause 90 percent of problems. In the case of trappers the proportion is probably more like five percent afflicting 95 percent. But a trouble-making five percent obviously is plenty of enemy-breeding activity.

The fact that ethical trappers cannot stop a few crude and contemptuous people from setting traps near public land trails used by urbanites with pets delivers an object lesson to practitioners of that other death-inflicting outdoor activity – hunting.

The vast majority of hunters can be of high-principle and sound ethic; but the culture of hunting will still accumulate enough social enemies to bring it to an end when the larger society concludes the good of hunting is not worth the trouble of putting up with the bad.

 The roots of sub-cultures such as trapping, hunting and fishing go deep into the greater urban population. Without the sustenance of these roots new recruits will not rise to fill the ranks of future outdoors people. More immediate, political and social permission to hunt and trap progressively declines. Political attacks by anti-hunters and anti-trappers typically are only the final, visible stage of a below-surface, step-by-step decline in which hunters and trappers become ever more isolated from mainstream values and interactions. 

In a human dominated world, social isolation is prelude to cultural extinction. Hunters and trappers are especially vulnerable to this isolation hazard given the physically secluded nature of hunting and trapping. Practitioners of the woodscrafts are forced to exert themselves toward social relationships even as their cherished experiences pull them away from society into lonely and wild places.

The smaller the portion of America’s non-hunting majority who know and respect the practice of hunting the smaller the social permission society will grant to hunters.  Sadly, trappers seem already to be dangling way out at the end of the social permission rope. Nobody should overlook the pathos of ethical hunters and trappers who plead their own good behavior as defense. When social permission is withdrawn, it is withdrawn for all.

Trappers who snare pet dogs near popular hiking trails on public land around large cities create a public relations disaster for all trappers. Makes no difference whatsoever if their sets are legal the enemies still accumulate – and enemies vote. 

Hunters have their own cadre of public relations 10-percenters.

Regardless of one’s opinion about large predators, the way hunters currently portray themselves to non-hunters by their treatment of wolves is generating an accumulation of political enemies in the larger society. The lynch-mob mindset against wolves displayed here in the northern Rockies is gnawing at the roots of hunting support among urban Americans who view the wolf, not as an elk-eater, but as an emotional icon. 

My engagement with hunters tells me the majority of western urban hunters want to think of the wolf as a valued trophy game animal – not as vermin. They would look at the wolf in the same way they view black bear – as a predator but also as a valued game animal that must be managed as such. Many of these same hunters, however, are swayed by the groupthink telling them every bite of wild meat swallowed by a wolf is stolen from the mouth of a human hunter.

Even the mountain lion, which, unlike the wolf, has acquired a hunter fan club, is sometimes targeted for over-harvest by policy makers obsessed with producing larger elk populations.

The point of this essay is to advise all these good hunters that they are not invisible as they cast their cultural portraits on the social wall for all those non-hunters to observe and judge. Believing you are right will be a poor consolation if your self-righteousness breeds more enemies than you can out-vote.

A shrill minority of hunters shout their contempt for all those ‘bunny huggers’ they despise.  State legislators, governors and wildlife commissions scramble to appease this groupthink of contempt. They could care less about the distant accumulation of political enemies. Thus uncaring, they certainly can’t be concerned about a growing urban indifference to whether or not hunting continues as part of our American way of life.

But this is root-rot at work. And it will lead to the shriveling away of the flower, leaf and limb of our hunting tradition. Until we hunters learn to grow allegiances among the larger society instead of accumulating enemies we cannot avoid arriving at the same troublesome place now occupied by those ethical trappers who personally do nothing to offend.

Remember, political collapse of the social contract that supports hunting does not require a majority of Americans to become anti-hunters: collapse only requires that they stop caring – stop seeing value in the hunters’ presence in society.

Only by earning the respect of non-hunters by showing ourselves as champions of values shared by non-hunters can we avoid the social oblivion of indifference.

And non-hunters have made crystal clear the one value they expect from hunters above all other values.  They expect hunters to show respect for the wild animals we hunt. Poll after poll pops this value to the top of the chart.

Hunters displaying contempt for an animal like the wolf, which is valued by the larger society, can expect only an accumulation of contempt in return.

To its credit the Boone and Crockett Club continues to emphasize the importance of keeping the respect of the non-hunting public. Among the 10 points of the Club’s Code of Ethics is the pledge: ‘To do my part in upholding a positive public image of hunters and hunting.’

Jack Ward Thomas, in an article titled “A Hunting Ethic” published in the spring edition of FAIR CHASE, the B&C Club magazine, cites four ‘filters’ or tests to establish a standard of fair chase. Prominent among these, he says, is “The action does not facilitate negative criticism toward hunting in general from those who do not hunt.”

Contempt breeds contempt; respect earns respect. Hunters who sneer at the values of non-hunters are pulling all hunters down the social rope toward the noose now tightening around the neck of trappers.

  ~~ Ron Moody