If you’ve ever been angered by the way hunters are stereotyped in the media and popular culture, then you’ll find Kathy Etling’s Aug. 22 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch an interesting read. Hunters were once rightfully depicted in film and on television as normal members of society, but as Etling points out, many scriptwriters today use hunters are their villains.

She writes:

Would you like to wow your friends with your ability to predict who, in a TV crime or legal drama, will eventually be found to be the killer or all-around bad guy or gal? Well, just zero in on anyone who is 1.) a hunter; 2.) has mounted deer or taxidermy animals—ducks, fish, etc.— hanging on the walls; or 3.) wearing fur. Just like that you will have nailed down the identity of the TV villain probably 99 times out of 100.

TV characters who also hunted were once commonplace. From Andy Griffith’s Ben Matlock in the legal drama “Matlock” to Forrest Bedford, Sam Waterston’s character in “I’ll Fly Away,” and even Bob Newhart in “Newhart,” a TV character who hunted was presented to the viewing audience as an Everyman. Today the hunter or fur wearer is most often depicted as the lowest of the low, a character capable of any evil. …

Television fanatics—and I count myself among them—are subjected instead to a steady diet of hunters as evil, plotting sociopaths who enjoy killing animals and people in equal measure. What hunters do to animals—which is occasionally kill them—is apparently tantamount in the minds of the TV producer, director or scriptwriter to being a small step removed from being a killer of humans.

Do you agree with Etling’s estimation of how scriptwriters are portraying hunters? Are their plotlines impacting the way the public views hunters and hunting?

A lost groundhog hunter near Penn State Mont Alto—a Penn State branch campus—prompted university officials to lock down buildings and send out campus-wide alerts via Twitter, Facebook, cell phones and e-mail. The “suspect” asked several Mont Alto residents for directions and his attire—a fluorescent orange hunting cap and rifle—prompted them to call the police. Within half an hour the lockdown was rescinded after police realized the man was a hunter and meant no harm. The Mont Alto campus is located in rural south-central Pennsylvania on the edge of a state game reserve and the Michaux State Forest, where hunting is allowed.

Aug. 12 in the Chambersburg (Pa.) Public Opinion:

“He knocked on a few neighbors' doors looking for information,” [said Pennsylvania State Trooper Thomas E. Pinkerton]. “He was asking for directions to a relative’s place who lived nearby.”

Pinkerton said the man became disoriented in the woods that are near the campus. He entered the woods in one place and came out in another, he said.

The troopers made contact with the man and determined no crimes were committed, and that he was legally able to possess the firearm, Pinkerton said.

Your reaction?

The Indiana Natural Resources Commission has tentatively approved a plan that would take a week away from the state’s gun deer season (where both bucks and does can be killed) and replace it with two new antlerless-only seasons. Most Hoosier hunters, understandably, are enraged by the plan and will have the chance to voice their opinions at open houses across the state this month. Game officials believe that reducing the time hunters have to harvest a buck (from 16 days to nine) will lead to a larger doe kill.

Aug. 8 in the South Bend Tribune:

Hoosier deer biologist Chad Stewart says that managers believe that if hunters have fewer days to take a buck they are more likely to pull the trigger on a doe. He cites Illinois and Ohio as examples of the impact of a shorter gun season.

“They are killing a larger percentage of antlerless deer than we do,” he noted. “We’ve tried liberalizing the amount of antlerless permits we issue, but it’s not working. Hunters are only going to take so many deer, and we need to increase the percentage of antlerless deer being taken.”

What do you make of Indiana’s proposal? Will it alienate hunters? In a time when hunter numbers are already dropping, is a plan that takes away buck-hunting opportunities a solution in search of an even greater problem?

Two British tabloids, The Sun and the Daily Mail, ran stories this week about two U.S. teens—Sara and Katey Brandenburg—who have hunted all over the world. The girls and their parents thought the reporter interviewing them planned to write about how much they love hunting. Only after the articles came out did they discover that wasn’t the case. Instead of lauding the girls for their hunting prowess, the articles sensationalized hunting as a blood sport and portrayed the teens, who hail from Colorado, in the worst light possible.

The Sun started off its story with this: “PRETTY teenage sisters have turned themselves into angels of death—shooting dead DOZENS of wild animals then smiling for sick photos with the bodies.”

The title of the Daily Mail piece read, “Bloodlust: Meet the ‘twisted’ teenage sisters who love shooting rare wild animals.”

In truth, the sisters come from a perfectly normal hunting family, and the “sick” photos they posed in were just your run-of-the-mill hunting photos. None of the girls’ trophies—a whitetail, pronghorn and dall sheep, among others—are rare or even threatened.

The girls’ father, Rod Brandenburg, told Outdoor Life that the stories are a “slap in the face to hunters everywhere.”

Read the full stories (and check out the photos) at the links above and tell us what you think. Be sure to read the comments at the end of both articles. How do stories like this impact hunting and the way it’s perceived by society?

After a dismal 2009 season in which hunters took their fewest number of deer in 27 years, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is prepared to spend $2 million to see if coyotes, wolves, and other predators are to blame, and also to determine what affects the survival of whitetail bucks. The studies are the most expensive deer research ever conducted in the state.

July 25 on thenorthwestern.com:

About $2 million in Federal Wildlife Restoration Fund money from Pittman-Robertson (money from excise taxes on the sales of ammunition and firearms) will be used to pay for the studies. Of that, $400,000 will be used to hire University of Wisconsin graduate students to assist with the research, said Dr. Chris Jacques, DNR deer research scientist and coordinator of both studies.

Many of the state’s hunters have questioned the DNR’s ability to accurately calculate deer populations, particularly after the DNR said it miscalculated the overall population by about 50 percent after a severe winter in 2007 and 2008.

At hearings the past two years throughout the state, hunters have reported seeing far fewer deer in most deer management units, and some have threatened to close their land to all hunters and boycott the 2010 season. …

The $1.14 million buck mortality study will use radio telemetry and ear tags to follow 150 bucks in each study area. Box traps, netted cage traps and netting by helicopter will be used to capture the bucks, [Jacques] noted. It will begin in January 2011. …The $360,000 fawn mortality study will trap 50 fawns per spring and see what their survival rates are until the deer season begins. The two-year study will begin in May 2011.

Is this a good use of $2 million? With Wisconsin under fire for its deer management—will this study do any good?

The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to return gray wolves to all of their traditional habitats in the United States—places like New England, California and the Great Plains. If accepted by USFWS or mandated by court order, the petition would keep wolves in the upper Great Lakes and northern Rocky Mountains on the Endangered Species List until they expand across the country.

“The act requires that wolf populations be recovered across a significant portion of their original range, and that isn’t close to happening as yet,’’ Michael Robinson, conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, told the Duluth News Tribune. “We need a national wolf plan and policy.”

Such a policy could prove disastrous to big game herds nationwide, not to mention domestic livestock. Anecdotal evidence points to wolves as a contributing factor in declining deer herds in Wisconsin and Michigan, and in areas in the northern Rockies where wolves and elk share habitat, such as Yellowstone, elk populations are declining fast. Since wolves were re-introduced in the mid-1990s, Yellowstone’s elk herd has dropped from 17,000 to 7,100—a 58 percent decline. In Idaho’s famous Lolo Zone, the elk population is down 57 percent since 2006, from 5,110 to 2,178 animals.

“We urge USFWS to be very cautious in this evaluation and reject the rhetoric of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Justice, Humane Society of the U.S. and other animal rights groups,” said David Allen, president of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. “Wolf re-introduction in the greater Yellowstone region was a classic example of ‘let’s get our foot in the door and then move the goal line,’ and should be warning enough. This is a fundraising strategy with anti-hunting, anti-ranching, anti-gun impacts, and the public needs to understand and see it for it is.”

Thoughts?

Several states are cracking down on springtime shed hunting to minimize disturbances to wintering big-game herds. Utah now requires an online course and certificate to go shed hunting, and Wyoming has enacted a law prohibiting shed hunting on public lands west of the Continental Divide between Jan. 1 and April 30. As five Idahoans recently discovered, shed hunting out of season in Wyoming is no joke.

July 2 in the Casper Star-Tribune:

Five Idaho men who were caught collecting shed antlers in southwest Wyoming during a closed season in April have been fined and their hunting privileges revoked, according to Game and Fish Department officials.

Game and Fish Green River spokeswoman Lucy Diggins said on April 24, a concerned sportsman reported to game wardens that a group of people was observed hunting for shed antlers on the sagebrush ridges near Cokeville in Lincoln County. …

The men were fined $380 each and their privileges to hunt big game animals in Wyoming during 2010 were revoked.

In addition, Diggins said three of the defendants will not be allowed to carry big game hunting firearms in the field while on probation.

Do you think revoking hunting rights is a fair penalty for collecting sheds? While shed hunters ought to make every effort not to disturb post-rut game herds, do you think shed hunting should be governed by regulations that, if broken, carry criminal penalties?

Scientists at Carnegie Institution for Science are arguing that “overhunting” of wooly mammoths 15,000 years ago led to a small but measurable change in the planet’s weather.

Their reasoning: When the last Ice Age ended 15,000 years ago, warming temperatures started die-offs among mammoths, which were more suited to frigid weather. Human hunters then decreased the mammoth population “far more rapidly than would have occurred otherwise,” according to the scientists.

As mammoth numbers fell, one of their favored foods—birch trees—was allowed to grow and spread freely. According to the study, the trees grew “more than enough to blot out the sun from the grass below. The trees actually darkened the color of the landscape, increasing the amount of sunlight absorbed and heating up the area.”

So, as mammoths died, birch trees spread uncontrollably, and a vicious cycle of warming ensured. Researchers did find that the amount of birch pollen in northern areas increased dramatically, coinciding with the arrival of human hunters and drops in mammoth populations.

(Editor’s Note: I confess I have not read the complete report, but I suspect the scientists did not suggest what human beings 15,000 years ago were supposed to do for food other than hunt.) Read the article here.

Comments?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has announced that it will begin paying farmers and ranchers in the Gulf region to flood their fields to provide alternative habitat for migratory birds along the oil-fouled coast. Up to $20 million has been allocated to flood 150,000 inland acres for oil-free resting, feeding and nesting areas.

June 29 in the Los Angeles Times:

The program applies mainly to former wetlands and low-lying land in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. Conservation officials are hoping to attract birds to safe areas before they land on shores and wetlands contaminated by the massive oil spill.

Landowners would be expected to flood fields and promote the growth of vegetation favored by migratory birds, or to enhance existing wetlands on their properties, for three to five years, said NRCS spokeswoman Chris Coulon. …

For birds, “it’s an alternative so they’ll have a lower probability of landing in areas affected by the oil spill,” Coulon said. …

The gulf region sits beneath one of the world’s major migratory flyways, with about 1 billion birds from more than 300 species passing through annually, said Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society.

Good idea?

The New Jersey Senate voted on Monday to reduce the distance archery hunters must be from homes from 450 feet to 150 feet. The state Assembly must still take up the measure, which is meant to make it easier for hunters to gain access to suburban areas where deer densities are high. Despite the fact that nearby states, such as Pennsylvania, have had few problems with an archery safety zone of 150 feet, detractors of the bill are saying that the new distance presents a safety issue.

June 21 in the Daily Record:

Supporters say the shortened distance would help hunters better cull deer that become less accessible as they gravitate toward residential areas, which would cut down the number of deer-car accidents and stop deer from ruining habitats where they graze.

Opponents say the change would bring hunters too close to where families live and would increase the potential for danger. …

The current 450-foot buffer would remain for hunters with shotguns, and bow hunters still would need to keep 450 feet from school playgrounds, plus shoot arrows only downward from trees, hills or other elevated positions, according to the legislation.

This issue isn’t isolated to New Jersey. As more and more localities look at urban/suburban hunting, the question of safety zones and how close is too close invariably comes up. What are your thoughts on this issue?