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Canned hunts: sports afoul

By Walt Brasch - posted Thursday, 21 September 2006


Whatever “you can image” costs $70 a day for food and lodging, plus a kill fee and supplementary costs for skinning and mounting. Pay $595 and you can kill a Texas Dall ram, rocky mountain ram, or Corsican ram. Buffalo are at least $1,250. Elk bulls come for $2,000. And, just in case you have trouble killing one of the nation’s 30 million white-tailed deer - 1.6 million of them in Pennsylvania alone - during the bow, crossbow, muzzleloader, rifle, or shotgun seasons, just come to Tioga. For $1,000 “and up,” you can get that elusive buck, with a 10-point rack suitable for mounting in your very own trophy room in suburban America.

Tioga’s rates are at the lower end of the scale. At other preserves, prices for white-tailed deer, with trophy-sized racks, can be more than $5,000. The costs for some of the exotic “trophy”-class animals, usually found only in sub-Saharan Africa, are well over $15,000.

Tioga, like most preserves, guarantees a kill. The clients are told they “may hunt as long as you wish until you get what you wish”. No hunting licences are required, there are no limits, Sunday hunting is permitted, and “kills are usually made from 25 to 100 yards”. On this “farm”, prospective clients are told, “Wild goat and sheep with large horns are numerous. Hunting them is great sport for the hunter.” The rocky mountain ram, with “their big, sweeping, curled horns make a great trophy,” Of course, there are some restrictions: no one under the age of 10 is allowed to shoot.

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Heidi Prescott, undoubtedly feeling like a peace activist in a convention of army recruiters, was the only one at the House committee hearing who didn’t fish, hunt, or had close ties to the hunting industry. Prescott is senior vice-president of the Humane Society of the United States, which has a membership of 9.5 million, more than three times that of the National Rifle Association.

Prescott showed members of the committee news stories and a separate undercover videotape of canned hunts. Before the hearing, Michael Gee had told a local newspaper that animal rights groups “just try to bring up extreme cases to prove their point,” and use it as a “stepping stone” to ban hunting.

“If she says anything in that video is from Tioga, that’s a lie,” Pete Gee, Michael’s father, retorted to the undercover investigation by Emmy-winning investigative reporter Melanie Alnwick of WTTG-TV (Fox News), Washington, D.C.

The news story - but not the videotape of the brutal killing of a boar, probably at another game preserve in Pennsylvania - was filmed in early May 2006 at Tioga, according to Aaron Wische, WTTG’s executive producer for special projects.

Most “kills” on the “farms” are from animals bleeding out. Animals suffer minutes to hours, says Prescott. Canned hunting, says Prescott, “is about as sporting as shooting a puppy in pet store window.” Most sportsmen agree with her. The concept of the “fair chase” is embedded into hunter culture. The Boone & Crockett Club and the Pope and Young Club (bowhunters), two of the three primary organisations that rate trophy kills, refuse to accept applications from persons who bagged their “trophy” on a canned hunt. The Safari Club does allow persons to seek recognition, but only under limitations that most preserves can’t meet.

Members of the committee weren’t convinced that canned hunts need to be banned. Rep. Tina Puckett (R-Towanda) told a reporter before the hearing she believed banning the canned hunt “could be the beginning of an attempt to say ‘no preserve hunting’, which then leads to no hunting”. She said she wouldn’t favour the bill “because of those down-the-road concerns”. Rep. Thomas Corrigan (D-Bucks County) says he submitted the bill, which carries 38 cosponsors, for consideration because canned hunts are “unsporting, cruel, and tarnish the image of all hunters”.

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The House committee kept throwing pointed questions to Prescott; she adeptly batted them back.

The bill that prohibits canned hunting would also be the first step to eliminating all hunting. Not so, said Prescott. Of the 22 states that already ban such practices, “the hunting culture is still strong”. She pointed to Montana, which has one of the nation’s strongest hunting cultures. In 2000, following a hunter-led initiative, it became the first state to ban canned hunts, reinforcing the values that true sportsmen believe in fair chase.

The state’s 900 deer and elk farms would be banned. The bill specifically excludes deer, elk, and all other cervidae.

The bill would prohibit farmers or butchers from killing livestock for food. “No judge in his right mind would interpret it that way,” retorted Prescott, who said the Humane Society “would be happy to work with representatives to amend it if members were truly concerned about it”.

Ralph Saggiomo, according to his official biography published by the Governor’s Advisory Council for Hunting, Fishing & Conservation, has a “love for the outdoors,” and has “spent the greater part of his life enjoying the outdoors and has been able to pass his passion on to all of his children, who have become successful hunters, fishermen, and trappers. His grandchildren are now carrying on the tradition, which his father and grandfather passed on to him.”

Although still active in the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania, if Saggiomo was a sportsman, he wouldn’t have shot a domesticated animal that was lured into his sights and had no way to escape. If he truly understood the beauty and grandeur of the outdoors, he would have allowed animals to live their lives without the intrusion of people who kill not for food or clothing but because their hormones are infused with the ecstasy they get from the kill and the resultant “trophy,” which he says now hangs in his den.

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About the Author

Walter Brasch is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. He is an award-winning syndicated columnist, and author of 16 books. Dr. Brasch's current books are Unacceptable: The Federal Government’s Response to Hurricane Katrina; Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture; and Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (Nov. 2007) You may contact him at brasch@bloomu.edu.

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