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What the Heck Is Ethical Sportsman Behavior?

By Harry Vanderweide, Reprinted from The Maine Sportsman Magazine

The following question may sound facetious, but is posed earnestly.

Why is it ethical to fish for trout with bait, but not okay to hunt deer with bait?

Let me push what little credibility I possess even further and ask this: If you believe it’s ethical to fish for stocked trout, do you also believe it’s okay to hunt for stocked deer?

I suspect that if you are at all thoughtful questions like the two above can take years to answer to your own satisfaction. What got me started on this topic is the ongoing campaign by the Humane Society of the United States HSUS) and their local allies to outlaw bear hunting over bait in Maine.

I suspect that a lot of fellow hunters are going to end up as unwitting accomplices of the HSUS in this clearly anti-hunting campaign. The reason is that many of these hunters don’t hunt bears, have never hunted over bait and haven’t asked themselves questions similar to those posed above.

There are those who would have you believe hunting ethics are a matter of black and white, that something is either right or wrong. But even a cursory look at how we fish shows that isn’t true. Anyone can understand that, generally speaking, fishing with bait is ethical, but sometimes, in some places, it is illegal. This happens in places where fish populations have been over-fished or where we’d like them to grow larger than they are able to under rules that allow fishing with bait. In such places we create laws that outlaw fishing with bait.

Passing such a law doesn’t make fishing with bait unethical.  Rather it is breaking the law that prohibits fishing with bait that is unethical. In other words, when it comes to ethical fishing, the determining factor is clearly the situation, not the action itself.

Trout Are Like Deer?

Let’s say a no bait law has protected a pond for a long time. As a result, the trout are stunted because of over-population. The biologists decide we need to reduce that population and the no bait regulation is dropped to allow the catching of more fish. Not only is bait fishing again ethical, but it is probably more ethical than fishing with lures or flies since restoring a sustainable number of good-sized fish is the goal and fishing with bait is generally more effective than fishing with lures. (Yes, I know that at times lures and flies can out-fish bait.)

Perhaps I’ve got you scratching your head now, asking what the heck has that got to do with hunting deer over bait?

The answer is that the parallels are exact. Maine’s decision to ban hunting deer over bait has nothing to do with ethics per se.  Rather, it is an attempt to keep the deer herd from being over-hunted, just as no bait laws are an attempt to keep trout from being over-fished.

The parallel continues. Hunting deer over bait is not, in itself, unethical. What is unethical is breaking the law that prohibits hunting over bait. Change the law and shooting deer over bait becomes ethical.  Most hunters in this country consider hunting deer over bait ethical since it is legal in most states. To get a feeling for how popular deer baiting is in the rest of the country, check the current Bass Pro Shops catalog with 12 pages devoted to selling deer feeders and deer feed. Do you believe all the people buying these products that are legal to use where they hunt are unethical?

What’s Too Easy?

There are those who will counter, “No way. Hunting deer over bait makes it too easy.” It would be just as correct to claim that fishing with bait is too easy. All you need to do is put bait on a hook, throw the hook in the water and wait for a fish to come along and swallow it. What could be easier than that? So why isn’t such easy fishing unethical?

Based on personal experience (hunting deer in places where hunting them over bait is legal) I’d say that if you believe hunting deer over bait is too easy, you haven’t done enough of it.

Of course, whether something is “too easy” is a highly subjective topic and once again depends on the situation.

Let’s say you walk into the woods a short distance, sit down on a stump and a 10-point buck immediately wanders by at 20 yards looking the other way as you bring up your rifle and shoot it dead in its tracks.  Was your hunt was too easy because you had such incredible luck? Does your good luck make it unethical for you to have shot that deer? I doubt you’d think so if it actually happened.

What’s Too Hard?

Let’s go to the other end of the spectrum. You’ve been sitting on a stump on a power line on a miserably cold and rainy day for 10 hours without seeing anything.  Suddenly a buck runs out onto the power line 400 yards away, going flat out. You raise your rifle, aim a over the deer’s back and shoot.. The bullet hits and the buck drops dead in its tracks.

Was that an ethical shot? After all, you waited and suffered a long time in the cold and rain. Then you made a nearly impossible shot. It was really hard.

Despite the time you put in, withstanding bad weather and making an extremely hard shot, most knowledgeable hunters would call what you did unethical. Chances of a clean kill in such a situation are vanishingly small. There is nearly universal agreement that long-range shots at running deer are far too risky to constitute ethical hunting behavior.

Of course, in both instances given above, what occurred was perfectly legal, therefore it is easy to argue that both are ethical.

Is Baiting Ethical?

All of which brings us to the present burning question, is it ethical to hunt bears over bait? (Or with dogs or traps for that matter.)

There is no rational argument that we need to stop baiting to prevent over-hunting of bears in Maine. There are no facts that support such a contention. Actually, on a rational basis, there’s every reason to continue baiting bears.

We have the largest bear population east of the Mississippi and it appears the population is growing. Unlike some states where bears aren’t hunted, there are relatively few negative bear/human interactions and bear attacks on people in Maine are almost non-existent. Without doubt this is because bears are hunted hard in this state, keeping them wary and shy. At the same time, bear hunting provides lots recreation for sportsman, supports a significant part of the state’s guiding industry and generates millions of dollars in economic activity, much of it from out of state sources.

So why would anyone mess with this success? The reason is simple.  Method.

There are a lot people, including altogether too many hunters, who believe baiting bears is too easy, therefore unethical.

Emotion Over Logic

Therein lies the real danger of the referendum on baiting bears. The average person, told that the majority of bears killed in Maine are shot over bait, will respond it’s wrong. Pressed to explain why it’s wrong they will give back a value judgement.  Arguing against a value judgement generally is a waste of time because there’s no logic involved.  You simply believe something is “too easy” or “unfair” and even “unsporting.”

If people were logical they would apply these same value judgements to other activities involving wildlife. For example, lobsters are trapped using bait. But other than the lunatic fringe, hardly anyone opposes using bait to catch lobsters, even though it would be simple enough to make a judgement that such methods are “too easy” or “unfair.’

People, including hunters, react emotionally, rather than logically, to wildlife and have no problem seeing a large mammal, such as a bear, much differently than they see non-mammals such as lobster or fish.

That’s what makes the bear baiting referendum so dangerous.  You can’t successfully argue against it on a logical basis. This was illustrated early on when a spokesman for HSUS claimed that baiting bears is “cruel.” He didn’t explain how baiting bears, which is nothing more than feeding them, is “cruel.” He didn’t need to. All he needed to do is level the charge to a sympathetic audience and let those defending bear baiting try and explain why baiting isn’t cruel. It’s much harder to disprove negatives; especially those based emotion, and especially those involving such elusive terms as cruelty.

It’s effective strategy and wastes the energy of the defenders as they answer claims that are spurious, rather than deal with real issues.

Here’s a real issue. The referendum about hunting bears over bait has nothing to do with ethics, fairness or cruelty. What it has to do with as the never-ending campaign by the animal rightists to end all hunting and that includes fishing. They have chosen to attack bear hunting because they know it is vulnerable. The HSUS knows they face an easy win in Maine by appealing to emotion and ignoring facts. They are here to move their campaign to end all hunting forward another step. Claims to the contrary are lies.

Sportsmen, regardless of whether they hunt, or how they feel about hunting bears over bait, need to keep this idea foremost. To do otherwise hands the anti-hunters yet another in a long chain of minor victories that inevitably ends all hunting, including fishing.