OPINION/COMMENTARY

Threats to Hunting

Today the United States, more than any other nation, displays a 200-year record in this regard in the history of man. Where else have common men been able to own and sell and trade guns and traps freely? Where else has a nation proclaimed that fish and wildlife belonged to ALL the people? Where else could the sons and daughters of factory workers get permission from neighbors to trap furbearers to sell for cash to make fine garments for others? Where else can a taxi-driver put in for an elk permit and get one before a Wall Street stockbroker? Where else are their government agencies working to assure a diverse fish and wildlife community that provides for birdwatchers as well as providing venison steaks and wild roasting ducks for everyone? The answer to all of these things together is nowhere else. Think of what is arrayed against us. National organizations that vow to eliminate not only hunting, fishing, and trapping but also animal ownership, animal use, logging, ranching, farming, guns, and even the concept of private property. Federal and (increasingly) State agencies bent on controlling all property and human activities. Just last night a California lady talked to me in tears about an isolated rural friend in the Mojave Preserve who is being harassed and driven off her property by a National Park Service using the despicable tactics of Nazi thugs. There is an international community that both fears and envies our freedoms and strength and wants to drag us down to their levels of socialism where hunting, guns, and property are only dispensed by the State to the powerful....