Vermont's Wildlife Debate Heats Up as Fall Approaches
Vermont's Wildlife Debate Heats Up as Fall Approaches
Vermont’s wildlife management debate is about to reignite.
*A Note about my hunting journey
Though I grew up in Vermont, I arrived at hunting and fishing as an adult. I fished a little as a kid, but hunting and guns were not part of my upbringing. At age 27, I bought my first gun (Mossberg Chuckster 22 Mag) for the sole purpose of dispatching our flock of grass-raised farm animals. Two years later, I purchased a proper hunting gun and have continued on a steady trajectory of hunting and fishing as much as possible in the wild places I can justify and afford going to.
My first deer didn’t come easy.
After I read Larry Benoit’s How to Bag the Biggest Buck of Your Life and hung out with some trackers, I harvested my first deer in 2016, seven years after I started hunting.
A Vocal Minority
I seek to minimize the suffering of all wildlife, whether hunting or catching mice in the kitchen cupboard. This past winter, Vermont experienced a contested debate in the legislature about proposed changes to fish and game laws detailed in Senate Bill 258. Spearheading the effort was Protect Our Wildlife (POW). This wildlife advocacy group helped educate the public and State leadership about contemporary trapping practices and hunting techniques that POW believes are outdated. Across the country, similar practices face opposition from like-minded groups.
In Vermont, fierce opposition prevented the reforms from taking hold. Proposed changes could have altered how wildlife rules are made (and who makes them) and the specific tactics allowed in these pursuits.
POW seeks to “make Vermont a more humane place for wildlife” and create a representative governance structure for managing the state’s wildlife, replacing the current one that prioritizes the viewpoints exclusively of hunters, trappers, and people who fish.
I agree with some of this organization’s sentiments and even some of the changes they proposed last winter. For example, I’m not a big fan of hunting coyotes over bait or using hounds to chase them down (unless necessary to control a nuisance population). Anachronistic hunting practices still exist in some states, such as “killing contests,” which promote wanton waste. I do not support these activities, but I support hunting coyotes in the spirit of fair chase.
Another instance where I agree with POW is that fish and wildlife governance should represent the people who live in the state. Currently, the governor-appointed Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board has one member from each of VT’s 14 counties; this isn’t statistically representative. Essex County (population 6,000) and Chittenden County (population 170,000) both have equal voice (one vote) on the current Board. Since the Governor appoints Board members, members will likely parrot the political views of whoever happens to be governor at the time of appointment. The structure of the new Board proposed in S.258 may have been an improvement: members would be appointed by the state legislature and by the wildlife commissioner. The legislature represents the state’s people, while the commissioner represents whatever political party sits in the governor’s office. So, in theory, this was a step in the right direction.
However, other nuances of S.258’s changes to the Board made it unpalatable. It sought to make the Board “advisory.” It would contain a mixture of consumptive and non-consumptive viewpoints. The Board would suggest changes to the Fish and Wildlife Department instead of having authority itself. This new arrangement would deviate from the current arrangement in which the Board makes decisions, consulting with, and getting significant input from, Fish and Wildlife Department experts.
However, the biggest problem with S.258 was its championing by a group representing a vocal minority. They claimed to want to make the Board more representative, with some members representing exclusively non-consumptive uses. Why would having their interests present result in representative governance? What evidence, other than their own opinion, indicates that having these voices would represent the people of the state? And who’s to say these interests aren’t already present (it is possible to be a hunter and a bird-watcher)?
Being the loudest voice in the room doesn’t make you right.
Speculation grew that this bill was a way for groups like POW to get Board members who are friendly to their cause appointed and subsequently steer Vermont down a path that limits Vermonter’s ability to hunt and trap. Perhaps there’s some conspiratorial sentiment to this, but it speaks to the fact that Vermonters value their right to hunt and are fiercely opposed to proposed changes that threaten this. Evidence indicates that trapping, which is far more volatile of an issue than hunting, is supported by most people in Vermont.
The Necessity of Hunting
Humans used to hunt for food, but now we also hunt because it’s a necessary conservation tool. Once we eliminated apex predators and paved, built, and subdivided the countryside, hunting emerged as one of many tools to keep species like deer in check. If we take a hands-off approach, deer overgraze forests and fields, eventually starving themselves by eating everything within each. In the absence of wolves, hunters are used to reduce the population to a sustainable number.
The percentage of American hunters has gradually declined for nearly four decades, yet the need for hunting remains. Where few hunters exist, or hunting is banned, deer and bears become nuisance species, causing property damage and vehicular accidents. In addition to the ecological service hunters provide, they fund millions of dollars in conservation efforts through license and ammunition sales.
I Care, Therefore I Hunt
The caricature of hunters as ignorant is antiquated; most hunters are informed and passionate conservationists committed to the ethical treatment of animals. The few bad apples highlighted by anti-hunting groups are not representative. Take, for example, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. This non-profit advocacy group champions access to public lands, leading efforts across the country to improve habitat; you’d be hard-pressed to find a more passionate or knowledgeable organization that cares more about the environment, wildlife, and fair chase than this group.
Efforts to curtail or eliminate hunter’s rights will likely increase in prevalence and sophistication nationwide. If you’re not a hunter already, there’s one thing you can do to be part of this dialogue in a truly engaged manner: start hunting.
I grew up in an anti-hunting and anti-gun household. But I’m also open-minded. Instead of remaining entrenched in my anti-gun views, I gradually realized that as a conservationist, one of the best things I could do was become a hunter. Initially, this was because it seemed necessary to manage wildlife; humans needed to do the job without an apex predator around to keep deer populations in check.
Yet, when I began hunting in my late twenties, this activity unexpectedly transformed my worldview. I anticipate that my experience is representative of anyone who gives it a try.
A new skill: Hunting is tactile and based on a material reality. Anti-gun or afraid of guns? Take up archery. You may enjoy the thrill of the chase and you’ll also gain an awareness of the multitude of factors that affect “the chase.”
Outdoor time: Being in nature allows you to exercise functionally by hiking, walking, and scouting.
Environmental awareness: Learn about environmental considerations, such as invasive species, development, sprawl, forest defragmentation, soil conditions, and climate change. Any hunter worth their salt will be knowledgeable about most, if not all, of these topics. The majority of places need more hunters to fulfill conservation goals.
Social connection: People associate hunters with conservative values, but that’s an over-generalization. I lean slightly to the left politically, as do my hunting buddies. Through hunting, I’ve learned about other people's views. When our neighbors are anonymous, and our social fabric is digital, talking with other hunters creates social bonds with people who may disagree with you. You learn from them and vice versa.
Healthy food: Wild meat is lean, sustainably raised, and organic.
Culinary buy-in: If you’ve struggled with caring about cooking, then harvesting a deer and learning to cook venison will change that. I harvested my first deer in the middle of December on a frosty ridge in Vermont. Reminiscing about the hunt, a group of friends and I fried up the tenderloins of that deer in a tablespoon of olive oil with some salt and pepper. My tastebuds encountered a multitude of flavors on that first bite; I swear I could taste the spruce needles of that Green Mountain ridge.
When you become a hunter, you establish firm connections to the environment, the species you’re hunting, the food you eat, the people around you, and yourself—connections missing for many Americans.
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Great piece, Jesse. I think a lot of the misguided efforts to “reform” hunting come from a disconnect with nature. And I think this is true with what’s going on in Vermont, with the battles over predator reintroduction and management out West and in California, and even with invasive species management of all types. Many people — most people — simply do not spend enough time thinking about how the biota functions when they are not part of it — and that shows in how they want to manage it.
This goes on both sides, too. It’s equally as “non-scientific” to want to ban hunting deer because fawns are cute as it is to want to kill every wolf because they’re ruthless murderers. Yes, fawns are cute — but in many Eastern states, deer are overpopulated and are the number one cause of wildlife injuries. Yes, wolves kill prey animals; but in many Western states prey numbers are at historic highs and causing landscape and ecosystem degradation. When your only context for nature is through the lens in which you spend your time — whether that be only as a hunter, only as a hiker, only as a bird watcher, only as a animal rights activist — you can only have a warped perspective of the overall system. We need to, as Aldo Leopold writes, “think like a mountain” and think broadly and over the longer terms.
(I realize the issue out west is more complicated than that; I’m overly simplifying. There’s a dynamic between ranchers and wolves, hunters and wolves, non-residents and wolves that is shaped by hundreds of years of interactions. And we also have to keep in mind that it’s human-driven change which is driving the changing landscape and population changes. Way too much for one comment, typed on my phone!)
I appreciate you advocating for a balanced approach. No one user group is absolutely right and no one user group has absolute dominion over what happens to our fish and game — a shared and public resource, something which is distinctly unique to our American psyche (and something which we’ve used and abused wantonly throughout our collective history).
There’s so much nuance to this, it’s absolutely imperative to look at it with a holistic view. I’d never profess to be an expert on this, but a few things I’ve read recently which I think have helped me appreciate the wider picture:
- Most of Dan Flores’s work, but specifically American Serengeti and Wild New World
- The works of Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac) and Walter Stegner (The Sound of Mountain Water)
- The Fair Chase by Philip Dray
- and, tangentially, much of Wendell Berry’s writing on the need to connect with the land.
Good thoughts. This is a tactic being used elsewhere around the country in places like Washington State- groups opposed to hunting and fishing wanting a say in how wildlife is managed with the ultimate goal of curtailing hunting and fishing rights. These misguided efforts do not have the best interests of wildlife at heart, nor do they bring any mechanism to accomplish their goals other than piggybacking off the funds provided by sportsmen through license sales and excise taxes on sporting goods. Thanks for banging your gong about this. These groups succeeding will be a disaster for wildlife management in the US.