Anti-Hunting Group With Misleading Name Is Circulating Petition In North Dakota
From the NRA (via email):
North Dakota sportsmen should be aware that a group cleverly calling itself North Dakota Hunters for Fair Chase is circulating petitions for signatures to place an anti-hunting initiative on the 2008 General Election ballot. Make sure that you and your family and friends do not contribute to this misleading, anti-freedom effort by signing these petitions!
This initiative effort is supported by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), a Washington D.C.-based lobbying organization that spends $120 million a year in an effort to end all hunting and animal agriculture in the United States. Here are just a few quotes from Wayne Pacelle who serves as President of HSUS:
“If we could shut down all sport hunting in a moment, we would.” – as quoted by the Associated Press in Impassioned Agitator
“Our goal is to get sport hunting in the same category as cock fighting and dog fighting. Our opponents say hunting is a tradition. We say traditions can change.” – Bozeman Daily Chronicle
“We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States. We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state.” – quoted from a first hand account of a speech to an outdoor ethics conference in Florence, South Carolina in the magazine Full Cry
The proposed initiative would ban private big game hunting preserves in North Dakota, a long-standing tradition in the state. This violates basic American principles of private property rights and sportsmen deciding for themselves how and where to hunt. Hunting ethics should be decided by each individual hunter, not by politically-motivated laws supported by radical animal “rights” interest groups.
Voters beware.
There was an effort to put this measure on the ballot in the last election and it lost. I don’t expect it to fair any better this time around.
Nor should it. Seems to me that if private property owners want to restrict hunting access on their property, and/or sell access to others, that’s their right.
