Ktulu
09-09-2003, 11:05 AM
Michigan bill would be wasteful cost to birds, environment
September 9, 2003
BY WAYNE PACELLE
Michigan has since 1905 barred hunters from shooting mourning doves for target practice. Many things have changed over 98 years, but this policy has not, and neither has the reason behind it: Shooting doves is wasteful, unsporting and inhumane.
State legislators have heard many appeals through the years to authorize dove hunting, but have always rejected them. Many legislators rightly recognized that there is no adequate justification for shooting a harmless bird so small that its body yields but an ounce or two of meat. But that has not deterred state Rep. Susan Tabor, R-Delta Township, from again introducing a bill, HB 5029, to establish a season.
Typically, if someone wants to take the life of an animal, he or she tries to argue that the creature is a pest: the deer overpopulate, the raccoons spread rabies, the gophers dig up crops, and so on. The task of killing is thus made to seem less selfish and more socially beneficial if the critters have cost us some dough or made life a little more dangerous or inconvenient.
But it's hard to turn the gentle dove into a marauding pterodactyl. They don't possess a blood-curdling screech, but sound off with a soft coo. Doves don't overpopulate; they regulate their own numbers without any help from us, and have done so in Michigan for nearly a century. They don't destroy crops; they are ground-feeding birds that help farmers by eating weed seeds. They don't eat your ornamental shrubs. In fact, they leave your Christmas ornaments alone, too. There are no reports of doves tearing down or even tangling outside ornaments and lights and ruining the holidays for the kids.
They don't carry or spread avian influenza, monkey pox, chronic wasting disease, or any other infectious scourge. They don't tip over trash cans, although they have been known to perch on them from time to time. They don't even leave droppings on golf courses as some other birds do, thereby mercifully keeping the powerful "putt lobby" out of this fracas.
It wasn't doves that attacked Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film "The Birds." Doves are not well-known in the movies or on television, except for their end-of-episode flights on television's former hit "Touched by an Angel." They are commonly recognized, however, as the bird of peace in that perennial best-seller known as the Bible, in which we are advised to be as "wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
Clearly, some hunters would take pleasure in shooting doves. But it's not as if hunters can't already take aim at a wide range of other birds. There are, of course, many sizes and species of geese and all the dabbling and diving ducks. There are the upland birds such as pheasant, partridge and grouse. Then there are turkeys and a flock of others from coots and other rails to snipe and woodcock. It's enough avian diversity to keep any bird hunter busy with both barrels ablaze.
While there are no particularly good reasons to hunt doves, there are plenty of reasons not to hunt them. Data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reveal a wounding rate in excess of 20 percent, which means that one in every four or five birds shot is not retrieved.
Dove shooting also translates into the discharge of mounds of lead shot, which pollutes our environment and poisons other wildlife. In fact, the lead shot that hunters discharge on a day of gunning far outweighs the mass of the birds they kill.
What's more, a September hunting season is a prescription for orphaning young not yet weaned from their parents. And there's not much sport in shooting birds that tens of thousands of Michiganders feed and watch and accustom to a human presence.
But to oppose this tired idea of dove hunting, all you really have to do is look out your window. There, you may see a dove outside your home and hear its gentle call. A bird simply living its life, walking around or flying about to gather seeds and other foods to survive.
To paraphrase Plutarch: Though the boys throw stones in sport, the doves do not die in sport, but in earnest. It's a lesson to pass on to child and adult alike.
WAYNE PACELLE is senior vice president for the Humane Society of the United States. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit, MI 48226.
http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/edoves9_20030909.htm
September 9, 2003
BY WAYNE PACELLE
Michigan has since 1905 barred hunters from shooting mourning doves for target practice. Many things have changed over 98 years, but this policy has not, and neither has the reason behind it: Shooting doves is wasteful, unsporting and inhumane.
State legislators have heard many appeals through the years to authorize dove hunting, but have always rejected them. Many legislators rightly recognized that there is no adequate justification for shooting a harmless bird so small that its body yields but an ounce or two of meat. But that has not deterred state Rep. Susan Tabor, R-Delta Township, from again introducing a bill, HB 5029, to establish a season.
Typically, if someone wants to take the life of an animal, he or she tries to argue that the creature is a pest: the deer overpopulate, the raccoons spread rabies, the gophers dig up crops, and so on. The task of killing is thus made to seem less selfish and more socially beneficial if the critters have cost us some dough or made life a little more dangerous or inconvenient.
But it's hard to turn the gentle dove into a marauding pterodactyl. They don't possess a blood-curdling screech, but sound off with a soft coo. Doves don't overpopulate; they regulate their own numbers without any help from us, and have done so in Michigan for nearly a century. They don't destroy crops; they are ground-feeding birds that help farmers by eating weed seeds. They don't eat your ornamental shrubs. In fact, they leave your Christmas ornaments alone, too. There are no reports of doves tearing down or even tangling outside ornaments and lights and ruining the holidays for the kids.
They don't carry or spread avian influenza, monkey pox, chronic wasting disease, or any other infectious scourge. They don't tip over trash cans, although they have been known to perch on them from time to time. They don't even leave droppings on golf courses as some other birds do, thereby mercifully keeping the powerful "putt lobby" out of this fracas.
It wasn't doves that attacked Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film "The Birds." Doves are not well-known in the movies or on television, except for their end-of-episode flights on television's former hit "Touched by an Angel." They are commonly recognized, however, as the bird of peace in that perennial best-seller known as the Bible, in which we are advised to be as "wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
Clearly, some hunters would take pleasure in shooting doves. But it's not as if hunters can't already take aim at a wide range of other birds. There are, of course, many sizes and species of geese and all the dabbling and diving ducks. There are the upland birds such as pheasant, partridge and grouse. Then there are turkeys and a flock of others from coots and other rails to snipe and woodcock. It's enough avian diversity to keep any bird hunter busy with both barrels ablaze.
While there are no particularly good reasons to hunt doves, there are plenty of reasons not to hunt them. Data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reveal a wounding rate in excess of 20 percent, which means that one in every four or five birds shot is not retrieved.
Dove shooting also translates into the discharge of mounds of lead shot, which pollutes our environment and poisons other wildlife. In fact, the lead shot that hunters discharge on a day of gunning far outweighs the mass of the birds they kill.
What's more, a September hunting season is a prescription for orphaning young not yet weaned from their parents. And there's not much sport in shooting birds that tens of thousands of Michiganders feed and watch and accustom to a human presence.
But to oppose this tired idea of dove hunting, all you really have to do is look out your window. There, you may see a dove outside your home and hear its gentle call. A bird simply living its life, walking around or flying about to gather seeds and other foods to survive.
To paraphrase Plutarch: Though the boys throw stones in sport, the doves do not die in sport, but in earnest. It's a lesson to pass on to child and adult alike.
WAYNE PACELLE is senior vice president for the Humane Society of the United States. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit, MI 48226.
http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/edoves9_20030909.htm