Ghost Article: Issue

 This piece was prepared under the byline of Jerry Foust, vice president of Winchester Ammunition. It makes a persuasive case for action which will be in the best interests of both the readers and his company. The advertorial ran in Range & Field magazine, a national shooting-sports publication. 

Don't Fence Me Out, by Jerry Foust

Fortunately, you can usually find a place to hunt if you ask in the right places.  And a few good words may be all it takes to keep a place to hunt for yourself, your children, and your grandkids.

State resource are your best first line of information on places to hunt and shoot.  If you haven’t gotten to know the local office of your DNR, you might be pleasantly surprised at just how friendly and helpful they can be.  But it’s no mystery; these people got into their line of work because they love the outdoors.  You both naturally have something in common.

Joining a hunt club might instantly put you in touch with the club’s private shooting preserve.  But even if a club has only a range and a meeting facility, it still might organize hunts on nearby private lands, or be able to refer you to preserves and public lands in your area.

Similarly, national hunting organizations such as Ducks Unlimited, Quail Unlimited, and the National Wild Turkey Federation can be good sources of information on places to hunt, particularly if you’re active in local chapters.  Such participation also helps support worthwhile causes, and makes you a countable constituent when legislators are wondering just how important hunting is to the folks they represent.

Help Create Support

This starts with letting your lawmakers know that you’re a hunter.  Express your opinion.  If an area is being proposed as a hunting preserve, call and write your lawmakers in support.  Write thank-you notes to lawmakers who are friends of hunting; it’s very satisfying to congratulate people on jobs well done.

Look for other ways to help.  In some states, the state income tax form has a box you can check to designate a portion of your tax dollars for natural resources.  Check the box -- and ask everyone you know to do the same.

Speak Out

Last autumn, the people of Arizona not only defeated, but stamped into oblivion Proposition 200, an initiative which theoretically could have brought hunting and fishing to a halt in that state.  That defeat -- and the national attention it received -- is a credit to the people who spoke up, got the word out, and rallied their neighbors to vote in favor of a right which we all too often take for granted.

Sportsmen and sportswomen are typically low-profile people who’d rather walk the woods with a few friends than go searching for a TV crew.  All in all, that’s one of their more admirable qualities.  But there’s such a thing as being too quiet.  If you’re a hunter, buying a hunting license is not good enough; you also need to register to vote.

Set a Great Example

I learned early on that there are simple things you can do which will have profound influences on how people feel about you and your sport.  Closing gates behind you, being careful about early morning noise, dropping off a pair of dressed birds or some venison steaks at the home of the people who were nice enough to let you hunt their land -- the impressions these simple courtesies make can last a lifetime.

On a larger scale, be too nice to be hated -- and too nice to hate.  Every community has its anti-hinting contingent, yet few people realize the environmental, social or economic impact of our sport.

In an award-winning article entitled  "A Bang That’s Worth a Ten Billion Bucks"  (Fortune Magazine, March 9, 1992), Alan Farnham wrote: "Hunting?  There’s no sport more incorrect, politically.  Yet, 17 million Americans love to spend their money on it."

You would be hard-pressed to find a person in this country who does not want wild creatures to have a place in which to be wild and free.  At the same time, there is a practical streak in most Americans which chafes at the thought of good land being used for nothing.  Hinters have saved and nurtured more wild species and their habitats than any other group on earth.  If you can demonstrate this, in a calm and non-didactic way, to people who do not realize it; if you can show that you care as much for wild things as they do -- you may not turn that person into a hunter, but you might make them a friend of the sport.  And doing that helps to guarantee that there will always be hunters, and game, and places to hunt.