Mixing Hunting and Politics

Keith, if you've managed to get back online (he told me he was fixing something last weekend), you might enjoy this article from the Washington Monthly.

This hunt for a spot to hunt is increasingly a part of the sportsmen's pursuit today. In the terminology of those who follow the problem, "access" is the buzzword phrase. "When you ask hunters directly what their biggest concern is, out of 20-odd possible choices, land access is most often number one," says Mark Duda of Responsive Management

Coming from a political rag, the article has its own slant (an opportunity for progressives, of course!), but not being a hunter myself, I learned a few things from it. There is quite a little storm brewing over paying for access, and the way it runs counter to hunting tradition here in the US.

Tony Dean, a sort of Walter Cronkite of Midwestern sportsmen, who mixes walleye recipes with political commentary on the popular "Tony Dean Outdoors" show, says he fears a day when hunting and outdoor recreation become pastimes of the elite, something only the well-to-do can afford to enjoy. "Our forefathers left a European system in which wildlife and land belonged only to landowners," Dean told me. "We don't want to go back to being like the Europeans."

Check it out.