Scoring at the Ballot Box
Small ball: Death by 1,000 cuts
Animal-rights organizations don’t try
to score a touchdown on every play.
Instead, they’re content to spread the
field, use the clock to their advantage
and pick up first downs; a small advance
on the East coast and a bigger play on
the West coast eventually add up to a
winning strategy and advancing their
agenda by preying on the ignorance of
urban voters and sportsmen’s apathy.
As urban population centers boom, animal-rights organizations have used
a successful game plan that keys on fundraising, misinformation, apathy
of sportsmen and manipulation of the initiative process to attack hunting,
trapping and other rural activities. To stop the offensive attack, sportsmen
need to understand their strategy, unify as a team and prepare for every play.
Eliminating mountain lion or bear hunting
with bait, hounds or traps in one state
sets a precedent to stop the practice in
other states. By dividing sportsmen, their
offense picks up one small victory and
then another before going for all three
in another state or returning to original
states to take practices not covered in
their first offensive attack. Urbanization,
time and money are on their side.
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Misrepresentation:
Funding the Movement
Animal-rights organizations, such as
the Humane Society of the United
States and the American Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, represent themselves as
animal-welfare warriors interested
only in saving abandoned or abused
puppies and kittens.
Bilking hundreds of millions of
dollars annually from the wellintentioned public with the ploy,
they then fund legislative-lobbying
efforts and ballot-box campaigns to
end hunting, trapping, ranching and
agriculture pursuits.
2004 2014
1996
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1994
1996
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1990
Divide & Conquer
Instead, they make runs at smaller
players and force them to bear the
brunt of their offense. Trappers,
houndsmen and bait hunters are
portrayed as unsporting – a myth
even some hunters propagate.
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1992
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Rarely do you see a direct play to
stop hunting for popular species
and methods. Animal-rights groups
know the prolonged game plan and
required funding to sway the vote
would make them underdogs.
1996
Mountain Lions: The Next Wave
Quiet on the big-cat front since
the mid-90s, HSUS is laying the
groundwork for an offensive play
in five states. Montana, Idaho,
Colorado, Utah and Arizona, states
that all have an initiative process,
were highlighted in propaganda by
HSUS as the five “deadliest” for lions.
1996: Fighting a Mult-Front Offensive
With approximately a $150 million average yearly budget,
HSUS can afford to self-fund ballot-box campaigns while
sportsmen must cobble together grassroots support. In
1996, HSUS simultaneously pushed bear initiatives in four
states. At $2-5 million per campaign, an issue is easily
lost due to the inability to purchase PR airtime.
2008
2004
Map Legend
With sportsmen divided, animalrights cheerleaders chant emotional
rhetoric for the media and crowds of
non-hunting voters.
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SPORTSMEN’S MONTHLY
May | 2016
1996
Mountain Lion Initiatives
Black Bear Initiatives
Rejected Initiatives
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Potential Initiative
Best Defense:
teamwork & Preparation
Anticipating exactly when, where and how the
animal-rights movement will attack hunting,
fishing and trapping is tricky. We often know
which states or court rulings they’ll target, but
when exactly they’ll make a play and on what
grounds is often ambiguous. To counter their
offensive tactics, sportsmen need to:
Work as a team: An attack on trapping,
hounding or bait hunting is an attack on
general hunting, including deer hunting –
don’t let their offensive play of division by
method of take or species slowly conquer all
of us. Defend methods of take at the ballot
box even if you don’t participate in them.
Collect funding now: Sportsmen in every
state need to create a fund now for the
impending end-around play coming from
HSUS and other groups in the future.
May | 2016
SPORTSMEN’S MONTHLY
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