Hunting: Our heritage, our Montana

As long as cows and pigs are killed in slaughterhouses to put food on plates in American kitchens, anti-hunting arguments from animal-rights advocates will ring with the distinctive hollow sound of hypocrisy.

If animal-rights advocates can first successfully abolish the beef and pork industries by winning over those who purchase conveniently wrapped cuts of meat at the local grocery store, then they can rightfully take aim at hunters.

Unlike most meat consumers, hunters can make the claim that they took personal responsibility for an animal, from the start of the hunt all the way to the freezer. And many can claim that there is a strong sense of spiritual awareness in that responsibility. But that may sound like mumbo-jumbo gibberish to those who oppose hunting.

So why don't we get down to brass tacks, and talk about the practical truths of hunters, the animals they hunt, and the state of Montana.

The fact is that all three are inexorably linked through a history that anti-hunters always fail to acknowledge. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is and always has been almost entirely funded by hunting and fishing license dollars.

As a result, all of the biologists and managers and wardens that are stewards over the state's wildlife resources have been there only because of hunters and anglers. There would be no studies, there would be no management, there would be no protections for Montana wildlife without hunters and anglers.

How would you discourage poaching without enforcement wardens? How would you understand or begin to take action against infectious wildlife diseases that have repeatedly threatened species such as bighorn sheep or elk, without biologists and wildlife epidemiologists?

How would you manage the conservation of dozens of non-game species? Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks devotes considerable resources to these critters, from the charismatic grizzly bear on down to the lowly spotted frog.

Montana hunters and anglers have been the state's single greatest influence in the purchase or protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat. Most recently, it was Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks that brokered the conservation easements protecting 147,000 acres in the Thompson-Fisher drainages, and 1,800 acres in the Bull River drainage.

No doubt, anti-hunting activists would be quick to promote some type of tax to replace license purchases as the main source of revenue for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks so that the good work could continue.

But that would fail to properly account for, or respect, the legacy provided by Montana hunters and anglers.

It's all well and good to be an anti-hunter who enjoys bird watching, taking photographs or simply marveling at the presence of wild animals in their natural Montana habitats. But how much are you willing to pay for it?

The truth is, those who would like to do away with hunting will never be able to cover the equity invested by hunters in the wildlife resources that Montana now has. That's because the long list of benefits to fish and wildlife have been built by hunters and anglers over decades. The state of Montana has, over time, developed a contract with hunters, a contract so strong that we contend it would be defensible in court.

And that contract was ratified last year in the form of an amendment to the state Constitution. "The opportunity to harvest wild fish and wild game animals is a heritage that shall forever be preserved to the individual citizens of the state."

So be it.