The Ten Worst Hunting Ideas

September 20, 2007

	©Corbis
	The Safari Club's "big five" includes lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards and rhinoceros.

There have always been bad ideas in hunting, but in recent years some hunters have come up with inarguably the worst ideas ever. Whether they are for the extremely lazy hunter, or are incredibly unfair, unsportsmanlike or excessive, these are some recent ideas that simply do not belong in a humane society.

Internet Hunting

Likely the laziest of all hunting practices, the idea for Internet hunting sprang up at a canned hunting ranch in Texas. The scenario was: the prospective web "hunter" signs up through a website, pays a fee for use and a deposit for the animal that he or she wishes to kill. The animal purchased is lured to a feeding station within range of the rifle, and when the target approaches the food, the Internet hunter uses the mouse to line the animal up in the on-screen crosshairs. A click of the mouse fires the rifle. Thankfully, this idea was shot down before it got started, and is now banned in 34 states, including Texas.

SCI Grand Slam

Safari Club International is a trophy hunting club whose members compete for the biggest trophy collections and shoot as many species as possible, including rare and endangered species. SCI gives out trophies for trophies and not only encourages, but rewards individuals who kill all they can kill. Awards are given for killing animals in specific categories, and the hunter's name and score are printed in a macabre record book. SCI offers more than 40 awards categories, including "Grand Slams" of bears, cats and the "Big 5." To complete all the award categories, the hunter is required to kill hundreds of animals.

Contest Kills

Contestants throw some money into the pot, set up a bench equipped with a rapid-fire, long-range scoped rifle and relax as they fire lead rounds into hundreds of unsuspecting prairie dogs. An ecosystem might depend on this keystone species, but who wants to hunt or search for animals, when prairie dog shooters can sit in one spot all day and win some money flipping prairie dogs into the air?

A favorite during killing contests, hunters lure predators such as coyotes into rifle range by using electronic calls. Some of these calls sound like birds or a rabbit in distress, or even a fellow coyote.  No contemplating nature or hard treks through the woods for these hunters—just pull the truck to the side of the road and try out one of the hundred of sounds downloaded the night before from the PC. Then when the wily one emerges from the tree line, all the participant must do is take aim with his long-range, scope-mounted rifle. 

Aerial Gunning

Who wants to go to the trouble of finding animals on foot, or even with a vehicle? Aerial gunning involves shooting animals, often coyotes, wolves, foxes and feral hogs, from a low-flying aircraft. The hunter flies above the animals, shoots them from the air, then lands to recover the dead or dying animals. Tens of thousands of animals are killed in this manner by USDA Wildlife Services each year at a considerable cost to taxpayers, despite study after study showing this indiscriminate killing to have no beneficial effect to other species or ranchers.

Polar Bear Trophies

The Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972 to protect marine mammals.  In 1994, trophy hunters successfully lobbied Congress to tear a hole in the MMPA and exempt polar bears from this protection so that the animals could be hunted in Canada and brought back to the United States as trophies. As climate change continues to heat up the arctic and the bear's habitat continues to shrink, they are scrambling to not only stay afloat but to dodge the bullets of trophy hunters. American trophy hunters have lugged more than 800 polar bear trophies into the country since the loophole was made.

Bear Baiting

Lazy hunters who choose to take the "hunt" out of "hunting" bait bears and other animals by lugging huge piles of garbage, rotting meat or jelly donuts into the woods. Hunters place the food on the ground or stuff it into a container. The hunter then waits in a tree stand for a curious bear to arrive and prepares to take aim while the animal eats.

In 2007, the Minnesota legislature even considered a bill to legalize the use of a bait vending machine. The metal container, called the Bear Buster Bear Baiter Buffet, has a timer so that the doors, containing food, open at the same time each day, emitting a "sex" or "food" scent so it can be smelled from long distances. After the bear is conditioned to receive a meal at the same time each day, all the hunter must do is wait at the specified time for the bear to arrive, and then shoot her in the back. The legislature wisely didn't approve this unbearable cruelty.

Endangered Trophies

In a loophole the size of Texas, endangered species raised on game farms, including the addax, the scimitar-horned oryx and the dama gazelle, can be shot for trophies in the United States. Decades of overhunting and habitat loss have driven these antelope species to the brink of extinction.  In fact, the scimitar-horned oryx is believed to be completely extinct in the wild, but canned trophy hunters can pay a breeder to shoot and taxidermy the endangered species for the right price.

High-Tech Hound Hunting

Many hunters of bears, cougars and bobcats often use hunting dogs to chase their quarry until the animal can be treed or cornered. These hunting dogs are fitted with high-tech radio collars that the hunter can monitor from afar. He can follow the signal sent from the dogs' collars without having to keep up with the chase as they roam across both public and private property in pursuit of game. When the dogs have an animal treed and tilt their heads upwards, the collar emits a signal to the hunter, who then knows that the chase is over. The hunter approaches and shoots the cornered animal down at point blank range.

"Families Afield"

The hunting lobby launched Families Afield, a program designed to recruit new hunters into an activity that has been declining for more than two decades. This program's proponents spread across the country encouraging legislators and wildlife agencies to exempt new hunters, often children, from hunter safety courses in order to make it easier—though not safer—for them to hunt. These courses are credited with a dramatic decline in the number of hunting accidents across the country, yet young and inexperienced children are strategically sent into the woods.

The Families Afield campaign seeks to eliminate what it calls "barriers" to hunting, though most would call them safety precautions. The hunting industry, scrambling to secure its revenue in the face of a rapidly declining number of hunters—a 2006 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study [PDF] found that the number of hunters has declined 4% over the past four years, a trend that began two decades ago—seeks to eliminate minimum hunting ages across the country. Each year there are a number of hunting accidents, sometimes fatal, involving children occasionally as young as three years of age.

World Hunting Association

The worst idea for a reality show surfaced at a canned hunting ranch in Michigan. A Detroit-area developer came up with a hunting competition in which confined deer would be shot with tranquilizer darts for prizes. This idea provoked the ire of the hunting community and every original sponsor dropped out. The uproar caused the World Hunting Association to switch from darts to bullets, but they kept the fences and added a group of scantily clad women whose apparent job is to prance through the woods in order to spice up the dull program. In one episode, a hunter is forced to move his blind because it is too close to the fence.

Fortunately, this reality TV show has failed to attract the attention of any television network and is ridiculed by much of the hunting community.