July 19, 2001                        subsequent hunting news                 home

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA'S NEWSPAPER EDITORS
by: Norm Phelps
Program Coordinator, The Fund for Animals

On behalf of The Fund for Animals and our 200,000 members and active supporters, I am writing to ask that the outdoor columns which currently appear in the sports sections of most newspapers focus exclusively on camping, wildlife watching, nature photography, and similar activities, and stop promoting sport hunting and fur trapping. We are making this request for the following reasons:

Hunting is not a sport. Newspapers such as yours provide their readers with coverage of a wide variety of sports. But from golf to baseball to hockey, genuine sports all share four characteristics. First, the competitors are all volunteers; they are there because they want to be. In hunting, only the hunter is a willing participant. The animal is a terrified victim whose only desire is to escape with his life and health.

Second, in a real sport the competition is roughly equal. In fact, I have never met a sports fan who did not agree that equal competition is the essence of sport. The rules of every genuine sport are drafted to give each competitor an equal opportunity to prevail. Each side competes with the same equipment, and no side is allowed an intrinsic advantage over the other. Even boxing strives to assure this equality of competition by assigning fighters to narrow weight classes. But in hunting, the opposite situation prevails. The rules are deliberately constructed to give the hunter an overwhelming advantage. While the hunter is armed with a lethal, long-range weapon, either a firearm or a bow, the animal's only hope is to be lucky enough to escape. Can you imagine a hockey game in which only one team carried sticks?

Third, in a real sport, the stakes are the same for both sides.  Everyone competes for the same reward - be it money, glory, or pride of accomplishment - and everyone assumes an equal risk - of injury, frustration, and disappointment. In hunting, the stakes are dreadfully unequal. If the hunter loses, she goes home undamaged; she has lost
nothing of value. If the animal loses, she loses that which all of us hold most precious - her life. In this regard, hunting more resembles a military campaign against unarmed civilians than a sporting competition.

This brings us to the final quality that all genuine sports have in common. Whether they win or lose, the competitors live to play another day. There is always, of course, the possibility of a career-ending injury. But even in the more violent sports, such as football and boxing, these are exceptional and unintentional; they are regretted by
all involved, and rulesmakers and officials work hard to minimize them. But unlike participants in real sports, hunters go into their "arena" for the sole purpose of killing their "opponent." Win or lose, however, the hunter's own life is not on the line. Hunter deaths are nearly always the result of a hunter shooting himself or shooting another hunter, and almost never the result of a hunted animal defending himself.

In the educational video What's Wrong with Hunting, produced by The Fund for Animals, Marv Levy, who took the Buffalo Bills to four Super Bowls, is unequivocal. "I don't consider hunting a sport," says Levy. "I consider it murder."

When we strip away the mythology, hunting consists of hiding in ambush and shooting a harmless animal before he knows there is any danger - or shooting him in the back as he flees in terror for his life. By no reasonable definition can that be called a sport. And it has no more business being glorified in the sports media than a Mafia hit.

People who do to dogs and cats what hunters do to deer, geese, doves, and squirrels are prosecuted for animal cruelty, referred for psychiatric evaluation, or both - and rightly so. But animals who live in the wild are ust as capable of suffering fear and pain as are our companion animals. What is cruel to one is cruel to the other. Hunting is legalized cruelty to animals.

The law enforcement and social science communities regard cruelty to animals as an indicator of potential violence against human beings, and the FBI includes childhood animal abuse in its profile of serial killers. In the six years between 1994 and 1999, children and teen- agers who lived in communities where hunting is a way of life murdered 27 people and wounded 50 more in fourteen separate incidents. Many of the
killers came from hunting families, and nearly all killed human beings with weapons kept for killing animals. These incidents were reported in the news media and are documented in The Fund for Animals' report "Children in the Crosshairs," which can be viewed on our website, www.fund.org. No one can any longer claim that hunting teaches children respect for life. In fact, we now have to ask the opposite question   Does hunting teach children that life is cheap and that shooting those who cannot protect themselves is the way of "real men"? Until that question is answered, it is irresponsible in the extreme for newspapers to carry columns that encourage people, including young people, to kill defenseless animals for fun.

The values claimed for hunting - that it teaches love for the outdoors, appreciation of nature, self-reliance, patience, perseverance, and other worthwhile lessons - all derive from the pursuit, not the killing.  Furthermore, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are 14 million hunters in the United States and 63 million wildlife
watchers who do, in fact, pursue animals without harming them.  The potential readership for a column on wildlife watching and nature photography is more than four times that of a column on hunting. Replacing the hunting items in your outdoor column with items on wildlife watching would be good business as well as a demonstration of compassion for animals and concern for America's children.

Newspapers in the United States can be justly proud of serving their readers with top quality sports coverage. But a hunting column brings only shame. It teaches cruelty, not courage, and bullying, not sportsmanship. I urge you to drop items that advocate or promote fur trapping or recreational hunting from your outdoor columns without
delay.

Thank you for your time and consideration. If you have questions or would like to discuss these issues, I can be reached at The Fund for Animals, Suite 301,
8121 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910;
telephone 301-585-2591, x210; or email, nphelps@fund.org (fund.org).

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely yours,
Normal Phelps
The Fund for Animals

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