Mainers for Fair Bear Hunting

Hunting writer Marc Folco continues to see the world only through orange-tinted glasses, rebuking The Humane Society of the United States for supporting a Maine ballot measure to ban bear baiting, trapping and hounding. Given that Maine is the only state in the nation to allow these unsporting and inhumane hunting methods, should this stance and determined work by The HSUS surprise anyone?

Massachusetts voters restricted body-gripping traps and also bear baiting and hounding in 1996, by a landslide vote of the people on a statewide ballot initiative. Just about every county in the state favored this HSUS-backed citizen initiative.

The situation in Maine smacks of even more appalling commercial exploitation of wildlife. Commercial guides and outfitters pocket a fee for dumping mounds of garbage in the woods and then situating a trophy hunter by the dump and directing the guy to shoot a feeding bear. That’s not hunting — that’s shooting fish in a barrel. The hunters who we work with find this deeply objectionable and at odds with their own ethical code of conduct.

Wayne Pacelle

President & CEO, The Humane Society of the United States