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Pat Durkin column: Hunting tournament draws fire
Occasionally, someone floats an idea that's so flawed and inflammatory you almost feel sorry for its creator because it's also so doomed it will sink faster than an anchor without its rope.
That's how I felt last week when a flurry of e-mails poured in with curses, warnings and battle cries aimed at the World Hunting Association, whose founder, David Farbman of Michigan, had just announced plans for a competitive hunting tournament with cash prizes.
The outcry against WHA came not from anti-hunters or nonhunters. All came from hunters, those who know there's a huge difference between a high-stakes, commercially sponsored competition and an everyday "big buck" pool between co-workers.
As a group, outdoors enthusiasts might tolerate big-money tournaments for bass and walleyes, but when someone floats similar schemes for hunting, look out. Picture dipping your foot into a pond of starving piranhas.
The WHA, meanwhile, promised its events would "take hunting to a new level," and feature "the world's finest hunters competing for hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money."
And — get this — the deer wouldn't die, at least intentionally. The "pro" hunters would shoot these fenced, game-farm critters with tranquilizer darts, and score points based on their size.
In a June 7 press release, WHA said its events would be broadcast via TV, the Internet, pay-per-view, on-demand and other outlets. It also said, "WHA plans to become the standard for professional hunting competition, and to grow and enhance the industry's image and presence."
Hmmm. Something tells me hunting's image needs a professional tournament circuit as much as FEMA's image needed Hurricane Katrina.
This idea is so hopeless I couldn't get upset when I read the press release. Why?
First, hunters need no prodding from me to get riled up. I knew their backlash would be so immediate, indignant and universal that no one in manufacturing or broadcasting would risk their business and reputation to such torment.
I recall a scheme in the late 1980s in which a promoter tried to get Wisconsin deer hunters to pay $100 entry fees to amass a multi-thousand dollar purse. Entrants would register their does and bucks at a parking lot in County Stadium in Milwaukee to be eligible to win large cash payouts for the biggest buck, biggest doe and so on.
Once the firestorm of hunter fury ran its course, the only sound to be heard was dry leaves skipping across the deserted stadium parking lot on opening day of deer season.
A couple of years later, a group in Missouri tried launching a deer-hunting competition and bought advertisements in national magazines. By coincidence, I started working for one of the magazines, Deer & Deer Hunting, a couple of weeks after the publishers ran that ad.
The readers' response was spectacular and righteous. They threatened mass cancellations and a boycott of every advertiser in the magazine if we repeated the ad.
Such visceral responses to hunting leagues, tournaments or any other commercial-inspired competitive hunt always will be there. Most people, and especially hunters, believe it's depraved to reduce wildlife to living, breathing raffle prizes.
However, when I consider some of the vicious e-mail and messages regarding the WHA's idea, I don't know what surprises me more, the WHA claim that a tournament and big-money prizes would bolster hunting's image, or the belief from elitist hunters that this idea would be embraced by common, everyday, Joe 6-Pack hunters.
When the WHA's plan soon disappears, consider it confirmation that Joe 6-Pack's moral compass retains its bearing.
Patrick Durkin is a free-lance writer who covers outdoors for the Press-Gazette
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Topic: Worst Idea Ever...HUNTING ALERT!!! READ & EMAIL! (Read 60012 times)
