Anti-Hunters Seek to Ban All Hunting with Hounds in Arizona

Outdoor Life

Just weeks after the proposed ban on mountain lion hunting in Colorado was rejected by voters, anti-hunting orgs petitioned the Arizona Game and Fish Commission to ban “dog pack hunting” under the guise of protecting endangered species like jaguars, wolves, and ocelots.

The 17-page petition — dated Nov. 25 and written by the Center for Biological Diversity with support from the Mountain Lion Foundation and the Sierra Club — seeks to end hunting with dogs in Arizona for species like mountain lions, bears, bobcats, foxes, and other wildlife. While this particular petition excludes upland and duck dogs, it specifically targets rabbit and squirrel hunting with dogs.

“…Packs of hunting dogs let loose on public lands cause significant harm to native ecosystems and wildlife,” a CBD spokesperson claimed in a statement. “Their prohibition in Arizona is long overdue.”

While the Arizona Department of Game and Fish couldn’t immediately provide comment on the practice of hunting with hounds, an agency spokesman did note that the petition failed to be considered for a Commission meeting agenda on a technicality. (The CBD sought to change two rules in Arizona hunting regs; protocol requires a separate petition for each.)

The petition “will likely be re-submitted in the coming months,” AGFC tells Outdoor Life.

In anticipation of the coming fight, hunters gathered at the December ADF Commission meeting to speak on behalf of hunting with hounds, according to an AZCentral article.

“I don’t have any doubt that the Commission will do their job to protect Arizonans’ best interest in conservation and wildlife management. So my message here today is more for the groups that have brought forth the petition,” Arizona Working Dog Alliance founder Chris Watson said, according to the news outlet. “Arizona sportsmen know what is coming and who is bringing it. And I’m here to warn those that are bringing it, we are not just one sportsman anymore. We are many.”

This is the fourth attempt in recent years to target big cat hunting in Arizona, according to the Sportsmen’s Alliance, though the first time endangered species are cited as a major reason. The presence of just seven jaguars in the state have been confirmed over the last three decades with between zero and two of the big cats ranging into the state from Mexico at any given time.

“For the ignorant, leveraging endangered species is a great argument,” says Brian Lynn, vice president of marketing and communications for the Alliance. “It’s an emotional play. We saw that exact tactic in Colorado where the latest ballot initiative was going to end lynx hunting. It’s already illegal to hunt lynx in Colorado because they’re endangered. You can’t hunt jaguars in Arizona. I would be very surprised if there’s been a jaguar treed by mountain lion hunters in Arizona in the last hundred years. It’s not reality, but it’s a good argument that sways public opinion, and an excuse for any commissioner or politician to latch onto if they’re so inclined to want to pass this kind of stuff. That’s what we see here in Washington state.”

The playbook is predictable: Antis start off at the Commission level. Though historically trickier to persuade, state game commissions are becoming increasingly easier to sway. Next, antis will attempt to introduce legislation to address the change they want to see.

“Then, if they can’t get anything passed and it’s a friendly state, with all the political winds blowing correctly, then they’ll try to run a ballot initiative,” says Lynn. “Most of the time all you need is to convince voters in a major city. In Arizona, all they need is Phoenix.”

Lessons from Houndsmen in Other States

For years Lynn has tried to remind all hunters that hunting with hounds is an easy target for antis to begin their larger agenda of ending hunting altogether.

“Dogs are easy to latch on to because of the misconceptions and stereotypes people have about hunting with dogs,” Lynn says. “Even in hunting circles, people look at hounds with a negative eye or don’t understand it. So it’s easier [for antis] to divide and conquer.”

Virginia is one such state that’s experiencing rampant infighting between hunters who disagree over how to pursue deer and bear. Currently, diehard hound hunters (as they’re called there) are at odds with property-rights advocates who want to ban the practice.

At a Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting last week, CPW carnivore and furbearer program manager Mark Vieira noted one of the biological benefits of using hounds to pursue mountain lions.

“Oregon and Washington are the two states that have lost the use of hounds,” said Vieira, noting that elk and deer hunters with lion tags are often harvesting cats opportunistically. “…Those female harvest rates are in the 50 percent, sometimes getting as high as 60 percent. [But] mountain lions aren’t on the landscape in a 50-50 proportion, particularly in hunted lion populations. There are far more females on the landscape. That’s how they regulate themselves … So if you’re to be walking across the landscape without dogs, opportunistically encountering lions, [there’s a] much higher chance of coming across a female lion and in those states, harvesting it.”

Vieira cited broad numbers to make his point: About 66 percent of Colorado’s cat population is female and 33 percent is male. And Colorado cat hunters, who are allowed to use hounds, reported a female harvest rate just 29 percent this season, according to last week’s numbers.

“That, to me, really demonstrates the very selective nature of hound hunting and decision making by folks in the field,” said Vieira.

The anti-hound petition filed in Arizona deals in unsupported accusations that hunting with hounds isn’t fair chase, GPS collars are unethical, and so on. It even goes so far as to claim that “dogs are sometimes purposely starved by their owners to increase their prey drive” (an apparent perversion of the veterinary recommendation to not feed dogs prior to exercise) and that “hounds in the heat of a hunt have been known to attack people recreating on public lands.”

“We are not villains,” United Houndsmen of Colorado president Justin Angelovich said during the CPW the public comment session. “We are dog-loving adventurers in love with the mountain lion that walks our landscape. [We] hunt with the respect and admiration that can’t be achieved without a true level of struggle, difficulty, and commitment.”

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Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/petition-ban-hunting-with-hounds-arizona/