Fair Chase Is Ethical

Think for a moment about the title of this article. I have heard that simple statement repeated unendingly it seems and there is never a shortage of places to read about it either. Many who espouse to the feel-good title of an ethical hunter do so because they deem themselves to be one who believes in fair chase. The two main ingredients to look at in the title are “fair chase” and “ethical”. What is fair chase? Or in more brevity, what is fair? What does that four-letter word mean? And what about “ethical” or ethics, sometimes replaced with the word morals?

“It’s easy to define fair chase!”, I have heard repeatedly. “It’s hunting while affording the game every reasonable opportunity to escape.” And who is defining reasonable? Boone and Crockett has taken it upon themselves to define fair chase.

FAIR CHASE, as defined by the Boone and Crockett Club, is the ethical, sportsmanlike, and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild, native North American big game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over such animals.

That’s clear enough, right? We all know what “sportsmanlike” is, right? A good example could be found at your local Little League baseball game, a professional hockey match, a round of golf or at a Major League ballpark near you. Always a fine example of sportsmanship.

Even the terms “free-ranging” and “native” aren’t exceptionally clear cut. But here’s perhaps the muddiest part - “in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over such animals“. That sure helps us all determine what is fair chase. Of course I’m being facetious. Nobody seems to want to take a step further and define what “improper advantage” is. Ask 50 hunters separately what that means and you’ll get 50 different answers.

Hunting behind a fence gives a hunter an improper advantage. Right? Hunting over a bait pile (legally), gives a hunter an improper advantage. Right? Hunting with hounds gives a hunter an improper advantage. Right? Hunting from a ground blind or a tree stand gives a hunter an improper advantage. Right? Using a telescope on a gun gives a hunter an improper advantage. Right? Using scents and scent blockers gives a hunter an improper advantage. Right? And we’ve just begun to scratch the surface about fair chase. What about ethics?

The Unabridged Dictionary defines ethics this way:

1. (used with a singular or plural verb) a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture.
2. the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.
3. moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence.
4. (usually used with a singular verb) that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions.

When you read part 4 doesn’t that get your dander up? Doesn’t it make you want to do something about bad behavior?

Get in line. It seems that for whatever the reasons, our society seems to believe that we can control ethical behavior by making laws. Several states have and will grapple with the issue of high-fence hunting. The popular “cure” for such “unethical” behavior is to pass laws that would ban hunting behind a fence.

Those who advocate to shut down hunting preserves say the act is unethical. Some go so far as to say it’s not hunting at all. They call it slaughtering. They are all right in their assessment, at least from their own perspective of what is right and wrong. Many of these same individuals say that allowing this form of unethical hunting or killing, is giving the sport of hunting a bad name. They fear the non hunting crowd, which clearly outnumbers the hunters, will lump all hunters together demanding an end to our sport because they will see hunting as unethical and not fair chase based.

Is outlawing high-fence hunting the right approach? Can ethics be effectively legislated to achieve a desired result? We can create new laws to ban high-fence hunting but that will do nothing about hunting ethics. The unofficial definition of ethics is what you do when nobody is around.

The Managing Leadership website has an article about legislating ethics. Granted this particular article isn’t dealing directly with hunting ethics and fair chase but the short of it is ethics is ethics no matter in what forum it is subjected. Here’s what is said about legislating ethics.

You can legislate punishment for ethical violations, and you can make it stick. In this way, you can reasonably hope to constrain instances of unethical behavior. But you cannot create ethical behavior the same way. People won’t become, or even behave, ethically because the law requires it. Ethics comes from morals, and morals are transmitted by culture, not Congress

In a separate article at the same website, another writer agrees that ethics can’t be legislated.

We can neither legislate nor institutionalize ethics that don’t exist naturally within us. Efforts to pretend we can only trivialize our comprehension and expression of ethical behavior or moral thought.

Some believe that our capitalistic society we live in actually encourages unethical behavior, which includes greed, self-interest, narcissism, etc. What is ironic is that those feeling compelled to pass laws they think will alter an individual’s unethical behavior, in and of itself becomes greedy, full of self-interest, narcissistic and unethical.

In the 90s, society and in particular business, created the ethics police. More and more corporations and even governmental agencies created the positions of chief ethics officers in order to rule over the would be ethics violators. In some cases the behavior of the ethics police turned unethical in order to catch the ethics violators. And in some cases, business owners thought the entire effort was actually working against what was hoped to be accomplished.

If we are to believe, as was written at Managing Leadership, that “We can neither legislate nor institutionalize ethics that don’t exist naturally within us”, then is attempting to legislate the cervid ranchers and preserve hunting companies out of business going to accomplish anything?

It may well accomplish far more than the advocates are counting on. When talking with the owners of these ranches, one of their arguments against legislating them out of business deals with property rights. Many feel that a ranch owner has the right to choose how he will harvest his game. This attitude of the rancher carries over to the general land owner who values his property rights as well. Treading on the toes of ranchers and landowners by threatening their property rights, is a sure way to instill bad relations between the outdoor sportsman and the landowner, whom we all know without them we have less land to hunt on.

Hunters are divided on the subject of high-fence hunting. I think it’s safe to say that most hunters in America don’t indulge themselves in preserve hunting but they also don’t go out of their way to put and end to it. As a matter of fact, most feel the business serves a valuable purpose.

Can we honestly say that people will line up against hunting in general because there are a handful of hunting preserves? If you don’t believe me, start asking people, including hunters, what are the biggest things that negatively affect the sport of hunting. You will probably find that high-fence hunting is far down the list if it shows up at all.

So what should those who think this is a unethical practice do? If you will recall above the quote I used that said, “We can neither legislate nor institutionalize ethics that don’t exist naturally within us”, let’s not lose sight of the end of that statement. It says you can’t legislate ethics that don’t exist naturally within us.

We all have different backgrounds and this contributes to the vast differences in ethics and moral principles among us humans. Through education and presenting to others the values associated with such things as ethical hunting, will do far more to preserve our good clean hunting heritage than cramming another law down the throats of people that will accomplish little if anything. These are the tactics used by the anti-hunting and animal rights crowd.

We each have our own set of values. As parents we pass those on to our children. There is certainly nothing wrong with working together to improve upon our societal values. Legislating it is not the way to do it. Showing the public through example that the majority of the hunting community cares, is comprised of lawful citizens and respects the wildlife, the land and the landowners - all of them - will accomplish far more than any ill conceived piece of legislation.

Tom Remington