Maybe the time has come to end all trophy hunting.
Before you fire off a letter to the editor demanding my firing, immediately, with prejudice, give me a moment to explain.
In Wyoming, a Cody legislator has introduced the “Trophy game animal change to large carnivore game animal” bill, which would replace the “trophy” with “large carnivore” in state statutes that govern hunting predator species.
The online news website WyoFile reported that a Wyoming Wildlife Federation staffer drafted the language of the bill out of concern “trophy” hunting is increasingly unpopular with the non-hunting public. Rep. Sandy Newsome, who I know from my days living in Wyoming, agreed to sponsor the bill.
Inside the hunting community “trophy” isn’t a dirty word. For a long time, I had an elk mount that followed me around after the family moved from Arizona, where I killed the bull. At some point I decided I no longer wanted to keep lugging it about as I moved from state to state, or display it. So I sold it to a traveling antler dealer.
This was about the same time I realized I didn’t really want to collect lightly shot male and female examples of all six hunted quail species in the United States just to have a taxidermist whip up a trophy display of 12 quail on a gnarled oak limb. Photos on social media now seem trophy enough.
Outside the hunting community, attitudes about “trophy” hunting are another matter — an unpopular one. That same WyoFile article referenced a 2019 National Shooting Sports Foundation opinion poll that indicates 80% of Americans approve of hunting. An even larger group, 92%, strongly or somewhat agree that it is OK for others to hunt so long as they do it while following hunting laws and regulations, even if they don’t intend to hunt themselves.
But when the same survey measured public opinion for “trophy” hunting, only 29% approves, and a scant 9% strongly approves.
Does the general public understand that many hunters, maybe most, pursue trophies even if their primary motivation to hunt is for meat? Probably not. But if you’re a hunter and don’t understand we’re engaged in a never-ending public relations campaign with the non-hunting public, you may not understand the world as it exists.
The Wyoming legislation isn’t intended to convince some angry “woke” mob of anti-hunting activists back to change their minds. It’s intended to keep the majority, representing a wide range of political persuasions, conservative to liberal, on our side.
We don’t need to convert most non-hunters. They’re already with us so long as they see hunting and fishing practiced sustainably and ethically. The word “trophy” triggers many, however. It suggests something unseemly about a hunter’s rationale for hunting. That reaction is based on a misunderstanding of exactly what trophy hunting means, but the perception persists.
Killing a deer or elk that you intend to eat, while also mounting the head or antlers for display, isn’t trophy hunting. It’s just hunting. The misunderstanding comes when non-hunters hear “trophy” and think antlers are our only motivation.
And while “Mind your own business,” comes to mind, remember that when we’re talking about voting, hunters are a minority. We want to keep the non-hunting majority voting with us.
Montana doesn’t have the “trophy” problem in statute, but the word often creeps into the way we talk and write about predators. While the fate of Montana or any state’s wildlife doesn’t rest on semantics, every time we talk about hunting in a public space we are engaged in public relations.
We might as well talk about it in a way that improves the chances this dialog leads to a positive outcome.