I miss the time when I enjoyed social media. I yearn for those days before the media moguls who run these platforms decided money-making algorithms, rather than user preference, determined what we see.
Still, even a quickly deteriorating platform such as YouTube offers a glimmer of what could have been, of that original vision of a digital gathering place for free expression, where people might band together, and with numbers on their side, right some of the injustices our political system seems impotent to correct.
I saw that old sparkle this week when I watched a couple videos on hunter harassment. Then, YouTube’s algorithm kicked in and suddenly it was force-feeding me similar content like I was a goose in a foie gras farm. One video after another of someone being harassed — by other hunters who consider their favorite spot their property, even if it is on public land, or private landowners trying to chase off hunters, either on public or private land where they have permission to hunt.
These encounters often result in law enforcement being called to the scene, which is followed by the authorities telling the harassers that the hunters have the right to be where they are, doing what they are doing, and suggesting the harasser find something better to do with their surplus free time.
This kind of harassment isn’t new, but it seems to be on the rise. I have nothing to support that opinion other than my gut, but some of it seems obvious. For at least three decades, and probably longer, access has been the issue that underlies our most contentious issues in the West. Controversies about wildlife and land management haven’t gone away, but so much now seems to be about who holds the key to the gate.
Add to that the influx of newcomers to the West, folks who didn’t grow up with an outdoors tradition and are ignorant of the role hunting plays in wildlife management. Add to that mix, disparities of wealth that make it harder for middle class folks to survive in the northern Rockies as wealthy investors drive up the price of housing and land, and you’ve created an environment where it’s no surprise hunter harassment gets normalized.
My perception of an increase in hunter harassment also has much to do with how well armed folks are with video-recording equipment these days. If I’m out hunting, I always have my hunter-harassment-recording device along since it also serves as my emergency-services-connection device if something goes awry.
Phones have come a long way.
I sometimes must explain to my college students who Rodney King was and how the chance presence of some dude nearby with a video camera dramatically changed the results of his arrest and the citywide riots in Los Angeles that followed. In my students’ world, when bad things happen they assume there’s always someone nearby who has pushed record.
This wealth of video often elevates hunter-harassment incidents from two people with conflicting accounts of an incident into a prosecutable offense, with a realistic shot at a conviction.
There’s also the conservation angle to hunter harassment. One of the videos the YouTube algorithm fed me was of a group of goose hunters set up in a grain field. The harasser parked along a nearby road and honked wildly whenever birds flew near the hunters.
Geese, rather miraculously, are now so overpopulated wildlife managers practically beg hunters to kill them. The birds are destroying their summer range in the Arctic and hunting is one of the few tools we must slow population growth. Fortunately, the honking ploy failed and the hunters all bagged limits.
Safety is another concern. Harassing hunters means you are harassing someone with a weapon. I fear a harassment incident will someday escalate into a murder case. But don’t assume the suspect will be the hunter. Harassers have Second Amendment rights too.