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Cover-Your-Deer Legislation Is D.O.A. in North Dakota
By BLAKE NICHOLSON
The Associated Press
BISMARCK, N.D. - Troubled by the sight of bloody deer carcasses hanging off cars and pickup trucks on North Dakota's highways, state legislator Duane DeKrey proposed a law requiring hunters to throw a tarp over their kills. He might as well have painted a bull's-eye on his back.
The bill caused such an uproar that he withdrew it on Monday, just days later.
"Some of it was even a lot more vitriolic than I ever dreamed it would have been," said DeKrey, a Republican representative from a rural district in and around the town of Pettibone. "It was quite evident which way the bill was going."
This is, after all, a state of avid hunters, a place where the right to hunt is enshrined in the constitution. ("Hunting, trapping and fishing, and the taking of game and fish, are a valued part of our heritage and will be forever preserved for the people.") It is also a place where hunters proudly display their deer tied down to the roofs of their vehicles or thrown into the back of open pickups.
DeKrey, a hunter himself, is not squeamish about deer carcasses but said the sight makes hunters look bad and could hurt the sport.
"It's about keeping the testosterone lower when you're going down the highway and showing off your big buck," he said. "Some of it is a little over the top."
Some hunters agreed with him that it is poor manners to display dead animals while hauling them home. Mike Paulson, a hunter from a town called Hunter, said covering up "wouldn't hurt anything, and would probably keep some people happy."
But DeKrey said others called him a kook and laughed at him. Many bitterly complained that the state has no business telling them to cover up the carcasses.
Ralph Muecke, a hunter from Gladstone who stows his deer carcasses in the back of a pickup, pronounced the bill "the silliest piece of legislation I've seen yet."
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals found itself siding with the hardest of the hard-core hunters against DeKrey's bill.
"We encourage people, if they're going to kill defenseless animals, to parade the animal's carcass all over town, since uncovered bloody carcasses are more likely to wake people up to the cruelties of hunting," spokesman Bruce Friedrich said. "Clearly, covering up cruelty doesn't help animals at all."
In decades past, many states actually required hunters to leave their game exposed, as a way to fight poaching.
Steve Williams, president of the Wildlife Management Institute and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the nationwide trend in the past couple of decades has been to promote the covering of dead animals, and not just to avoid offending others.
"It keeps it out of the weather, and you end up with better meat for the table," he said.
Since 2000, more than 100,000 deer a year have been killed in North Dakota, population 640,000. The number of licenses issued to hunt deer with guns climbed an all-time high in 2004 of nearly 144,000.
DeKrey said he has witnessed grisly highway scenes during deer season, including carcasses towed haphazardly in a trailer. "Two does were hanging over the top, and there was blood running down from both of them on the side of the trailer," he said. "I thought, 'What kind of image does that give us?'"
DeKrey said e-mails he received were equally divided, pro and con, and included a message from "a lady in Minot who said she was tired of her children being traumatized by going down the highway and seeing deer in various states of death."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
By BLAKE NICHOLSON
The Associated Press
BISMARCK, N.D. - Troubled by the sight of bloody deer carcasses hanging off cars and pickup trucks on North Dakota's highways, state legislator Duane DeKrey proposed a law requiring hunters to throw a tarp over their kills. He might as well have painted a bull's-eye on his back.
The bill caused such an uproar that he withdrew it on Monday, just days later.
"Some of it was even a lot more vitriolic than I ever dreamed it would have been," said DeKrey, a Republican representative from a rural district in and around the town of Pettibone. "It was quite evident which way the bill was going."
This is, after all, a state of avid hunters, a place where the right to hunt is enshrined in the constitution. ("Hunting, trapping and fishing, and the taking of game and fish, are a valued part of our heritage and will be forever preserved for the people.") It is also a place where hunters proudly display their deer tied down to the roofs of their vehicles or thrown into the back of open pickups.
DeKrey, a hunter himself, is not squeamish about deer carcasses but said the sight makes hunters look bad and could hurt the sport.
"It's about keeping the testosterone lower when you're going down the highway and showing off your big buck," he said. "Some of it is a little over the top."
Some hunters agreed with him that it is poor manners to display dead animals while hauling them home. Mike Paulson, a hunter from a town called Hunter, said covering up "wouldn't hurt anything, and would probably keep some people happy."
But DeKrey said others called him a kook and laughed at him. Many bitterly complained that the state has no business telling them to cover up the carcasses.
Ralph Muecke, a hunter from Gladstone who stows his deer carcasses in the back of a pickup, pronounced the bill "the silliest piece of legislation I've seen yet."
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals found itself siding with the hardest of the hard-core hunters against DeKrey's bill.
"We encourage people, if they're going to kill defenseless animals, to parade the animal's carcass all over town, since uncovered bloody carcasses are more likely to wake people up to the cruelties of hunting," spokesman Bruce Friedrich said. "Clearly, covering up cruelty doesn't help animals at all."
In decades past, many states actually required hunters to leave their game exposed, as a way to fight poaching.
Steve Williams, president of the Wildlife Management Institute and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the nationwide trend in the past couple of decades has been to promote the covering of dead animals, and not just to avoid offending others.
"It keeps it out of the weather, and you end up with better meat for the table," he said.
Since 2000, more than 100,000 deer a year have been killed in North Dakota, population 640,000. The number of licenses issued to hunt deer with guns climbed an all-time high in 2004 of nearly 144,000.
DeKrey said he has witnessed grisly highway scenes during deer season, including carcasses towed haphazardly in a trailer. "Two does were hanging over the top, and there was blood running down from both of them on the side of the trailer," he said. "I thought, 'What kind of image does that give us?'"
DeKrey said e-mails he received were equally divided, pro and con, and included a message from "a lady in Minot who said she was tired of her children being traumatized by going down the highway and seeing deer in various states of death."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
