NATIONAL HUNTING AND FISHING DAY
Not Much to Crow About

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, September 27, 1996

CONTACT:

Heidi Prescott, (301) 585-2591, Heidi@fund.org
Mike Markarian, (301) 585-2591, MikeM@fund.org

As hunters celebrate "National Hunting and Fishing Day" on Saturday, September 28, and try to portray themselves as responsible conservationists, The Fund for Animals maintains that killing wildlife for recreation is nothing of which to be proud and that the hunting industry has done little to police its ranks or improve its image.

Due to growing concern for animal protection and growing anti-hunting sentiment, leaders of the hunting community have embarked on public relations campaigns to improve the image of hunting.

With jargon of "responsible conservation" and "hunter ethics," hunters are out to recruit more hunters and neutralize the public's opposition to hunting. But what have they really accomplished?

Despite efforts made by the animal protection community, hunters have accomplished keeping the following cruel and egregious hunting practices legal (despite rhetoric of "fair chase"):

• Hunters participate in shooting contests for money and prizes, such as Pennsylvania's live pigeon shoots. Thousands of tame birds are released one at a time from tiny boxes, and most of them are only wounded. The shooters hire young children to collect wounded birds, rip off their heads, stomp on them, or throw them into barrels to suffocate.

• Ten states allow trophy hunters to lure black bears to noxious piles of rotting meat and jelly doughnuts, and then shoot the feeding animals at point-blank range.

• Wealthy hunters can pay a fee to enter canned hunting ranches and be guaranteed a trophy. These fenced-in ranches often buy exotic animals from zoos, circuses, or auctions.

• Hunters are often allowed to kill mourning doves, squirrels, mountain lions, black bears, and other animals during the crucial months when mothers nurse their dependent young leaving the orphans to die of starvation or predation.

"The very idea of a National Hunting and Fishing Day makes a mockery of all our decent national days," says Cleveland Amory, President of The Fund for Animals and best-selling author. "Next I suppose it will be National Mugger Day or National Drive-By Shooting Day."

Because of a continuous decline in the number of people who buy hunting licenses -- down from 10 percent of Americans in 1975 to fewer than 6 percent in 1994 -- demographic researchers believe that hunting may become extinct by the year 2050. The hunting and firearms industries have launched a massive campaign to recruit children into hunting and to provide lifetime customers for their products.

"State and federal agencies have funneled hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars into programs that teach children to kill and cripple animals for fun," says Heidi Prescott, National Director of The Fund for Animals. "If hunting is taught in schools in the 21st century, it will be taught only in history class."

For a copy of The Fund for Animals' new video for kids, What's Wrong With Hunting, featuring Coach Marv Levy of the Buffalo Bills, Alexandra Paul of Baywatch, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen of Beverly Hills 90210, and Craig Paquette of the Kansas City Royals, please call (301) 585-2591 or send us mail.

oOo

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