Senator Stennett's Legislative weekly column--Week 6

 

I can still recall the late October day when I harvested my last bull elk. After four full days of glassing and stalking, we could not quite put it all together. On the morning of the last day of the season, my wife and I had hiked 1500 feet up the mountain. It was 8am and we were in a foot of new snow.  We had lost first light, but before we called it off I suggested that we look over the next ridge. We belly crawled to the ridge line and at 245 yards, we found a six point bull.  I have harvested a half a dozen elk in 38 years of  hunting. Each one is burned in my memory as the one I just described. It is this type of fair chase hunting on public lands that many Idahoans dream about and hope for as they head into the back country each Fall for their annual hunt. This type of hunting is our heritage, our ethic and our culture.
           
New in Idaho, today one can go to an elk farm, pay thousands of dollars to walk into a fenced area and shoot the bull of their choice.  Within hours a person can jet into Idaho, kill a prized bull-elk, get back on the plane and be home for supper.  The rack from my most prized bull, which I hunted a lifetime for on public lands, would pale in comparison to some of the grain-fed monsters bred for their big antlers at these “shooter bull”operations. This isn’t the heritage or sport we all associate with real hunting.  This is a guaranteed and glorified kill.  It is nothing more than over-priced target practice for out-of-state fat cats who want the grand prize of a hunt without a fair chase of one. This isn’t Idaho.   
          
This week in Senate Agriculture Affairs Committee we considered Senate Bill 1073, which would have outlawed these canned-hunt operations.  This bill failed to pass committee.  Opponents of the bill argued that this was not an issue of fair-chase hunting.  They said it was an issue of personal property rights, and if someone wants to charge people to kill elk on their land they should have that right. 
         
Yet if we don’t protect our heritage, and our traditions of fair-chase hunting on public lands, it won’t be long before we become like Europe.  In Europe the tradition of public hunting for all has become a story of the past. Today, only the rich are able to pursue game on private land reserves.  Hunting should not be about who has the biggest wallet. Yet, Europeans cannot pay any price for the rush of a fair-chase; that opportunity is gone.  They will never know the thrill of winning the draw for a tag, hiking for miles in public lands, enduring the cold weather and elements, long days of scouting, and the final silence before the squeeze of the trigger.  If we don’t protect this heritage, our future generations will not know this either.
           
Along with the shooter bull operations that permit the killing of elk within their fences, there are other ranches (aka cervidae farms) that just raise elk like cattle for their meat. This week, we also considered other legislation that would affect all these type of elk farms.  When elk are penned up, the risk of contracting diseases, such as chronic wasting disease (CWD), brucellosis, tuberculosis, or giant liver fluke, increases dramatically.  When farm-raised elk escape into the wild, our wild herd is then threatened with these diseases as well.    Last year after the escape of elk from a ranch in Eastern Idaho, more Idahoans and legislators began taking a closer look at the dangers of the relatively new industry.

 

This week we passed legislation out of committee ( S1074) that would require these operations to be licensed to operate in Idaho.  The legislation would increase the penalties if operations do not comply with the rules and regulations.  Yet this legislation has a year delay and leaves most of the regulation to be decided in the rules process to be determined by the Idaho Department of Agriculture. While I voted in favor of the bill in committee, I would have preferred this legislation to have more teeth and real regulations written into Idaho Code.

 

Other bills we considered this week , such as Senate Bill 1072,  would have created some real regulation. That bill would have required these operations to have double fences to prevent escape of farm-raised elk, and nose to nose contact with wild elk.  This bill failed the committee by a 3-6 vote.   Also failing committee by a 3-6 vote was a 5 year moratorium on more cervidae farms or ranches in Idaho(Senate Bill 1004).  If we permit this industry to grow without stricter regulations, we are risking the health of the wild herds. A moratorium would have given us adequate time to ensure that we develop a protective barrier between the domestic cervidae ranches and the wild herds the rest of us enjoy. 

 

In a nutshell on the topic of elk farms and shooter bull operations, this week in the Senate Agriculture Committee we did nothing more than pass a requirement that these operations need to be licensed.  We have not made any significant progress in strengthening the regulations that protect our wild herd from farm raised elk or guarantee our hunting heritage and traditions. When a similar lack of legislative action occurred in Montana, citizens introduced an initiative to ban these farms completely. In Idaho, we had an opportunity to offer protections to both the industry and our heritage.  Unfortunately this week the legislature has done nothing to protect our hunting traditions.  It is possible that an initiative similar to Montana’s will be introduced here in Idaho.  A citizen’s initiative will likely be more restrictive than the legislative approach we could have offered this session.  

           
As always, I welcome any suggestions, or comments you have to offer.  It is my honor to serve District 25.  I can be reached by calling (208) 332-1000 or toll-free 1-800-626-0471, via email at stennett@senate.idaho.gov, or by mail to P.O. Box 83720, Boise, ID 83720.