Trapping and hunting are different

Bob Sheppard’s letter, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, claims that trappers are being unjustly persecuted by a federal judge’s injunction restricting wolf trapping and snaring to the original season, Jan. 1-Feb. 15, to protect the federally listed endangered grizzly bears. Bob Sheppard is a mainstay of the Montana Trappers Association. He lives in Ovando. One wonders if, and if so, how many grizzlies he has caught in his traps over the years.

Mr. Sheppard goes on to infer that restricting trapping is the first step in a stealth agenda to ban hunting. He points to California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado as proof. But he gives no examples of a connection between getting rid of traps and getting rid of hunting. That’s because there aren’t any.

California banned mountain lion hunting back in 1972, with no connection to trapping, which wasn’t banned until 2019, 47 years later.

Back in the 1990s, Washington banned baiting and hounding of bears and mountain lions. Again, there is no connection to trapping restrictions. Washington banned most trapping in 2000, after the ban of baiting and hounding. Washington banned spring bear hunting in Nov. 2021. No other hunting including bear hunting was banned, and there is no connection to Washington’s trapping restrictions.

Oregon allows trapping and hunting. An extremely unpopular petition to stop hunting and animal husbandry went nowhere.

Colorado banned some, not all, trapping back in 1996. A possible 2024 initiative to ban mountain lion and bobcat hunting has no connection to the trapping restrictions enacted almost 30 years earlier.

The opportunity to hunt the vast majority of species including ungulates, the most popular hunting targets by far, has never been threatened anywhere in North America, even though 10 states have restricted or banned trapping.

The big differences between hunting and trapping are that trapping is not fair chase, maims and kills any animal unlucky enough to be caught indiscriminately, threatens public safety, and injures and kills domestic animals and livestock. Hunters see and know their target, trappers are not even there. They cause pain and suffering and have no trap check time limit.

The top of the list in Pope & Young’s rules of Fair Chase, the ethical code of hunting, is never kill an animal “helpless in a trap, deep snow or water, or on ice”. Hunting and trapping couldn’t be more different.