Media Coverage - Dove Hunting Ban Should Be Restored
Published October 15, 2005. Huron Daily Tribune, Editorial Board
Dove hunting ban should be restored
Last year, for the first time in a century, hunters in six Lower Michigan counties got the chance to hunt something else a tiny song bird known as the mourning dove. Shotguns in hand about 3,000 people killed about 28,000 birds. What they were able to do with the carcasses afterwards is debatable since the birds don't provide much in the way of "meat."
In 1905, the state Legislature banned the hunting of mourning doves. Then in 1998, the gentle backyard bird was named Michigan's Official Bird of Peace. There are an estimated four million mourning doves in Michigan, most of them in the southern portion of the state.
So how did the mourning dove get on the hit list of a small group of hunters in the first place? Thanks to some fast work by a downstate representative in a 2003 session, a bill allowing dove hunting passed the Legislature by a narrow vote and was signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The public outcry was immediate and loud.
The hunt lasted one season before a consortium of citizens and groups including the Humane Society of the United States got a ballot initiative approved for the November 2006 election. Voters will be asked to either say yes to allowing dove hunting to continue or no to dove hunting, thus negating the new law and restoring the 1905 ban.
Many arguments are being put forth against dove hunting. For example, there is an estimated "wound" rate of 30 percent because these birds are so hard to hit, leaving them easy prey for other animals, which then ingest the bird and the lead shot imbedded in it.
Proponents say the birds are edible in things like stew and are a challenge to shoot because they are small and fast. They also argue that dove hunting has been allowed in other states for many years, especially in the south where they are more plentiful. Michigan has just 1 percent of the nations 400 million mourning doves.
There is really only one reason needed for voting no on this ballot proposal, though. The hunting of mourning doves seems especially cruel considering that the birds mate for life and when one parent dies, the other is unable to raise the offspring on his or her own. In addition, mourning doves are also the only birds allowed to be hunted during their nesting season. Mourning dove hunting is simply unnecessary with so many other game birds available for sportspeople to hunt.
