Media Coverage - THE VOCAL POINT: Ballot Defeats
Published November 17, 2006. By Dan Murphy. Excerpt. Cattle Network.
Most of the post-election media coverage focused on the Democratic takeover of Congress, an historic event, to be sure.
But alongside the Republicans who lost their House and Senate seats several state ballot measures broadly related to animal rights also went down in flames on Nov. 7.
One was Michigan's Proposal 3, an ill-conceived initiative that would have set a hunting season for mourning doves. The measure was DOA long before Election Day, and ended up losing by a lopsided 69 to 31 percent.
Newspaper editorials painted the picture for anyone who might have been on the fence:
Supporters tried to argue that a dove season would be "good for youths to learn about hunting." Uh, doesn't that support the claim that shooting doves is "target practice?""The mourning dove is so beloved in Michigan it has earned the status as the state's official bird of peace." (Niles Daily Star)
"Doves are little more than target practice, with even hunters admitting that each dove, weighing three to four ounces, yields little meat." (Michigan Daily)
"There [is] only one reason hunters would want to gun down these lovely songbirds — and that's for the thrill of the kill. What's next? Robins and cardinals?" (Dowagiac Daily News)
Others tried to make the ban on doves a cause for mourning the demise of all hunting, which is a ridiculous stretch.
Face it: Shooting at a songbird — or a squirrel or other smallish animal — isn't going to garner any great support, even among people otherwise tolerant of game management via controlled hunting.
