BCJ_WINTER17 Digital Edition

OPINION
Sam Lungren photo
WHITETAIL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
BY BEN LONG
AMERICA’S FOUNDING FATHERS HAD THIS FEAR of “the
tyranny of the majority.” That is, if one larger group of people got
too much power, it was bad for the whole democracy. That is why
we have the Bill of Rights – to protect the rights of those who are
outnumbered.
Hunters should think of America’s public lands as a biological
Bill of Rights. Those lands protect us from what I call the tyranny
of the whitetail.
First off, let me vow loyalty to King Whitetail. They are tasty,
beautiful and fun to hunt. The bulk of my hunting time is spent
pursuing whitetails, and they make up most of my protein intake.
According to surveys by the National Shooting Sports Foundation,
some 10 million American hunters pursue whitetail deer
annually. By comparison, all other big game species account for
only 300,000 hunters annually – a mere 3 percent. As a result,
whitetail deer cast a mighty big shadow. They dominate the license
fees (and thus agency priorities), the biological research, the
trophy books, the outdoors media and the hearts and minds of
American hunters.
If whitetail deer did not exist, wildlife managers would probably
genetically engineer a similar creature to thrive in modern
America of industrial agriculture and urban sprawl. Whitetails
need very little space – even a big buck can live its life contentedly
on a single square mile. They breed rapidly to make up for
heavy predation, whether it be by cougar, coyote, automobile or
riflemen. They happily fatten on crops like soybeans or alfalfa.
The ultimate generalists, they thrive in the deserts of Arizona, the
frigid north woods of Canada, the swamps of Florida and city
parks nationwide. If all wildlife were as flexible, we would need
no Endangered Species Act.
Whitetails are an all-American game animal. But they are not
the only one. North America is blessed with more than 20 big
game species, none of them as ubiquitous, but each as special.
Look at it this way: Nothing against Bud Light, America’s most
popular beer, but isn’t America richer for all our myriad of brews?
Not all wildlife is as flexible as whitetail deer, living their lives
in one square mile. Whitetails “fit between the cracks” of civilization,
but many other popular big game species cannot. For
example, some mule deer in Wyoming migrate 150 miles between
summer and winter ranges. Pronghorn populations in Montana
and southern Canada migrate 200 miles. A typical bull elk in the
Rocky Mountains may use a home range of 15 square miles. A
single grizzly bear requires 50 square miles. Bighorn sheep and
mountain goats are habitat obligates – meaning they require a
certain kind of rugged escape cover to survive.
Big game needs big country. Whitetail deer are the exception
that proves the rule.
So where do these non-whitetail big game species live? In short,
they live on public lands – the great national forests, grasslands,
parks, and Bureau of Land Management acres of the American
West (along with adjoining private timber and ranch lands). That
public estate amounts to 640 million acres shared by people and
wildlife alike. Because of the foresight of sportsmen and other
conservationists over the past 100 years, this estate provides the
foundation for North America’s wildlife heritage, even as the human
population surpasses 310 million.
Back in the 1990s, biologist Jack Ward Thomas noted that 80
percent of America’s elk depend on public lands for at least part
of their life cycle. The percentage is probably close to 100 percent
for mountain goat, bighorn sheep, moose and other big game.
In short, our national forests give wildlife the kind of space they
need to thrive, even if they are not whitetail deer.
“Public lands offer the broad expanses necessary for biodiversity
and ecosystem function. You cannot parse up the land into
smaller and smaller pieces and expect it to maintain the fabric
of nature,” said biologist and wildlife advocate Shane Mahoney.
“Having a nation anywhere in the world with millions of acres
available to the citizens is an extraordinary gift and legacy.”
Alarmingly, there are voices today who would liquidate that
legacy. These people have the same anti-public lands philosophy
that Theodore Roosevelt faced when he started to cobble together
America’s network of public lands.
I would also argue that public lands offer a certain authenticity
of the hunt that is eroding rapidly in whitetail country. With the
private-land, intensive wildlife management and food-plot practices
of today, whitetail hunting is increasingly focused on manipulating
the habitat and herds to produce shooting opportunities.
While management can (and should) improve habitat on public
lands, big game on public lands remain primarily as they have
existed for the ages. On public lands, you shape your hunting to
the ecosystem instead of shaping the ecosystem to the hunt.
Thanks to TR and those like him, America’s wildlife heritage is
whitetail deer plus much, much more. If we want to keep it that
way, we’ll need to keep our public lands in public hands.
Idaho outdoor writer Ron Spomer put it this way: “Public lands
personify this idea we call America – which is freedom. The human
animal – the human spirit – is not intended to be confined
to a cage.”
Ben is the vice chairman of BHA’s national board of directors. He
ate whitetail for dinner last night.
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