Hunting as a “Meaningful Relationship With Wildlife”

Baker, Montana is a small town of 1,700 near the North Dakota border. It’s not known for its roaring economy, so five years ago the Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture devised a brilliant scheme for bringing some sorely-needed funds to the area: a coyote-killing contest. You’re probably thinking, "Hey, that’s a great idea! Maybe I’ll suggest it at my next city council meeting!"

Coyotes are the dregs of animal society as far as humans are concerned (and let’s face it–our opinion is the only one that matters). There are no restrictions on hunting and killing them; it’s always open season on coyotes, partly because they are a danger to livestock, whom they tend to eat when they get the opportunity.

Out yonder in Baker, you can win $6,000 if you kill the most coyotes. Apparently, about 180 "sportsmen" from all over the country go to Baker for the chance to win the cash and bag a bunch of coyotes. The event is technically referred to as a "calling contest," because the hunters mimic the distress calls of prey to attract the coyotes. One of the hunters who organizes the event is a thoughtful man named Jerrid Geving. He said, probably after much contemplation:

I don’t know why God put them on this Earth. If He put them on this world to give us sport for hunting, maybe.

Really. That’s what he said.

Oddly, some folk ain’t too keen on that there callin’ contest. Evidently, as a way to control the coyote population, they’re useless, as the coyotes reproduce in no time. Furthermore, in the burgeoning field of hunters’ ethics (I kid you not), calling contests aren’t "fair" because they violate "the notion that hunting is a private stuggle between predator and prey." Said Jim Posewitz, a hunting ethicist,

We like to think it’s a more meaningful relationship that we have with wildlife than simply viewing them as a competition between people.

The key words are we like to think. Stalking and slaughtering an animal hardly denotes a meaningful relationship.

Do I think the calling contest is barbaric? Sure. But no more so than any other excuse to kill.