Sunday, March 11, 2007
Shortcuts taken by some celebs taint all hunters
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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Avowed sportsman Troy Gentry smiled proudly in a segment of a nationally televised hunting program last fall as he showed off his trophy room, its walls filled with mounted bucks, turkeys and such.
The country music star's trophy room is not as full today.
A couple of weeks ago, a judge in Minnesota ordered Gentry to forfeit a full-body mount of a 600-pound black bear.
That bear's name was Cubby.
Wandering around in his 3-acre enclosure, Cubby was a popular attraction for photographers who paid to visit Lee Marvin Greenly's game preserve in Minnesota.
Then Gentry paid Greenly $4,650 for Cubby and, with a video camera rolling, shot the bear with a bow and arrow in October 2004.
The forfeiture of the mount was just part of the sentence Gentry received for killing Cubby, then tagging the bear with a Minnesota license and trying to pass the animal off as having been killed in the wild.
Gentry, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in November, also was sentenced to three months probation, fined $15,000, ordered to forfeit his bow and won't be allowed to hunt in Minnesota for five years.
Real hunters are outraged, and they should be. This is the kind of thing that reflects poorly on the majority of hunters, who realize it's about the hunt, not the kill.
That's exactly why this story needed to go public. And why, unlike similar stories in recent years involving TV personality Jimmy Houston and country music entertainer Ronnie Dunn, it needs to stay public and have consequences.
Gentry's apologists will point out that, from a purely legal standpoint, this was a relatively minor crime involving a tagging technicality.
They are correct.
But it's about so much more.
What Gentry did wasn't hunting. It wasn't close to hunting. It was a lazy, selfish, ego-driven shortcut.
After Gentry was charged, his camp issued a statement claiming that Gentry was misled by Greenly. The statement said that, contrary to some reports, the bear wasn't in a "cage or pen."
"This wild bear occupied its own habitat (consisting of several acres of woodlands)," the statement read.
Several acres? How is that not a pen? How can that bear be wild?
Gentry's supporters also noted that Gentry had to wait in his stand for a couple of hours before the bear walked close enough for a shot.
The video? It was supposedly for Gentry's "personal use" and was not, as alleged, edited to make it appear as if the hunt had taken place in the wild.
While Gentry's video hasn't been made public, Houston's was.
A couple of years ago the shaggy-haired outdoorsman was videotaped trying shoot a monster buck over bait in a small pen at Bellar's Place, a high-fenced hunting operation in Indiana where, among other things, big bucks were drugged so they could be hauled into small pens to be shot by hunters for fees up to $10,000, and beyond.
Houston wasn't charged with a crime, but what he did -- or tried to do -- was indefensible.
On the tape, which can be viewed at real-hunters.com, the buck trotted back and forth in a small pen, turning each time it reached the fence. Houston didn't shoot the buck because it wouldn't stop for a shot.
The video was uncovered as part of an investigation that eventually led to jail time and a $575,000 fine for the operation's owner, Russell Bellar.
One of the witnesses at Bellar's trial was Ronnie Dunn of the country music group Brooks and Dunn.
Dunn, who wasn't charged, testified that Bellar pointed out the buck Dunn was to shoot. The musician compared the experience to "slaughtering cattle."
At least Dunn seemed remorseful and had the guts to call it what it was.
Here was Gentry's apology after pleading guilty: "I relied on experts around me for guidance, and I regret that today. Not so much because I was fined and punished, but because it appears I don't have respect for the law."
Actually, it appears he doesn't respect our intelligence, because only an idiot would believe that Gentry didn't realize what he was doing was inexcusable.
Granted, shooting animals behind high fences is perfectly legal in some states.
Defenders of high-fence hunting often argue that the fences are more about protecting the landowner's animals than creating an unfair hunting situation. While that might be true on some large fenced tracts with low animal densities, the fact is most hunters disapprove of fenced operations for fair chase reasons.
Most hunters are also smart enough to realize that leaders of the anti-hunting movement love to exploit so-called canned hunt operations to shape public perception of hunting.
Certainly, those on both sides of the high-fence debate must agree that Gentry's "hunt" was nothing close to fair chase.
Even though Gentry's fine amounts to a slap on the wrist financially, he's paying for his terrible judgement. Some former fans have pledged boycotts of his group's records and concerts. And it stands to reason that no one in the hunting industry will want to be publicly associated with him.
Many legitimate hunters would be happy to see Gentry suffer the same fate as hunting writer Jim Zumbo, whose career imploded in mere days after he enraged gun enthusiasts with a strongly worded blog entry about assault rifles.
Based on recent history, that probably won't happen.
Houston is still on television. Brooks and Dunn are still selling boatloads of records. So this will probably turn out to be just a minor inconvenience for Gentry.
Other celebrity hunters will notice, and continue to take unethical shortcuts to stroke their egos, stock their trophy rooms and boost their reputations as manly men.
And that's too bad for everyone who does it right.
