Oklahoma State Senator Earl Garrison wants to establish a “Hunters Bill of Rights” because he’s scared that animal rights activists will eventually have hunting banned in this country. Let’s hope he right about that. In the meantime however, I doubt this bill will ever be passed.

Garrison believes that hunting is an act of conservation that is necessary to save animals in the long run. “Animals have to be harvested. It’s important that you have management because if you don’t, you get overpopulation, and the animals get smaller and there’s much imbreeding.” I’ve already mentioned in this blog that this is a myth, and that there are indeed other ways of managing population size, such as birth control and not destroying habitat for housing developments.

The director of Promoting Animal Welfare Society, Dorothy Farmer, has said in response to Garrison’s proposal, “If you go out and kill a deer and eat it, I have no problem with that. But I don’t think you should have to kill something two or three times just to get it to be dead; you should be a good shot and eat your meat.” The problem is that not all hunters are good shots, which means that many animals have to suffer. If an animal is not hit just right, it may continue to try to get away from the hunter despite its injury, and all the while the hunter will continue to shoot at it. Bow hunting is even worse than hunting with a gun, since an arrow may not penetrate far enough to kill the animal instantly, leaving a painful wound.