Media Coverage - Bird of Peace? War of Words
Sides speak out on proposal 3
Published October 26, 2006. By Brian Mulherin. Ludington Daily News
Big-time wrestling has nothing on Michigan’s dove-hunting debate.
Where wrestlers will use anything available at ringside in their top-billed performances, be it a folding chair, a microphone stand or some other “foreign object” handed to them by their managers, so too are those involved in the debate over Proposal 3 pulling out all the stops — including taking advice and money from well-heeled national “managers.”
Arguments from the two sides at the Ludington Daily News’ local political forum ranged from accusations that doves are simply used for “target practice” in other states to charges that a bird in an anti-hunting television commercial isn’t dying, but is instead getting its groove on in a mating ritual.
Proposal 3 is not an initiative to create a dove hunt, according to Lee Zeidler of the Citizens for Wildlife Conservation Committee. Zeidler said Wednesday night that dove hunting in Michigan was created when the governor signed a bill approved in both the state House and Senate to create a three-year trial season in counties along Michigan’s southern border. After the three-year trial period, the Department of Natural Resources was to assess the hunt’s impacts on dove populations.
After one year, the hunt was halted by action of the group formerly known as Stop Shooting Doves. Because of the nature of the ballot proposal, the group is now known as the Committee To Restore the Dove Hunting Ban.
The Michigan Audubon Society supports the ban and Dana Schindler, the secretary of MAS’ board of directors, presented opposing views to Zeidler’s Wednesday night.
Zeidler said mourning doves are not even a songbird, according to the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Schindler said MAS, founded in 1904 and the state’s longest-surviving conservation organization, has always considered the mourning dove a songbird.
Schindler said most doves shot in other states — as many as one-third — are not retrieved.
Zeidler said it’s illegal in Michigan for a hunter to not retrieve his or her game.
While Zeidler said the opponents of dove hunting are being financed by the Humane Society of the United States, which has a well-defined anti-hunting agenda. But he admitted some portion of the pro-dove-hunting funds have come from the National Rifle Association and the United Sportsman’s Alliance. He stressed, however, that the majority of the funds have come from Michigan hunters who would like to see the season established.
While Schindler’s side states that the mourning dove was declared the state’s official “bird of peace” in the 1990s, Zeidler countered that the house resolution didn’t pass the senate and was not signed by the governor. Schindler said no governor ever signed legislation to make the apple blossom the state flower or the American robin the state bird.
Where dove hunting opponents have produced a television ad with a flopping — apparently dying — bird, Zeidler said the bird, according to DNR experts, was either tied to the ground and trying to fly away or exhibiting mating behavior.
Schindler expressed concerns that lead shot used for dove hunting could be used by other birds as grit and taken up into the food chain. She said injured birds could also be eaten by predators, noting that death by lead poisoning is slow and painful.
She quoted articles and letters to the editor of Michigan Out of Doors magazine noting that it takes “five or six” doves to make a meal for a person and that the birds were best served as hors d’oeuvres.
Concerns about the amount of lead shot dispersed over fields were also raised by Schindler.
“‘If you can bag a couple of doves for a box of shells, consider yourself normal,’” Schindler read, quoting outdoor writer Tom Huggler’s column in the magazine.
Zeidler said if lead shot is a problem, then all hunting should be banned because lead shot is used for almost all hunting in the state. Lead was banned for waterfowl hunting in the 1970s.
Zeidler said young doves can survive without parents at just a week old, while Schindler said doves need both parents to raise young birds, called squabs, to the age of flight because the time needed for adults to digest and regurgitate food is so long that the parents must work in shifts.
She said charges that doves can breed two to five times a season are overblown and confused with the mating seasons in warm-weather states. She said two broods per year is normal for Michigan.
Zeidler said Michigan doves are largely migratory and are hunted in 40 other states, including California and Hawaii. He said whether Michigan hunters hunt the birds or not, they will be shot by hunters. Schindler said the birds in Michigan are still breeding when Michigan’s dove season would be scheduled.
Zeidler said while doves may come to feeders, it’s illegal to shoot them at feeders just like it’s illegal to shoot a turkey that comes to a feeder. It’s illegal to hunt migratory birds over bait, he said later.
Schindler said while it may be illegal, she agreed with one long-time hunter who wrote to Michigan Out-of-Doors magazine that the law won’t stop children from donning camouflage, spreading extra corn over a field and picking the birds off with BB guns.
