Mississippi Deer Baiting Debate Continues

The state of Mississippi has been debating the issue of baiting deer and shooting deer over bait piles for some time. In early February, the House passed a deer baiting bill. In late March a baiting bill ended up on the governor’s desk. Last month the governor opted to sign a bill that would study the issue of deer baiting first.

Baiting gets into two issues, ethics and a useful tool for deer management. Generally the tool for management gets overlooked in order to debate the issue of ethics. I have jumped on that bandwagon myself on several occasions. As a matter of fact I discussed at length this issue pertaining to Mississippi in a previous blog post.

The other day I found another letter to the editor from a 60-year old gentleman from Mississippi sharing his take on deer baiting. He points out that he hunts strictly on his own land and does not hunt over bait. How he views the practice and those who do, you might find interesting.

Concerning bait, let people hunt however they want to in order to attain as much enjoyment as possible from the hunting experience. Whether they hunt with a shotgun or a slingshot is irrelevant to me, and I think the baiting issue should be just as much a matter of personal choice.

Hunting is expensive, and people don’t have the time that they used to to put into it. For these two reasons, and others, hunting is on the decline; we should be encouraging the sport, and not discouraging it.

I think to tell someone it is unethical and unsportsmanlike to bait for deer is about as ridiculous as telling a fisherman that he or she must fish with artificial bait instead of live bait because the live bait just makes it a little too unfair for the fish.

The writer’s attitude is to be commended in that he does not sit in judgment of those who choose to use tactics to hunt that are different than his own. He doesn’t even say whether he approves or disapproves of any of it. All he says is that for himself he opts not to bait. The good part about this is that he finds no need to become the god of the hunting ethics world and demand that others conform to his style of hunting.

I also liked his analogy of hunting and bait to suggesting that restrictions placed on live bait versus artificial bait for fishing would be likened. He is exactly right but I wonder if in his analogy he really understands that this same kind of sportsman exists today. He almost sounds like he doesn’t think anyone real fisherman would suggest such a thing. Well, I got news for the man from Mississippi. They are out there.

There are sportsmen that have become so self serving in their own choices of sport that they can only see their own methods as viable and ethical. How ridiculous.

Tom Remington