Hunters are environmentalists Media Coverage, Montana, Skeptics

Thanks to leftinthewest.com for the tip.

I didn't pick this up the first time I read "Top Billings," but it was something that George Ochenski didn't:

The beauty of the access issue was three-fold. First, it helped Schweitzer make inroads with the constituency of outdoorsmen that is normally Democrat-averse.

Second, it let us speak to both left-leaning environmentalists, who wanted public lands and wildlife herds maintained, and right-leaning outdoorsmen, who wanted a place to recreate and a steady population of game to hunt. This was especially important because we did not want to alienate the enviros who would be out in force on election day to vote against an initiative to permit cyanide leach mining. Stern, who had a deft sense of strategy, once pointed out, “Hunters can be some of the biggest environmentalists around, even though they don't think of themselves that way and would never in a million years label themselves that.”

Third, it was an issue that would ultimately help us tie Brown in Republican-leaning Gallatin County, one of the fastest growing counties in America. Like other Rocky Mountain exurbs, Gallatin had seen an influx of new residents looking to live in an area with outdoor recreation. Targeting these new residents and making them Democratic voters early were key not only to the election at hand, but also for building a majority for the long haul.

Ochenski, in his column, goes on for several paragraphs, pointing out leaders of the Montana environmental movement that are also hunters and fishers. Such as:

...John Gatchell, the conservation director for the Montana Wilderness Association, goes out every year to bag his deer or elk. Chef Boy Ari, the Indy’s food columnist, munches on antelope, whitetail and mule deer that he brought down and processed with his own hands. Indy photographer Chad Harder bagged his whitetail buck on opening day and is now off chasing elk in southwest Montana’s extended season.

And, so on and so on. Ochenski's point is that in Montana, and I would expand that across the West, real environmentalists are people that feel a real, every day connection to the environment. These are people that see the places worth preserving as being not only a nice back drop to their lives, a part of their personal well being and quality of life, but as human habitat. They would have a hard time living, literally, if timber companies were to move in and clear cut over a stream, or WalMart paved over a wetland.

Ochenski does this because he reads that David Sirota is drawing a hard line between hunters, who might vote like environmentalists, but would never call themselves that, and actual environmentalists. And, Sirota seems to think that if a hunter would walk into a bar and admit himself to be an environmentalist, he might as well wip out his PETA and ACLU card.

With the hunters and fishers I know, it would take them about two sentences in a conversation to admit to being environmentalists. I know this isn't how people react to political campaign messages, but the difference between Johnny Deer Hunter and Bobby Suburu Outback with the Kayak, isn't that much.

Emmett O'Connell | December 27, 2004 | Comment on This Post (0 so far) Permalink: Hunters are environmentalists Media Coverage, Montana, Skeptics

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