A HUNTER'S APOLOGIA

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In the cities, meat comes neatly packaged in bled-out chunks that are unrecognizable, unless you make an effort to think about it, as pieces of something that once lived and breathed and, we can only hope, enjoyed its life before being knocked on the head with a hammer gun, eviscerated, skinned and dismembered to feed us. Under these euphemized circumstances it's easy, even natural, to wall ourselves away from the hard and undeniable fact that life, all life, feeds on life.

"I feel absolutely unabashed by the arguments of other carnivores who get their meat in plastic with blue numbers on it. I've seen slaughterhouses . . ."

In the country, however, a good many people still raise all or part of their food, meat included, perhaps watching a calf or shoat or lamb or bunny or chick getting itself born and growing and playing and sharing affection with its mother and siblings, then having to kill and butcher that same animal come the harvest moon.

To these people, hunting wild animals is no greater a sin than slaughtering the tame, but a natural and wholesome part of living. Of course, not all hunters hunt solely to eat, but offer other social and moral justifications for the activity. The first is economics. Virtually all wildlife protection, restoration and management programs have been and continue to be paid for by hunters, via the sale of hunting licenses and special programs such as Pittman-Robertson.

The Pittman-Robertson (P-R) Program—formally titled the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act—was conceived and sponsored by conservationist-hunters and signed into law by President Roosevelt (one of their number) in 1937. Through the levying of a manufacturers' excise tax, currently set at 11 % on the sale of sporting arms, ammunition and bowhunting gear, and 10% on handguns, P-R provides major funding for wildlife recovery and management programs. During its first 47 years, 1939 to 1986, P-R generated $1,650,683,612—that's more than $1.65 billion. P-R funds are distributed to state wildlife agencies to help (in the words of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) "restore wildlife habitat, conduct needed research, transplant species to areas where conditions favor their revival, and educate hunters in safety and outdoor ethics. Nongame and endangered species are among those which have benefited.

" Another vital service of Pittman-Robertson has been the fostering of professionalism in state wildlife agencies. This is accomplished by placing stringent standards on recipient states. Foremost, states may not divert their own wildlife funds (raised primarily through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses) to nonwildlife uses. Additionally, recipient states must employ wildlife personnel who are trained and competent in their fields, effectively rescuing these important jobs from the political-appointment arena. Unarguably, P-R has been a godsend to American wildlife. But an even more important income generator for state wildlife agencies is the sale of hunting licenses, especially the pricey nonresident big-game licenses. (A nonresident Colorado elk tag, for example, currently goes for $210.25.) It comes as a surprise for many taxpayers to learn that in no state are wildlife agencies substantially supported by general tax funds (the total contribution from general tax funds here in Colorado, for example, is a token $1). Forced to be self-supporting, state wildlife agencies must sell a large number of hunting and fishing licenses in order to maintain viable management and law-enforcement programs. This situation has led to accusations by antihunting factions that state and federal wildlife agencies are operating "game farms" for hunters.

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