DNR's silence deafening

One doesn’t have to be a hunter to understand that hunting has its own set of ethics, rules of sportsmanship and behavior.
That’s why things like baiting deer are out of bounds.
And that’s why canned hunts, where farm-raised deer are kept within a high-fenced area for the pleasure of high-rollers looking for a trophy, rankle thoughtful hunters. They know unsportsmanlike behavior when they see it.
And yet the Indiana General Assembly is advancing a bill that would expand captive hunting in the Hoosier state.
House Bill 1265 was passed out of committee this week on an 8-4 vote.
The bill would clear up the legality of four existing fenced-in hunting sites and set up guidelines for new operators to follow suit.
That vote came in spite of testimony in opposition from the Indiana Deer Hunters Alliance and other nature organizations.
“It’s just plain unethical to shoot tame deer in a pen and call it sportsmanship,” Chuck Baker of the Izaak Walton League of America told Niki Kelly, Statehouse reporter for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
There’s also concern that growth in the number of hunting preserves would increase the risk of chronic-wasting disease among deer in Indiana.
But there’s big money involved, and the operators of high-fenced hunting preserves apparently have friends in high places.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which has been at the forefront of the fight to end such practices, has suddenly gone mute on the issue.
The DNR’s silence is deafening.
And that raises a whole new set of ethical issues. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]