By Todd Schaller, WWA Vice President & Education Committee Chair
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s December, 2023 Newsletter edition.
In the December WWA newsletter we touched on hunting ethics and introduced three questions on ethical decision making from expert Kenneth Blanchard. The questions may help hunters wade through the gray areas of decision making in the situations we often face while waterfowl hunting.
- Is it legal?
- Is it fair to all involved, both long and short term?
- How will it make me feel about myself? or, How would I feel if my decision was published on social media or in the local newspaper?
While the process of these three questions is easy, working through these questions within the situations you face while hunting can be challenging.
We’ll give it a try with a situation most hunters have experienced: you arrive at your desired hunting location and another hunter is already set-up there or very near this location. While it would be legal to set up there as well, or to ask the other hunter to leave, I think most would agree that those actions wouldn’t be fair to all involved (particularly the other hunter) and certainly wouldn’t be a hit within the social media world.
Possible solutions:
- Inquire if you could hunt together,
- move to a different location that provides enough space for both of you to enjoy a quality hunt, or
- head back home.
How about a wounded bird sailing into an adjacent cattail bog? Legally we’re required to “make a reasonable effort to retrieve” our game. The ethical dilemma now becomes, what does the “reasonable effort” look like? Which really gets into, “is it fair to all involved?” (particularly the wounded bird) and “how will it make me feel about myself?”
Most hunters would expect that an ethical hunter will travel to the location the wounded bird flew into as soon as possible and look for his/her game. The quality of the search may vary within the conditions (water depth, dog, vegetation density, etc.).
Let’s say you searched but cannot find the bird. Now the next step of this ethical dilemma is, do you consider the bird as part of your daily bag limit even if you can’t locate it? While you’re not legally obligated to, some hunters feel that this is the right ethical decision. This thought process falls under question number three of the Blanchard method, basing their decision on how it makes them feel and their belief on whether it is fair to all involved, knowing the bird will not survive.
This ethical thinking aligns with the Aldo Leopold quote, “Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching – even when doing the wrong thing is legal”.
While we often speak of hunting ethics or ethical hunting, in the end it is an individual’s value statement that reflects back onto themselves, and on hunters in general.
I’m sorry this series on ethics and hunting didn’t provide the perfect roadmap (I’m not sure it exists), but I hope it has given readers something to think and talk about during the off season.
If you have an ethical hunting situation you would like to share or have discussed in a future article, contact Todd Schaller at c217tazman@gmail.com.