The Ethics of Varmint Hunting

On occasion I find time to take my boys hunting for upland game birds, like pheasant and chukar partridge. We enjoy getting out in the far country under the big sky, working with the dogs and readying for the shot on the flush. I often miss my target, even with my big 12-gauge pattern (bad eyes), but my boys are crack shots, and despite using small gauge (2o) and bore (.410) shotguns, fill up their game pouches pretty quickly. We don't get to go often, but I must say our annual forays in the high country of Eastern Oregon make great memories. I've written about it here.

Given this, you would think a simple invitation to go hunting with a friend would not cause a problem for me. But it has. This friend has asked me to go "varmint hunting" with him on the wide public lands of Central Oregon.

A "varmint" is an animal that is not "game": in other words, people do not (commonly) eat a varmint. The animal thus serves no "purpose" for people, other than sometimes as a nuisance. The varmint may, however, serve a significant purpose on the animal food chain or in some other ecological role. Thus the term "varmint" is obviously a utilitarian construct or label that tells us as much about human eating habits and one's view of animal life as it does about the inherent worth of the animal. Which animals are varmints is also somewhat dependent on the locality. Common varmints include (non-endangered) rats, chipmunks, squirrels, groundhogs, rock chucks, prairie dogs, snakes, and lizards, and even larger creatures like coyotes, cougars, wolves and foxes. My friend has it in mind to shoot at sage rats and chipmunks, to be specific.

I was taught to shoot only that which I planned to eat. I do eat game birds. I'm not about to eat a rat. Should I hunt them?

1. I don't have a problem with hunting. I do eat meat, and by doing so I am (implicitly) concluding that it is justifiable that one animal (a chicken or cow or fish) die for the sake of the hunger of another, even if that other (me) had available to him non-meat choices to satiate his appetite. Animals dying for the sake of others strikes me (although obviously not everybody) as an ubiquitous aspect of the natural world. As intelligent creatures, we humans owe it to the animals we eat to end their life with a certain degree of mercy. (Some of the ways animals are killed at slaughterhouses, at least according to what I've read, are absolutely beyond the pale and should be abandoned in favor of more humane practices, regardless of the cost.) Taking an animal's life through gunshot (usually) imposes a quick death.

2. So, again speaking personally, the linking of hunting and eating makes sense. Only hunt that which you plan to eat. This is a common, perhaps even predominant, hunter perspective. But is it a correct one? The consequence of linking eating and hunting is that only people who have a taste for venison or elk meat may hunt deer or elk. In other words, if I try venison and don't like it, then I may not ethically hunt for deer. What if I'm allergic to venison, or plan to give the meat away and fail to find a recipient? Linking hunting and one's taste in meat seems odd. It also reflects a false reality, as it separates out and ignores the joy of hunting and the thrill of the chase as a reason to hunt. Under the view that eating justifies hunting, hunting is reduced to an uncommon and expensive way to put food on the table. Hunting to eat sounds like joyless work, and emphasizes one aspect of the sport that not one hunter I know will actually emphasize in any discussion of hunting. No one says something about killing enough deer or birds to feed his family; we talk about technical competence or unbending determination, not meat.

3. I suspect that hunting has been ethically justified by hunters as "food-provision" in order to fend off the objections of those who view hunting as an ethically indefensible sport. Indeed, hunting groups noticeably go to great lengths to describe and define the act of killing an animal as "harvesting," implicitly alluding to the food-provision benefit of the sport, with the obvious parallel to everyday meat slaughter and consumption. But although this defense may temporarily succeed in muting opposition, it's a false one and all hunters know it. Providing meat is merely a collateral benefit, at best. Hunting is not glorified farming or another way to go grocery shopping; calling hunting "harvesting" does hunting a disservice. It sells it short. Hunting is fun, and that fun occurs in the field, not when the meat is put on the table.

4. Hunting groups commonly bemoan the diminishing number of young hunters, and worry that our next generation will lose touch with the deep satisfaction that a hunting trip brings. Is it any wonder? What kid would want to go harvesting? All hunters know that hunting is fun regardless of whether an animal is taken or even a shot is fired. In other words, hunting is a blast even when nothing is harvested. So hunting cannot be about harvesting; it's about the stalk and the chase, the competence, the skill, and the (occasional) reward. I know of good hunters who hunt for years without once harvesting a deer. But they still love hunting.

5. If hunting were about harvesting and eating, there are a lot easier and cheaper ways of getting food on the table. U.S. grocery stores are packed with the most popular meats. One cannot so easily purchase true game meats, but no matter what people say, game meats are not as good as regular meats, at least not in the general case. Proof: the stores don't stock venison and quail. If one day people thought quail to be better than chicken, then the stores' provisions would change. People who have a preference for game meats over regular meats remain in the minority, obviously. Linking hunting to eating, and saying that only people who like the taste of game meats may (ethically) hunt for those respective game animals is a perfect recipe for shrinking the size of the hunting population. You're shooting yourselves in the foot, hunters. Stop saying you hunt for food. You hunt to hunt. At least I do.

6. I do eat what I kill, but I'd rather have a chicken than a chukar. Both are good to eat, but I can't say it's a desire to substitute chukar for chicken that impels me out with my shotgun. I can say that I'm hunting to eat and will eat what I kill, but that justification is contrived. If it's food I want, I go to the grocer.

7. All of which raises a problem: if hunters really don't hunt for food (food being a nice side-product of hunting, at best), then why do hunters hunt? Let's be honest everyone: hunters hunt for pleasure. Hunting is a very full pleasure, to be sure. But inescapably one part of hunting (not the only part, maybe not the essential part, but still a significant part) is killing. If it is permissible to kill an animal for food (and I argue it is), is it permissible to kill an animal for sport? May we kill an animal for pleasure, not necessity, not even contrived necessity?

8. Let me try to answer my own question by first qualifying it. Hunters do not take pleasure from the killing. We take pleasure from the preparation, practice, skill, stalk and so forth, in the context of which the killing forms an inevitable, climactic part. I would analogize the kill to the photographer who captures an image of a rare animal: the photographer's satisfaction with the beautiful image would include not just an appreciation of the image itself, but a fond recollection of the effort and skill that went into capturing that image. In that sense hunters speak of successful kills as "trophies," mementos of individual achievement. Indeed, hunters take pride in their kills being accomplished as efficiently and humanely as possible, with one well-placed shot that effects a death without non-mortal wounding or suffering. Killing is not the pleasure; hunting is.

9. With that qualification, I won't shy away from my question. Although killing is not the pleasurable aspect of the hunt, it is part of the pleasure of the hunt, and thus fairly raises the question about killing animals for pleasure. Varmint hunting is nothing but pleasure, in the sense that no arguments about harvesting apply. Rather than justify the sport on the basis of pleasure, varmint hunters usually employ another justification: self-defense. Varmints can cause problems: they can uproot farmers' fields, kill livestock (or injure them, by digging holes in pastures), carry diseases, and decimate the populations of "desirable" wildlife (songbirds, for instance). These arguments work for farmers and ranchers, who are justified in defending their property. But what about my invitation: to go out on the public lands, find rats and just start shooting? One could search for similar utilitarian arguments: by shooting a bunch of chipmunks, I would be helping restore or maintain the population balance that nature intended, were the natural predators of these critters (owls and the like) not so scarce. Or I could say I'm helping to diminish the population to better stretch the limited food supply for these animals. But for me to claim that position as my own suggests to me that I need to do a lot of research and thinking about the "right" number of chipmunks or sage rats that should be running around on the forest floor, and would require me to have some clear idea that the present number is too high. I'm not going to pretend to know all of that.

10. I could argue that I am justified in relying on the state to do that calculation for me: by its hunting regulations, states impliedly exert control over the populations of game animals and varmints. When the State of Oregon declares a perpetual open season on sage rats (as it has) the state (one hopes) has done some measurement and concluded that perpetual hunting is necessary to maintain wildlife balance in the public lands and to prevent a undesirable build-up of the nuisance rat population on the ranches and farms that border the public lands. I'll admit I'm not sure of this self-defense rationale: it works for farmers and ranchers shooting in their fields, but is a little less convincing in the context of the vast national forests of Oregon. Unlike my usual clarity of purpose (often wrong, never in doubt), on this one I'll have to wait a bit to respond to the invitation.

Book Notes: Dream Golf

Dream Golf: The Making of Bandon Dunes, by Stephen Goodwin (Algonquin, 2006)

To understand Bandon Dunes and appreciate this book, you have to allow me to tell you a golf story. I hate golf stories and I never tell them because they are interesting only for the participants. But I hope this story transcends the genre. It's a story of how I struck five consecutive perfect shots and made a bogey. It's a story I or any number of golfers could tell about Bandon. If you can't see yourself in this story, Bandon Dunes is not for you.

Hole number six at Pacific Dunes is a short and straight par 4. The skinny green, just a few yards wide, is perched on top of a steep hilltop, protected on the left by an absolutely huge sand bunker (probably 20 feet high) and on the right by a slick hillside that takes any ball that rolls to its upper edge on a speedy roll to its bottom, about fifteen or twenty feet below the green. The fairway is very wide, but any tee shot to the left side is dead, due to the sand bunker. Even a straight ball from the tee can be a problem. The proper angle is to take your tee shot way over to the right, hitting directly at (and one hopes over) a large, high-banked bunker that dominates the hillside on the right.

The wind was up and in our face, but I've played here a lot, and before our annual trip I work on keeping everything low, not easy for me since my natural ball is high. I take my drive way right and it barely clears the lip of the bunker, leaving me a perfect look at the green only eighty or so yards away. I lie one. Here I make a small mistake in choosing my next shot. I should have tried a low line drive, landing the ball on the upslope to the green. Instead I take a wedge and hit it just like I planned, but I let the ball get just a little higher than the top of the hill. Big mistake at Bandon. The ball gets pushed back just a little, landing on the green short and left. This is bad. The slope of the hillside trickles the ball over the edge of the green and the ball doesn't stop until it's at the very bottom of one of the steepest and largest bunkers I've ever seen. I see the bottom of my buddy's golf shoes as he gives me the direction for my next shot. I lie two.

Now this sand shot has to go about straight up in the air and land just past the top edge of the bunker. A bit short, and it's back at my feet; even slightly long, and the ball will roll to the bottom of the opposite bank, leaving me with a shot so difficult that we Bandon regulars talk about it frequently. So I practice the swing, hinge my wrists, and force myself to complete the shot before looking up at it. And it works, the ball shooting straight up in the air and coming down softly right over the bunker's top. It's a once-in-lifetime shot, at least for me. I'm just a hacker like most of you, but I have my moments, and this is one of them. My friends are exclaiming, yelling at the ball to release and trickle slowly toward the hole. Their tone changes suddenly, and they now ask the ball to sit. It doesn't. The slick green and shaved hillside take the ball to the very bottom of the other side. I'm in a spot from where I've made a snowman. I once played with a guy who went bunker, hill bottom, bunker, hill bottom. For his next shot he took a wedge and hit it back to the nearby fairway, from where he got up and down. This is a hard, hard shot. I'm twenty yards off the green and I lie three.

The play here will surprise you. A chip is out of the question. Bandon's famous tight lies prohibit your sliding anything with a flange under the ball, and even a lob wedge risks a skull. A bump and run is plausible, but any shot, even with a lob wedge, that puts the ball in the air brings Bandon's ocean winds into play, leaving your ball out of control. The correct shot is the putt. Just hit it through the grass and up the hill. A touch too soft and you'll have to hit it again; even a smidgen too hard and you'll have to hit the sand explosion of a lifetime for the second time in ten minutes. Words can't describe the difficulty of this shot. This is Bandon, where the bluster of the winds and the vagaries of the dunes demand putting from fairways, rough and even sand traps. So I guess at the speed, hit it firmly, and up the hill it goes, coming to a stop about eight feet above the hole, but on the green. You could drop a bucket of balls at the bottom of that hill and not put more than a couple on the green. Yet I'm on, and I lie four.

Some putts at Bandon can't be made. The greens are so fast and have so many tricky breaks that even a good putter from the wrong position may have to grind to three-jack. It's not just the execution, it's the reads. Sometimes we splurge and play with a caddie (a real treat). Their value lies not so much in hoofing the clubs or raking the sand, but in directing the drives, refusing to hand you your wedges from the fairways, and pointing at the line to astonished golfers. It can't go there. But it does, and figuring that out (or believing your caddie) is half the battle. I study this downhill eight-footer, and see a double break, first left, then right, toward the ocean. I touch it, and it wobbles as planned, tumbling into the hole. Had it missed, I'd have had a ten-footer back up, easily. But in it went, and my pals congratulate on my bogey. Two members of my group made par, just driving it right, running the ball up on the green, and two-putting from below the hole. But my hole was better.

This book is, at bottom, an uncritical tribute to a man (Mike Keiser) and his vision. It's a tribute well-deserved. Bandon Dunes is a special place, easily the best place I've ever had a chance to play. The (so far) three courses at the resort present difficult holes, but doable, with no single way to play them. I've hit drivers from the tee and putters from the fairway, three woods on wind-gusting par threes of fewer than 150 yards, and wedges from farther away going in the other direction. Really Bandon shouldn't be called a resort. Everything about the place says golf, and frankly it says golf with men in mind: the colors, surfaces, weather and ruggedness of Bandon seems to twang some strings deep within the male soul. (Bandon's famous "Bunker Bar," with very good Scotch, a stuffed cigar humidor, more than one poker table, a pool table, and whatever sports game up on the screens, twangs something too.) Last time I played there, in a group of 24, on the last day the weather was so rough, with howling winds and sideways rain, that every one of us but two turned back. My buddy and I had the time of our lives, and actually played well. Every once in a while, really as often as I can, I like to close the law books and get away for some of the fun that makes living in Oregon an easy choice, although one not everyone understands: hunting with my boys, fishing with my fishing buddies, a dirt bike ride in the mountains. A golf trip to Bandon comes in at the top of that list. Playing there connects you up with something elemental.

The Problem with NFL Player Agents

The NFL Players Association recently found itself in front of a Congressional committee over its suspension of agent Carl Poston. Poston is the agent who mishandled linebacker Lavar Arrington's contract with the Washington Redskins, leading to the apparent forfeiture of a six-million dollar bonus. Poston's was a problem of ineptitude, not honesty. But the latter has been an issue too. The NFLPA also had a problem with agent Tank Black, who when last heard from was being sentenced to five years federal time for swindling money from his player-clients. Why does the NFLPA seem to have so much trouble with (certain of) its agents? Why do the agents for Major League Baseball players seem so effective and ethical, by comparison? What can be done?

Pay the NFLPA agents more money, that's what.

1. Let's start with baseball. Lots of pages have been devoted to weepy tributes to America's pastime. Baseball, it is said, hearkens back to our pastoral history, to the uniquely American sense of open fields and grassy, flat spaces. Unlike the time-regulated sports of basketball or football, baseball with its potentially limitless contests brings to mind the endless summer afternoon. Maybe. But baseball is uniquely American in another way: with very few formal limitations, its players can hire virtually anybody to serve as an agent in negotiating a contract. (Although the MLBPA does require agents to be certified, certification requirements are minimal.) In addition, the agents are free to charge players what the market will bear for their services. You get it: a free market.

2. As a result of this free market in baseball agents, we have some very wealthy player agents, most notably Scott Boras, who routinely grants media interviews from his mansion overlooking the Pacific. But the presence and success of Boras sets a bar for other baseball agents, and the bar is a high one. Boras serves his clients with vigor, relying on modern statistical analysis, thorough preparation and glossy presentation to sell his players to bidding teams. I don't know the man personally, and maybe we wouldn't be friends if we met (TSLP lays way back, whereas from all accounts Boras doesn't, not at all), but if I were a professional baseball player looking to maximize my earnings from a short career, Boras would certainly be tops on my list of preferred agents. Other baseball agents, if they want to compete with Boras and make Boras-style money, have to deliver representation of equal or superior competence.

3. Now let's check out the NFLPA. Like most unions, the NFLPA claims to be the exclusive bargaining agent for NFL players. No problem with that. The problem is this: unlike its baseball counterparts, the NFLPA doesn't trust the free market. It doesn't allow its players to select their own representatives (at least not as easily: the NFLPA has a pretty serious certification process, with obligatory continuing education obligations). More importantly, it doesn't allow the players and their selected agents to agree to a price for the agent's services. Instead, agent compensation is capped at three percent of the contract value, or even less, in certain circumstances. See here, if you want to read the nitty-gritty.

4. Should it surprise us if a talented, industrious and effective sports agent, looking to profit from his work, opts to represent baseball players instead of football players? Why should the NFLPA set a price that it knows will tend to drive the best agents to other sports?

5. How do NFL agents compete for players? In baseball, Boras and his ilk show the players their organizational competence and marketing acumen. See this story from ESPN magazine, describing Boras' wooing of a young Alex Rodriguez. In football, of course some of the same goes on. But football agents must operate closer to the margin, making the kind of bells and whistles Boras has on hand marginally less affordable. A uniform price ceiling prevents a player from paying more for better representation, even if he wants to. Players can't pay for the best even if they want to. All of which leaves player agents competing with each other selling players on less important goods, such as friendship or relationships or what have you. Is it any wonder football players are notably famous for picking agents on the basis of a perceived compatibility (such as friendship or shared backgrounds) that probably has little payoff in terms of contract value? On what other basis can football agents compete? How can player agents say they're the best if they don't charge (and maintain) a fee that would tell players they are the best?

6. The NFLPA's limitation on the number of agents and its ceiling on the prices agents may charge has another problematic consequence: it leads to ethics problems. Limiting the profit an agent may collect from a single player means that the agent, to make money, has to spread himself thin. Lots of clients; volume sales; quantity over quality. At the same time, players compete for a finite number of roster positions. Effectively diminishing the number of agents means more agents will represent more than one player who might be suitable for a particular job opening. In addition, because the NFLPA rules promote volume sales, the necessity for those agents who survive in the industry is to take on as many clients as feasible, not just to make money, but also to be perceived as an important or effective representative. Most agents can't devote tons of resources and time to representing a small handful of players: there's not enough money in it. So agents have to become prominent to attract clients and survive; prominence is ensured by a long client list.

7. The 3% compensation limitation causes another problem: for some would-be agents, a guaranteed three percent of a lucrative NFL contract might be overpayment. These substandard agents might try to sell their inferior goods for more than they're worth: the NFLPA stipulated maximum in effect sets an artificial price for all representations. Indeed, it is not uncommon in the NFL for player agents to represent rookies for free, as a loss leader for subsequent representation when the stipulated rookie deal expires. One could see this practice and think that the player agents are nice people. One could also see this as predatory pricing aimed to try to up the barriers to entry for those agents selling lemons (and to keep out all agents, as again survival in the NFL depends in part on volume). Maybe this predation works. Or maybe the lemon-sellers re-target their enticements to players at the end of their rookie contracts instead of at the beginning. The fixed agent fee makes it difficult for players to assess the quality of agents: the best predictor of quality (a higher price) is precluded. Fixed fees draw to the NFL exactly those agents who will want to take advantage of the players' comparative inability to distinguish the good from the bad.

8. I understand the NFLPA's motivation: it wants to save its players as much money as possible. Indeed, the PA may look to the plethora of credentialed agents and think its system and compensation limits are sufficiently generous to attract numerous agents and ensure adequate contract bargaining representation to its players. But this belief assumes one fact, erroneously: it assumes that the players, not the owners, are the ones paying the agents, and that the percentage agent fees come from the player. Not so, at least not probably. Assume the NFLPA is "successful" in generating wages above market wages (else, why have a union?). Some players are more important than others; starting football players are for the most part rather unique athletes; perhaps the reserves are more interchangeable. Put another way, the demand for star players is clearly inelastic (hard to find a substitute). Where teams cannot find a substitute, then the bulk of the agent's fee will be borne by the team (since the player has more negotiating leverage); the opposite is the case where demand is elastic, as would be the case for comparatively fungible special-team players. The result of all this is that teams, not players, bear most of the cost of paying agents precisely in those cases where the NFLPA would probably fear the agent's compensation would be unconscionably high: with star players drawing large contracts. Only where players earn compensation at or just above the mandated minimum wage are agents effectively paid out of the pockets of players. (Interestingly, it is here, with respect to minimum wage players, that the Major League Baseball PA prohibits agents from collecting a fee; a similar restriction could protect journeymen NFL players as well.)

9. But to the free market the NFLPA will not turn. Instead, in the wake of recent scandals and Congressional oversight, the football union will likely adopt more certification and continuing education requirements and more limits on the ability of players to contract freely with agents. Further regulation will only create additional costs to entry, exacerbating the NFLPA's problem. The NFLPA should try to draw the best agents to professional football, not push them away.