Laws prohibiting the “harassment” of hunters are on the books across the United States. Often, in practice, they raise the question: Who’s harassing who?

In Pennsylvania, attorney Jan Haagensen was arrested for “hunter harassment” after telling hunters to stay off her property. Haagensen, ironically, was the one who called the police. The American Civil Liberties Union helped Haagensen overturn her conviction.

In South Carolina, trespassing by hunters with dogs made Kathy Andrews afraid to walk her sprawling rural lands. She attempted to collect evidence, finding a tracking device from a hunting dog's collar on her property. Authorities tracked the device to where she worked and arrested Andrews for theft. The charges were dropped when the county magistrate ruled that the collar had been obtained as evidence without a requisite search warrant.

Marquette University professor and documentary filmmaker Joseph Brown, who works with Wolf Patrol, a conservation movement that recognizes the role of citizens in developing wolf-management practices. Brown had his filming equipment seized by Forest County sheriff’s deputies in Wisconsin, who believed Brown’s footage included a hunter repeatedly bumping a member of Wolf Patrol with his pickup truck.

Brown and members of Wolf Patrol still fear arrest and have stopped filming, despite a circuit court ruling in Brown’s favor. It found that Wisconsin’s hunter harassment laws indeed pose a chilling effect and violate the First Amendment.

West Virginia and Michigan’s hunter harassment laws stipulate that subsequent violations within two years can result in one year of jail time.

Legislators in Minnesota crafted legislation so that a person intending to violate cannot enter or remain on public or private lands without property owner permission. A person can be arrested in Indiana if an officer “has reasonable grounds to believe” the person has engaged in or intends to engage in conduct on specific premises. Similarly, Arkansas hunters may obtain an injunction if they can show that their activities have been, and may be, threatened again.

In Ohio, I was arrested and put through criminal court for violating the state’s vague hunter harassment statute. I was on the residential property of a close neighborhood friend, near where a permitted bow hunter sat in his treestand just 400 feet from a middle school and in close proximity to our homes in Seven Hills, Ohio. I was doing nothing when the police arrived and nabbed me.

Through records obtained through discovery, I learned that the arresting officer told the hunter, who was from out of state, to call his private cell if he felt bothered. That officer, solely responsible for inspecting hunting treestands and approving archery permits in our community, also hunted there. One month after my arrest, the hunter returned, impaled a deer, then lost track of her after she’d run out in front of my vehicle, pumping out blood, and disappeared.

Though I won on appeals because the required statement of facts was ignored at sentencing, the federal case that would have directly challenged the statute’s unconstitutionality was lost, not on its merits, but due to counsel’s neglect.

The year before my arrest, I had organized a community referendum against bow hunting. But the city quashed the board certified petition through a bogus “emergency ordinance.” I filed a civil suit, and won on appeals.

Government protections of hunters keep people from speaking up or even using their own lands. I couldn’t stop the police-protected, sanctioned violence against animals and people in my community. No one should have to.

Advocates for a preserved environment for wildlife should seek reform. State agencies should be restructured to include broad-based stakeholders, not just hunters.

_____

Lucy McKernan writes about all things wildlife, including governance reform, conducts public presentations on bird conservation, and tutors rambunctious teenagers in the Cleveland area. T his column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

_____

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.