Anti-Hunters Plan Protest at Outdoors Exhibition

Animal-rights advocates say they will picket a sports and vacation exhibition at the Anaheim Convention Center today to protest what they call “the senseless killing of harmless animals.”

The protest will mark the second such incident involving animal-rights groups and the 23rd annual Sports, Vacation and RV Show at the convention center, which features booths and exhibits promoting hunting and other outdoor sporting activities.

Organizers said the annual show was expected to attract some 90,000 people over nine days. The show features more than 600 exhibitors, many of them promoting hunting gear.

Last week a group called Compassion for Animals was kicked out of its booth in the convention center for displaying books and videotapes highly critical of hunting. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge later rejected the organization’s request that convention organizers be forced to allow it back in for the remainder of the show.

Rejecting ‘Abuse’

The latest trouble for the exhibition, which ends today, came when another animal-rights group announced Saturday that it too would protest to “express our rejection of the abuse of all animals.”

“We have to make people aware of the crime of hunting,” said Bill Dyer, a theater producer and spokesman for Last Chance for Animals, another Los Angeles-based organization. “We just can’t accept that this goes on.”

Dyer said the two animal-rights organizations were not affiliated but that his group, like Compassion for Animals, “is against animal abuse in all its forms.”

“We had been planning this for about a week,” he said. “We’ll have flyers to hand out about hunting and trapping.”

Dyer said he was opposed to the promotion of any type of hunting, “particularly when these people go out and kill animals just to hang their heads on the wall.”

Incensed by Story

Dyer said he was particularly incensed when he read a feature story in The Times about Madleine Kay, a Woodland Hills woman who holds the world’s record for the largest hartebeest killed with a handgun.

Kay designs jewelry using some of the teeth, elephant ivory and claws from the animals that she kills, selling it for as much as $5,000. She has a booth at the Anaheim sports exhibition.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Dyer said. “It’s not like in the old days, when people hunted for food and survival. This is phony macho stuff, going out and killing harmless animals with big guns. You can kill them standing 1,500 feet away. They don’t eat them. They put them on their walls. It’s disgusting.”

Kay could not be reached for comment.

Dyer said the group had 300 dues-paying members and about 2,000 other “activists.” He said he did not know how many people would show up for the protest, which was set for 11:30 a.m.