Arizona’s Great Debate : Opponents Insist That Prop. 200 Is a Sly Attempt to Ban All Hunting, Fishing and Trapping, but Proponents Disagree

To many Arizona residents, Proposition 200 on next week’s ballot is more important than the Presidency. It’s a matter of life and death--not theirs, but the state’s wildlife.

The Wildlife Legislative Fund, a national pro-hunting group, states without reservation that Prop. 200 “bans all hunting, fishing and trapping in the state.”

Others suggest that if Prop. 200 were taken to extremes, someone could go to jail for setting a mousetrap, killing an ant or swatting a fly, let alone for molesting furry and finny creatures with bullet, bow or hook.

Whoa! say proponents. The intent of the proposition is to ban steel-jawed leg-hold and conibear (body-gripping) traps and other ghastly and lethal means of trapping or poisoning animals on public lands. Period.

Gil Shaw, the Phoenix lawyer who launched the initiative, said: “It’s reached hysterical proportions. If we were trying to outlaw hunting and fishing, we’ve done a poor job of it.”

Arizonans for Wildlife Conservation, headed by Joe Melton, a trapper, is leading the fight. Ironically, most of the other outspoken Prop. 200 opponents, from Gov. J. Fife Symington to former Sen. Barry Goldwater, favor banning steel-jawed traps.

But they don’t trust Shaw. They say that although his initiative may appear innocent, it’s a “Trojan Horse”--the words of an Arizona Republic editorial--loaded with animal rights forces poised to follow up.

Worse, the hunting and fishing interests fear, the “anti-hunter crazies,” as one Safari Club member characterized them, will have a groundswell of momentum: today Arizona, tomorrow the country.

The opponents remember California, where the animal-rights movement has cooled but only after threatening all hunting and outlawing the hunting of mountain lions while hunters had their backs turned.

The National Rifle Assn. was lobbying against gun control in Washington and Safari Club International was on safari when California passed Prop. 117 in 1990. This time those two organizations have turned their big guns on Arizona, joining the Mesa Varmint Callers, Timber Mesa Mountain Men and about 60 other state hunting and fishing clubs on the front lines to blow away Prop. 200.

Arizonans for Wildlife Conservation has raised more than $700,000 to beat Prop. 200. Additionally, the NRA planned to spend more than $300,000 but has been limited to only about $50,000 because President Bush and Ross Perot have bought out the TV and radio time. Shaw says he has raised only about $150,000--none of it from animal rights groups.

Wayne Pacelle, executive director of the Fund for Animals, based in Silver Spring, Md., said, “The people opposing it are the groups we usually fight. But we haven’t given a dime to it and we haven’t done any mailings. We haven’t gotten involved. . . . It hasn’t a shred to do with hunting or fishing.”

Six years ago, Larry Sunderland, a retired World War II bomber pilot, was walking his beagle, Duper, in the Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff when the dog stepped into a steel-jawed trap. Sunderland freed the dog but got stuck himself, suffering a superficial but painful injury.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department asked the Coconino County district attorney if Sunderland should be prosecuted for destroying another person’s trap. When the DA declined, the department dropped the matter.

Sunderland didn’t.

“Larry started stumping the state saying, ‘Do we really need these on public lands?’ ” Shaw said. “He came to me to look at the legalities.”

When they were unable to get satisfaction from the Arizona Game and Fish Commission or the state legislature, they sought enough signatures to get an initiative on the ballot. The first time they fell short; this time they made it.

“Arizonans didn’t know trapping was going on with these devices,” Shaw said. “Most were ashamed and outraged to find it even existed.”

The cause of the uproar is in the language of Prop. 200. Section 1 of the Declaration of Policy of Shaw’s original initiative stated: “We desire to manage our wildlife and protect our property by humane and non-lethal methods.”

Hunting, which is obviously lethal, has long been justified by its proponents as a proper tool of wildlife management. But in Section 2 Shaw wrote: “No restriction . . . shall prohibit the taking of wildlife with guns or other implements in hand . . . “

Shaw said, “If this bill passes, it wouldn’t even stop (other methods of) trapping. The box trap is still viable. That’s one of the things we were thinking of when we put in the phrase ‘humane and non-lethal methods.’ ”

But when the secretary of state’s office rewrote the initiative for the ballot it failed to make it clearer. In the Descriptive Title it exempts “from this ban the taking of wildlife with guns . . . “

And just below that, where voters will make their marks, it states: “A ‘yes’ vote will have the effect of . . . declaring a policy of humane, non-lethal wildlife management.”

Byron Lewis, who heads the Environmental and Natural Resources Section of the State Bar of Arizona, said, “Those two (statements) are inconsistent.”

Gordon Whiting, a rancher who is chairman of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, said, “How ambiguous it is, open to any kind of interpretation, makes it a legal nightmare. If they just intended to ban leg-hold traps, why isn’t that what they said?”

Apparently, they did just that in Ohio in 1980 and Oregon in ‘86--and those initiatives lost. Since then the Florida, New Jersey and Rhode Island legislatures have banned the traps, and Santa Cruz and Nevada Counties in California tried to do it on their own with successful county ballot measures. When the California Fish and Game Commission challenged them, Santa Cruz toned down its measure, but the Nevada County measure is in litigation.

Even opponents say that if Shaw had drafted a more straightforward initiative it would have a better chance of passing. A lot of hunters don’t like traps--perhaps fearing they might step in one themselves.

Kevin DeMenna, who is running the NRA’s Arizonans Against Prop. 200 campaign, said: “It was either clumsy or crafty drafting.”

Either way, the opponents aren’t taking any chances. Pat O’Brien, the Game and Fish Department administrative officer, said: “The department itself does not have a position. We’re restricted (by state law) from influencing voters on political (issues).”

But Game and Fish Director Duane Shroufe has been on TV almost as much as Perot, urging a no vote.

O’Brien said: “An individual is entitled to First Amendment rights, and (Shroufe) was asked to do so on his own time at his own expense and speaking for himself.”

The NRA has several anti-200 billboards up, and bumper stickers abound.

DeMenna said on the phone, “As I look out my window on Central Avenue in the heart of Phoenix, I can see two (bumper stickers), only one of which is on a pickup, which is real important. We’ve got ‘em on all the pickups.”

Legal opinion is divided on what will happen if Prop. 200 passes.

Frank X. Gordon, former chief justice of the state supreme court, adamantly maintains that it’s no threat to hunting or fishing. Paul Bender of the School of Law at Arizona State University agrees.

“It would not ban hunting or fishing,” Bender said. “The operative language is very clear. . . . The declaration of policy is a little ambiguous, but it’s not even going to be in there as part of the law.”

But opponents fear the Declaration of Policy will override the law portion as the “spirit” of the law.

“Not a chance,” Bender said. “There’s a real paranoia here about gun control and any regulation, but nobody should be afraid of this.”

Shaw called it “the hysterical big lie” and said even some opponents weren’t calling him an anti-hunter anymore.

“They found out that Gil Shaw was raised in Pine Top, Ariz., a little hunting and fishing community . . . grew up hunting and fishing. . . . So now they’re saying, OK, Gil Shaw’s a nice guy (but) he’s written a sloppy initiative.”

Shaw sees current opinion as a dead heat. Polls indicate that Prop. 200 will lose, leaving hunting and fishing and steel-jawed traps legal in Arizona.

Sorry, Duper, wherever you are.