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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: October 2007

"Future of Hunting" TV show and future of hunting itself in question

 

BENNINGTON, Vt.--Vermont Supreme Court Justice Brian Burgess on October 5, 2007 amended the conditions of release for The Future of Hunting cable television show host Kevin M. Hoyt, 37, who on August 27, 2007 pleaded innocent to felony charges of lewd and lascivious conduct.

The Future of Hunting features expenses-paid "dream hunts" by children. Recent episodes were reportedly taped in Alabama, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Hoyt, according to a September 2005 profile by Pam Belluck of The New York Times, "quit a job as a structural steel draftsman a few years ago and decided to dedicate himself to getting children across the country interested in hunting. Hoyt, a father of five children under age 13, says he is committed to recruiting younger hunters."

Hoyt boasted to Belluck that, "My youngest child was with me when he was 2 months old and I shot a deer with a muzzle loader. He was in a backpack. I was stuck home baby-sitting and I felt like hunting."

Belluck followed Hoyt, a nine-year-old Massachusetts girl, and her father on an unsuccessful bear hunt in southern Vermont.

"The new conditions will prohibit Hoyt from having contact with children under age 16 unless another adult is present, regardless of whether parents have granted permission," said Bennington Banner staff writer Neal Goswami. "Hoyt must also give written notice of parental approval to the state," before associating with children, Goswami continued. "The parents must also be notified, in writing, of the charges Hoyt is facing."

Hoyt was arrested on August 13, two weeks after Bennington police detective Peter Urbanowicz and Vermont Department of Children & Families investigator Kyle Hoover began probing an allegation that Hoyt sexually molested a nine-year-old girl at his home in 2005. Urbanowicz filed an affidavit stating that the girl told him she was at Hoyt's home playing hide-and-seek with one of his relatives, according to Patrick McArdle of the Rutland Herald.

The incident lasted about three minutes, the girl told Urbanowicz. Frightened, she never returned to the house, but only managed to tell her sister what had happened two years later. Her sister told their mother, who approached the police. The victim of the alleged molestation reportedly provided an accurate description of the house, which is no longer Hoyt's residence.

At arraignment Hoyt asked through attorney Daniel McManus that he be allowed to have supervised contact with children in order to continue The Future of Hunting series, recounted Goswami. Ruling that hunting trips could not be supervised appropriately, Bennington District Court Judge David Howard denied the request, but District Court Judge Katherine Hayes in September 2007 allowed Hoyt to have contact with children under the age of 16 with parental permission.

"Deputy Bennington County State's Attorney Christina Rainville appealed the conditions, saying they were insufficient to protect children in the community," wrote Goswami. "Rainville also argued that the condition requiring parents to be notified of the charges against Hoyt were unenforceable."

"Hoyt is well-known in the Bennington County area for his efforts to bring more young people into hunting," said McArdle. "Earlier in 2007, he was the featured speaker at the University of Vermont 4H Shooting Sports Jamboree, a shooting competition for young people, hosted in Shaftsbury."

Hoyt's web site, <www.thefutureofhunting.com>, features photos of himself with children, including his own, in hunting camoflauge, and lists 33 "sponsor links." Among them are Buckmasters and the National Shooting Sports Federation. Most are hunting-related businesses.

"With his wife Heather supporting the family by working from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. at a veterans' home and a Wal-Mart, Hoyt devotes himself to his mission," Belluck wrote, "asking for donations of services from outfitters, taxidermists, hunting guides and others. This month," September 2005, "he plans to drive his camouflage-tattooed Toyota Tacoma truck to dream hunts for deer, elk, bison, or pronghorn antelope" in seven states plus Saskatchewan, Canada.

"He intends to sleep in his truck," Belluck said, "and not return home until Thanksgiving."

Despite the effort and investment, The Future of Hunting does not appear to have been hugely successful. The Future of Hunting web site mentions exposure through many hunting magazines and radio broadcasts, but the program was last aired by the host station, Catamount Access Television in Bennington, in April 2007, McArdle found. Hoyt also produced a 40-minute video about deer hunting at the CAT-TV studios, called WWO Smackdown. This, McArdle said, was broadcast several times in July 2007.

CAT-TV executive director Judy Murphy told McArdle that Hoyt was never an employee of the station, and only had the same use of facilities and air time as other producers of public access material.

The missing link

ANIMAL PEOPLE was published from Shushan, New York, and printed in Bennington, Vermont from 1992 to 1996. Noticing unusually high rates of both hunting participation and prosecuted sexual abuse of children in the region, ANIMAL PEOPLE investigated the possibility of a cultural relationship by comparing the rates of hunting participation and crimes against children in all 232 counties of New York, Ohio, and Michigan.

In 21 of 22 New York counties of almost identical population density, the county with the most hunters also had the most prosecuted sexual abuse of children.

Ohio counties with more than the median rate of hunting license sales had 51% more reported child abuse, including 33% for sexual abuse and 82% more neglect.

Michigan children were nearly three times as likely to be neglected and twice as likely to be physically abused or sexually assaulted if they lived in a county with above average hunting participation.

Michigan as of 1994 sold twice as many hunting licenses per capita as upstate New York, but had seven times the rate of convicted child abuse, and twice as high a rate of sexual assault on children.
ANIMAL PEOPLE concluded that the data supported a hypothesis that both hunting and child abuse reflect the degree to which a social characteristic called dominionism prevails in a particular community.

Yale University professor Stephen Kellert, in a 1980 study commissioned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, defined dominionism as an attitude in which "primary satisfactions [are] derived from mastery or control over animals," a definition which other investigators later extended to include the exercise of "mastery or control" over women and children.

Kellert reported that the degree of dominionism in the American public as a whole rated just 2.0 on a scale of 18. Humane group members rated only 0.9. Recreational hunters, however, rated from 3.8 to 4.1, while trappers scored 8.5.

Presidential order

Hoyt was arrested four days before U.S. President George W. Bush addressed the future of hunting with an executive order "to direct Federal agencies...including the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, to facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities."

Bush decreed that, "Federal agencies shall, consistent with agency missions, evaluate the effect of agency actions on trends in hunting participation and, where appropriate to address declining trends, implement actions that expand and enhance hunting opportunities for the public."

Bush ordered federal agencies to, "Consider the economic and recreational values of hunting in agency actions, as appropriate," and "Manage wildlife and wildlife habitats on public lands in a manner that expands and enhances hunting opportunities, including through the use of hunting in wildlife management planning."

Said Public Employees for Environmental Responsbility executive director Jeff Ruch, "This may amount to no more than meaningless pandering to the 'hook and bullet' vote...There appears to be no shortage of hunting opportunities. Perhaps the reason for the decline in hunting licenses lies elsewhere."

"Clearly, Bush is catering to a constituency. There is no biological or ecological justification [for the order]," Defenders of Wildlife executive vice president Jamie Rappaport Clarke told John Heilprin of Associated Press. Clarke formerly headed the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Bush acted shortly after the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service published preliminary findings from the 11th of a series of surveys of hunting and fishing participation begun in 1955. About 34 million Americans hunted or fished in 2006, the Fish & Wildlife Service data shows, or about 11% of the U.S. population. But this was the lowest rate of hunting and fishing participation ever surveyed.

Ninety percent of the U.S. hunting population are age 35 or older; the number of hunters 16 and older is now falling at the rate of about 1% per year; and the total number of hunters is down to about 12.5 million, half the numbers of 25 years ago.

The number of U.S. migratory bird hunters fell 22% from 2001 to 2006, while the number of small game hunters fell 12%. Big game hunting declined 2%, the only type of hunting that did not fall off even faster than overall hunting participation. Big game hunting, however, is primarily a pursuit of older, more affluent hunters, while small game hunters are mostly young.

Fishing declining too

Fishing participation, which had held steady for some time after hunting participation began to fall, dropped at three times the rate of hunting after 2001, including a 23% crash in the Great Lakes region. Freshwater fishing outside the Great Lakes declined 10%; saltwater fishing fell 15%.
About 30 million Americans fished in 2006--five million fewer than in 2001.

Non-lethal wildlife watching, meanwhile, increased 13%. About 71.1 million Americans, nearly one in four, watched wildlife as a recreational pastime in 2006 without feeling the need to kill the animals.
"The American attitude regarding wildlife is changing," said Humane Society of the U.S. spokesperson Andrew Page. "I suspect the day will come when a presidential candidate goes to a local humane society to adopt a homeless animal, rather than pose as a hunter with a gun." --Merritt Clifton