By Mike Lange
Dave Trahan has been a little nervous lately. The executive director of the Sportsmen’s Alliance of Maine (SAM) is in crosshairs of another organized drive to ban the use of bait or dogs to hunt bear in the state.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other activist organizations are trying to gather 80,000 signatures in order to put the question on the November 2014 general election ballot.
If the issue sounds familiar, it is. In 2004, voters shot down a similar referendum by a 53-47 percent margin.
Trahan predicts that HSUS can easily put a ton of money into their campaign. And while spending megabucks on a TV ad campaign is no guarantee of success, supporters of the current law on bear hunting feel that undecided voters may not see the whole picture.
On the other hand, the bear hunting referendum may also do something that no other ballot question can do this fall: get conservatives out to vote. And that may be enough to keep Gov. Paul LePage in the Blaine House for another four years.
Sounds far-fetched? Do the math. If Eliot Cutler and Mike Michaud split the moderate and liberal vote with 30 percent each, that leaves 40 percent up for grabs. And the last two governors, LePage and John Baldacci, were elected with 38 and 39 percent of the vote respectively.
Yes, it’s true that Cutler and Michaud are also on record as opposing the bear-baiting referendum. But Cutler still comes across to many as pompous and Michaud as bland, despite his blue-collar upbringing.
But conservatives savor LePage’s tidbits on welfare abuse, wind turbines and the media. You may not see him in the woods dressed in blaze orange with a Remington .270 strapped to his shoulder, but chances are LePage will get the hunters’ attention.
I’ve never been a serious hunter. Every firearm I own was bought used, including an old 7.62 Mosin-Nagant Russian rifle I found in a pawn shop for $40. I used to go to hunting camp in Stratton with seven or eight buddies every fall. Usually, the weather was bad, so we played a lot of poker.
We did run across nuisance bears that would destroy bird feeders and ravage trash cans. But we never bothered hunting them because everyone preferred venison to bear meat.
Wildlife biologists say there are about 30,000 bear in Maine and hunters take about 3,000 a year. That’s about the same percentage as deer and moose, so I’m really not sure why bear hunting gets people so riled up.
In any case, it will be an interesting race. Supporters are working diligently to get the issue on the ballot and sell the idea to the electorate.
Then it’s a question of who shows up at the polls, and which candidate is more “bearable” for the next four years.
Mike Lange is a staff writer with the Piscataquis Observer.
