Hunters' issues could decide vote in battleground!

[LifeNRA]

Hunters' issues could decide vote in battleground states

Some sportsmen fear that gun rights would be curtailed

- Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, October 22, 2004

Chequamegon National Forest, Wis. -- John Myhre, a 57-year-old hunting guide, stopped abruptly on the trail layered with orange pine needles and slowly began to raise his Russian- made shotgun.

"Bird," he breathed out. A moment later, a ruffed grouse soared from the growth of young poplar trees, flushed into the transparent, crispy morning air by Myhre's hunting dog, Ruff. Batting its wings so heavily the air around it seemed to quiver, the bird disappeared into the receding amber foliage of the forest before Myhre could fire a shot.

Myhre turned around. He was beaming.

"It's not the killing part that's important in hunting," said Myhre, who operates the Sportsman's Lodge on Moose Lake in Hayward, in northwestern Wisconsin. "The greatest thing about hunting is the part that we can be out here, in nature, in the woods. It's the fact that you can see the color of the leaves, smell the smell of the wood, hear the bird flush."

Hunting, Myhre said, is "our passion ... our livelihood."

This fall in Wisconsin and some other battleground states, hunting also is a loaded election-year issue.

Many hunters in Wisconsin and elsewhere worry that their right to hunt is at stake, despite repeated pledges by President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, to support gun rights and hunting. The hunters' concern has made the issue of gun ownership "real important motivators for potential voters" in Wisconsin, where polls show a close contest, said Jeff Mayers, editor and publisher of WisPolitics.com, a nonpartisan politics Web site.

In Hayward, Myhre's hometown of 3,279 people, schools close each year for a nine-day deer-hunting season in November and children customarily go on their first hunt at age 12.

Mayers said many Wisconsinites will use their perception of the candidates' positions on hunting and gun rights to inform their choice on Nov. 2. It's why Kerry has made brief hunting trips several times during the campaign, including Thursday in Ohio, to portray himself as supportive of gun rights and hunters.

Still, he hasn't convinced Jim Onarheim, who runs the Mystic Moose Resort on Moose Lake, next to Myhre's hunting lodge.

"Neither candidate impresses me," said Onarheim, 57. "But as far as the gun rights go, I'll vote for Bush."

A survey last week by the bipartisan Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation showed hunters and anglers by a 2-1 ratio believe Bush has been more supportive of their issues than Kerry.

Vice President Dick Cheney fed that impression Thursday when, responding to Kerry's goose hunting outing, he argued that the image of the gun-toting, camouflaged Democrat was an "October disguise" that masked his voting record against gun rights.

Kerry's support of extending the recently lapsed assault weapons ban, instituting background checks for people purchasing weapons at gun shows and his opposition to legislation that would grant gunmakers immunity from civil lawsuits filed by crime victims, is interpreted by many of America's 38 million outdoor sportsmen as an assault on gun-ownership rights. Their distrust for the Massachusetts senator is propped up by America's strong gun lobby.

The National Rifle Association, which has endorsed Bush, has named Kerry "the most anti-gun presidential nominee in (America's) history." It is airing an infomercial in Wisconsin claiming that Kerry wants to take away the Second Amendment right to bear arms, something the senator does not advocate.

The gun group plans to spend about $20 million in 15 states, including Wisconsin, on radio, television and newspaper ads, phone banks, door-to-door voter contacts, direct mailings and election messages in magazines that go to the group's 4 million members.

"I'm fully aware that Mr. Kerry is just killing himself to prove to us that he is concerned about hunting and gun rights," said Jon Wilcox, spokesman for the Wisconsin Rifle and Pistol Association, an affiliate of the national gun group.

"He has neither the ability nor the power to end hunting in the United States of America," Wilcox said. "But what he can do is limit my ability to go hunting in national reserves. For the period of time that he would be president, you would find it difficult to hunt."

The views of hunters may be one reason Bush and Kerry are running so close in Wisconsin. In 2000, Al Gore won the state's 10 electoral votes by fewer than 5,000 votes, out of 2.5 million -- although many believe Gore's narrow victory was influenced more by the state's 94,070 votes for then-Green Party candidate Ralph Nader than the gun lobby.

Kerry campaign officials have been trying to win over the hunters and focus on Bush's environmental policies, which they blame for mercury emissions that contaminate watersheds and expanded natural gas drilling on public lands in the West.

"Sportsmen are especially upset because now we're discovering that almost every river and lake in Wisconsin has unsafe mercury pollution because of the president's environmental policies," said Seth Boffeli, spokesman for the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

Chuck Dolan, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign in Wisconsin, denied that the senator had plans to limit hunters' access to national reserves, saying Kerry "has a tremendous respect for the rural heritage of America, and that rural heritage includes hunting."

But hunters and people who depend on hunting for a living are not convinced.

"John Kerry has ... said he's a gun owner and everything, but at the same time he stands next to people who want to take our guns away," Myhre, a big, bearlike man, said at his lodge.

Myhre and his wife, Linda, came to Moose Lake in 1980 with $2,000 and a 1964 Chevy pickup truck that was "a refugee from a junkyard." Since then, their little resort -- four pine-trimmed cabins overlooking a dock on the lake, a few boats, and his services as a hunting and fishing guide -- has developed into "a fairly good business," he said.

Myhre doesn't believe he'll have to surrender his guns if Kerry occupies the Oval Office. But he worries that Kerry could limit hunters' access to public lands, hindering their ability to hunt -- and undermining the business he calls his own "American dream."

Not all Wisconsin hunters believe Kerry will jeopardize their ability to shoot game -- nor do they believe hunting should be the central election issue. Gene Johnson, 58, a retired English teacher, said he'll vote for Kerry, whom he believes to be "the best man to get us out of Iraq and for the economy. "

"I'm not a tree-hugger by any stretch," said Johnson, who shoots pheasant and has come to the Shooting Star Archery in Hayward to pick up a bow and arrows for a deer hunt. "But I don't think the gun issue is significant."

But for many gun enthusiasts in Hayward, it is the most important issue of all.

"If the NRA tells me to do something, I do it. That's why I'm voting," said Dennis Meyer, 47, owner of Shooting Star Archery.