Sponsors boost hunting & trapping participation by offering cash for biggest & most dead animals
CALGARY, Alberta––The name of the “Alberta Ungulate Enhancement Program” sounds like a government project––but it isn’t.
The Alberta Trapper’s Association and the Alberta Professional Outfitters Society bill it as a “science research project,” but it isn’t.
Thinly disguised wolf-killing contest
The “Alberta Ungulate Enhancement Program” is in truth a wolf-killing contest, perhaps the biggest in Canada, running from October 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025.
It purports to be helping to rebuild huntable populations of bighorn sheep, caribou, moose, and mountain goats, all cold-climate species in decline in Alberta, largely due to habitat loss associated with global warming.
Populations of deer, bison, and pronghorn, also ungulates and also hunted in Alberta, are all increasing, also largely due to global warming. These species favor somewhat warmer climates, with shorter winters.
Little actual mention of science in the rules
The “Alberta Ungulate Enhancement Program,” though, is unconcerned about climate and weather. The sole mention of science in the killing contest rules is a requirement that participants must submit a logbook showing where they trapped and hunted.
“Where wolves are not captured is as important to the scientific database as where they are captured,” the rules stipulate.
Also called the “Top Wolf Contest,” the “Alberta Ungulate Enhancement Program” offers prizes of $5,000 for the biggest wolf killed, with a second prize of $3,500 and a third prize of $2,000, plus a bounty of $250 per wolf, “with no limits on how many wolves are killed across the province or in any provincial Wildlife Management Unit,” the conservation group Exposed Wildlife Conservancy notes.
(Exposed Wildlife Conservancy photo)
What is the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy?
Founded in 2019 by wildlife photographer John E. Marriott and video producer Kim Odland, the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy describes itself as “a culmination of Marriott and Odland’s efforts to effect change in the wildlife conservation landscape, a process that began with a meeting over coffee in May 2014. It continued in January 2016 when Marriott and Odland, with the help of Lance Andersen, launched the web series EXPOSED with John E. Marriott.
The web video series has “reached more than one million viewers,” Marriott and Odland say, “helped to shut down the trophy grizzly bear hunt in British Columbia, and raised awareness about a host of other wildlife issues that we’re continuing to fight to this day.”
(Beth Clifton collage )
“Trapped In the Past”
The current Exposed Wildlife Conservancy campaign, called “Trapped In the Past,” aims “to debunk the popular arguments the trapping industry uses to prop itself up” across Canada.
Anti-trapping campaigns have historically focused on spring-driven traps, such as the leghold trap, the use of which was first documented in 1590, and the Conibear trap for beaver, otter, mink, nutria, and muskrat, invented by Frank Conibear in 1929 as a purported humane alternative to leghold traps.
(See “Trapping defender” Proulx explains why all fur trapping is cruel.)
But both leghold traps and Conibear traps largely fell out of vogue decades ago, in favor of much less expensive and easier to use copper wire and cable snares.
Cable snares
To set a copper wire snare, typically used for furbearing animals up to the size of a raccoon, a trapper simply carries a coil of copper wire and wire-cutting pliers. The snare can be set wherever the trapper finds animal tracks.
Full-grown raccoons and bigger species, such as coyote, bobcat, foxes, and wolves, may pull free from a copper wire snare, however, or break it from metal fatigue while trying to “wring off,” typically at cost of the snared foot.
Cable snares, therefore, are used to trap the larger species whose pelts tend to fetch the highest prices at auction.
Marriott and Odland therefore focus their efforts against the “Alberta Ungulate Enhancement Program” on the use of cable snares by most of the killing contest participants.
Trappers less than .05% of population
“A trapping license in Alberta to capture and kill animals is extremely easy to obtain, simply requiring the completion of a weekend course and a $20 fee,” an Exposed Wildlife Conservancy media release points out.
“Once licensed,” Alberta trappers “can trap on Registered Fur Management Areas or on private land. There are currently 1,632 such areas in Alberta,” the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy media release continues, “with the licensed trapline owner tasked to ‘manage wildlife,’ no formal training in biology or in wildlife management required.
“How are trappers, consumptive users who make up less than 0.05% of our population, qualified to ‘manage our wildlife,’” the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy asks.
The Exposed Wildlife Conservancy points toward a 1997 “Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards,” ratified by Canada in 1999.
“A bounty on wolves is simply unacceptable”
“The Fur Institute of Canada and our provincial and federal governments are quick to mention that Canada is a signatory,” the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy observes, but adds that “Canada only signed the agreement after negotiating that killing neck snares not be included” among banned trapping methods.
Approved trapping methods were supposed to “render at least 80% of animals unconscious (leading to death) within a 5-minute time frame. Canada was unable to prove that killing neck snares met those requirements,” the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy recalls.
The “Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards” required that an entity called the Canadian Furbearer Management Committee was to review the “acceptable time limit” for use of neck snares by 2002, but never did.
“The existence of a bounty on wolves, lacking any scientific, ecological, or human safety justification, is simply unacceptable,” the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy media release concluded.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Ontario chase pens
The “Alberta Ungulate Enhancement Program” wolf-killing contest opened on the same day, October 1, 2024, that the Ontario government, headed by pit bull advocate Doug Ford, began accepting applications from prospective operators of new so-called “train-and-trial pens,” better known as chase pens, in which dogs are set on captive wildlife.
Applications from both Canadians and Americans are to be accepted until December 29, 2024.
Chase pens are banned in all other parts of Canada and in 41 U.S. states.
Chase pens were on their way out in Ontario, too. Of the estimated 60 chase pens operating in Ontario in 1999, only 22 are known to be still operating, but the Ford government is trying to revive chase pens to help boost declining hunting license sales.
(See Seeking U.S. hunters, Ontario allows new coyote, fox, & rabbit chase pens.)
Hunting participation is 4.6% of U.S. population
“Hunting has been on the decline for decades. License holders have fallen from 8% of the U.S population in 1960 to 4.6% in 2020,” pointed out Britta Lokting, author of an October 13, 2024 Rolling Stone exposé entitled “Inside the Growing and Controversial World of Wildlife-Killing Contests.”
What Lokting did not mention is that hunting license holders are still 4.6% of the U.S. population at the end of 2024, representing a slight numerical increase in the total number of hunters.
Yet killing contests are practically the only form of hunting showing any actual rise in participation. That rise is steep and dramatic “since the turn of this century,” Lokting observed, “when recovery projects for gray and Mexican wolves began under the Endangered Species Act and the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
“Contests have cropped up by the dozens”
“Since then, contests have cropped up by the dozens in rural areas around the country. Numbers vary widely,” Lokting found, “but Texas is believed to host more contests than any other state. Estimates range from 60 to 600 a year.”
Lokting mentioned that the West Texas Big Bobcat Contest, “billed as the ‘highest-paying hunting contest in the country,’” attracted “Only about 25 teams when it began in 2008, according to co-founder Jeremy Harrison. Now its January, February, and March contests draw almost 2,000 teams and hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money.”
In 2024, Lokting reported, “the contest paid out more than $421,000 to various winners and has doled out almost $4 million overall.”
“The rules for each contest vary,” Lokting explained, “but typically the teams that bring in the heaviest predators win the main money pot. There are often side pots for, say, the most gray fox, bobcats, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, or other animals classified as ‘varmints’ that don’t have bag limits or hunting seasons.”
Ten states have banned or restricted killing contests
Few state wildlife agencies argue that killing contests serve any serious wildlife management purpose, but many condone them for boosting hunting participation.
Ten states have so far banned or restricted wildlife killing contests, beginning with California in 2014.
“So far, the bans have largely been passed in Democratic-led states,” noted Alex Brown for Stateline.org, profiling the New York ban that took effect on January 1, 2024, following the passage of killing contest bans in Maryland, New Mexico, and Vermont.
Promoter will call it a “photography contest”
But New York killing contest promoters, including Mohawk Valley Coon & Cat Club president Brian Gray, Brown reported, “intend to continue holding contests, organizing by word of mouth to avoid state enforcement “unless someone tattles.”
If that happens, Gray told Brown, “he intends to relabel the event a ‘photography contest,’ with prizes for the best photos of dead coyotes instead of for the carcasses themselves.”
“Some of our guys have $6,000 scopes on their rifles,” Gray said, “and they’re never going to get to use them for anything else. This club has been in my family since the 1940s, and I don’t want to lose it.”
Illinois & federal bills
A bill to ban killing contests cleared the Illinois state house of representatives in 2024, 62-45, but did not advance in the state senate.
“While no Republicans supported the measure in the house, several Democrats – mostly from outside the Chicago area – opposed the bill,” blogged Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block on July 11, 2024.
A federal bill, the Prohibit Wildlife Killing Contests Act of 2024, designated H.R.8492, was introduced in May 2024 by Steve Cohen, Congressional Representative from Tennessee, to “require the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service to enact regulations banning wildlife killing contests within one year of enactment of the law.”
Poor prospects in 119th Congress
Attracting 19 cosponsors, the Prohibit Wildlife Killing Contests Act of 2024 was on May 22, 2024 assigned to both the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Committee on Agriculture.
The Committee on Agriculture sent it to the Subcommittee on Forestry on September 3, 2024. It appears unlikely to advance during what remains of the 118th Congressional session.
In view of Republican support of wildlife killing contests, at least so far, the Prohibit Wildlife Killing Contests Act of 2024 is also unlikely to advance, if reintroduced, through the Republican majorities in both houses of the 119th Congress, scheduled to convene from January 3, 2025 to January 3, 2027.
National Coalition to End Killing Contests
The Humane Society of the U.S. is the biggest of the 60 humane and environmental organizations belonging to the National Coalition to End Killing Contests, organized by Project Coyote.
Other members of national note include the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Animal Welfare Institute, Born Free USA, Center for Biodiversity, In Defense of Animals, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Western Environmental Law Center, and WildEarth Guardians.
Conspicuous by their absence are the American SPCA [ASPCA], Best Friends Animal Society, Friends of Animals, National Wildlife Federation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA], and the Wilderness Society.
Please donate to help our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate
Discover more from Animals 24-7
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Thanks for highlighting the ongoing disgusting tradition of killing contests.
I fought then in Wisconsin and Arizona. Lost in Wisconsin but won somewhat of a victory in Arizona.
There is a very important component I believe was not addressed in this article and probably could provide enough grist for a whole separate article.
That being the strange bedfellows connection between killing contests and major charities. Charities which the killing contests promoters use as cover to sanitize and legitimize their blood sport.
Although I am not an investigative journalist, years ago when living in northern Wisconsin I was part of a group opposing those derbies.
I followed the $$$ and what I found was shocking. Not only did I learn that Wisconsin alone hosted 42 killing contests annually, but that the sponsors were claiming that entry fees would be given to well known charities. In the small town of Washburn, Wisconsin, the sponsors were advertising that entry fees would be split between local kids after school programs and St Jude Children’s Hospital.
As a follow up,I contacted St. Jude’s and could get very little info other than they believed all donations came from “legitimate sources.’ It was a brick wall.
So, if a small group of blood sport enthusiasts in a small town in Northern Wisconsin we’re donating to St Jude’s, which accepted that blood money, can you just imagine how much total donations are coming from these groups in order to clean up their image to the public!
Indeed many killing contests are conducted under the auspices of raising funds for local charities, especially nonprofit local fire departments in rural communities, an aspect spotlighted by Britta Lokting in her October 13, 2024 Rolling Stone exposé, “Inside the Growing and Controversial World of Wildlife-Killing Contests.”
To some extent this does sanitize the massacre of wildlife, undertaken chiefly for the purported thrill of killing, but also of relevance is that in rural communities especially, volunteer firefighters often are hunters, as well.
ANIMALS 24-7, as a volunteer firefighter decades ago, was personally acquainted with at least six rural volunteer fire department chiefs who also served as presidents of their local hunting clubs. Two of them might well have hosted killing contests under cover of charity, if they had thought of it. Two others would have been appalled, and two might have had ambivalent attitudes.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, of Memphis, Tennessee, is the only non-hunting-related national charity ANIMALS 24-7 is aware of with a strong, direct longtime association with hunting contests, including killing contests. More than 35 years of animal advocacy have so far failed to persuade St. Jude to amend policies and traditions that are deeply rooted in the Memphis region. (See “Coon hunt” fundraiser may be seen as racist, frets St. Jude hospital“Coon hunt” fundraiser may be seen as racist, frets St. Jude hospital.)
Sick, cruel, unjustifiable and unnecessary. Not surprising, in this current climate.
Sharing with gratitude and despair.
These are such detestable activities; it’s difficult to fathom that any ethical hunter who respects fair chase practices would support them – and, in fact, most sportsmen I know in southern Nevada steer clear of any association with these contests. Yet, few will go against the “brotherhood” to publicly condemn them.
We did try a campaign two years ago to compel St. Jude’s to refuse to be a recipient of the sickening fundraiser in Memphis, but I guess the contributions were just too good to pass up; sad!
Trapping. . .another archaic pursuit that needs to remain in the past. If we could get as much of the general nonhunting public to speak on behalf of wildlife as they do for companion animals, perhaps our elected officials might listen.