Perception, Predator Hunting And Public Relations

We need to share a better story about why we hunt cougars, bears and other carnivores ‘because the future of hunting – and wildlife conservation – depends on it.’

By Jillian Garrett

Public approval of hunting has declined in the past few years, with the national approval rate for hunting now resting at 76 percent, down by an alarming 5 percent from 2021. 

Trophy hunting has the lowest approval rating, while hunting for the purposes of obtaining food has the highest levels of public support. The reasons for hunting, and therefore how hunting is portrayed to the outside world, clearly matter – it is the image presented of hunting that counts. That should be enough to illustrate that the future of hunting is in large part one of perspective, and not the perspective of the hunting community, but of the non-hunting public.

CURRENTLY, HUNTING HAS a PR problem … and hunters themselves are a large part to blame for it.

It’s not just the tasteless grip-and-grins, the focus on big antlers or even the anti-hunting untruths. It is how we as hunters speak of it, how we as hunters portray it. When we treat the animals that we hunt with anything less than the respect and gratitude that they deserve, we help to further erode the very fabric of hunting.

That also extends to our portrayal of predators. 

Calling predators “stupid,” saying you “smoke a pack a day” when killing coyotes or gloating over the death of “fawn killers” reflects poorly on both the hunters and the hunting community. Simultaneously, approaching wildlife management with the mindset of making prey animals “good” and predators “bad” is simply a modern twist on an outdated predator bounty mentality, one that did not do us or our wildlife any good the first time around. 

While predators do need to be managed alongside other game species as part of a functional modern ecosystem, suggesting the killing of an animal simply because it eats meat is the absolute worst way to justify it. Even under the guise of so-called “conservation,” it is a broken moral argument to try and claim that predators such as bears are worthy of being killed for predating on deer when hunters turn around and boast about doing the very same thing. Approaching the argument from that sort of misguided angle feeds into the exact portrayal of untruths that anti-hunting groups want. It mars the image of hunters and hunting, drastically reduces public support and makes it that much easier for poor management decisions to be implemented. In short, it turns hunters into their own worst enemies. 

Once again, we come back to the fact that hunting has a PR problem.

THE IRONY IS that some of the worst offenders live in rural areas where the impacts of poor predator management are the highest. It’s a vicious feedback loop, and the problem is that this segment of the hunting populace is too busy screaming at the wrong people and failing to realize that they really need to be pointing that finger at themselves. Their own portrayal of predators and predator hunting has helped lead to this outcome.

The unfortunate truth is that we are always judged by our worst actors, and – as is so often forgotten – we hunt only at the general public’s pleasure. Their approval, or disapproval, as is often the case, is capable of not only deciding the results of these increasingly frequent ballot box biology initiatives, but can influence outcomes as they relate to conservation and hunting legislation, wildlife commission appointees and even wildlife management itself. While many of the bad actors within the hunting community frequently blame politicians or political parties for the current problems at hand, they forget that a large part of the trouble began with their own negative portrayal of hunting.

That negative portrayal only feeds into the overall bad image that the public is already inclined to see, being further exacerbated with media events like Cecil the Lion or Cody Roberts, which is when hunting approval really begins to tailspin. When that happens, it becomes increasingly difficult to find support for hunting opportunities and hunter input in wildlife management decisions. 

TO TAKE ONE recent example, the late-February incident in Wyoming with Roberts – who ran over a wolf with his snowmobile and then showed the still-alive animal off at a local bar – had repercussions that rippled across state lines. At a Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting this past April, the link was repeatedly made between all hunters and the episode. 

“Now you may say that was just some ignorant psychopath in Wyoming who gets his kicks on cruelty and violence, but it is a moral sickness that has infected our populace and it knows no bounds,” said David Lynn of Washington Wildlife First, further elaborating that this moral sickness is “a culture of death which celebrates ignorance and tolerance, barbarism, and cruelty as its guideposts.” His was one of many comments from outraged attendees at that meeting. Susan Kane-Ronning of the Washington Sierra Club Wildlife Committee said, “You’ve seen the brutal pictures and treatment of the wolf in Daniel, Wyoming … Washington also has people who commit inhumane acts towards wolves and other predators.”

That wave of anti-hunter, pro-predator sentiment acted as a further catalyst for management decisions when it came to Washington’s own wolf and cougar populations, including helping to negatively impact the recommended downlisting of wolves. Even though the hunting community had banded together and disavowed the actions in Wyoming, the policy implications of that twisted anti-predator mentality were still felt a little too close to home. Unfortunately, the current public perception of hunting looks a lot closer to Cody Roberts than it does to the pursuit of food, and with that type of perception, why wouldn’t the public need to protect wildlife from the villainous hunters?

THE REASON THE public views Roberts as a mascot for all hunters is because the hunting community hasn’t done enough to show them otherwise. In the eyes of the public, how is the image of Roberts with the wolf in the bar any different than the countless grip-and-grins being posted by hunters every autumn? Add to that the frequent commentary that accompanies those pictures such as “saved another fawn” and “the only good cougar is a dead cougar.”

When this is the side of hunting that gets shown, all the hunting community has managed to accomplish is to let the anti-hunters have the floor when it comes to telling the story of hunting. We have given those groups everything they need to make the case against us. Had the public associated hunting with food and other more positive imagery, it would be a lot harder to link it back to the Cody Robertses of the world. It would not be at all surprising to see the national approval for hunting further decrease in 2025 as a result of that event in Wyoming.

When members of the hunting community show hatred or disrespect for the animals that they hunt, it makes it that much easier for a non-hunting public (already disturbingly disconnected from nature and their food chain) to become further alienated; it makes it that much easier for them to believe the worst untruths about hunting put out by the anti-hunting groups, with the end result being that ill-conceived wildlife management decisions, based more on emotions than science, become increasingly common. We have seen this trend play out repeatedly, and across multiple states.

Anti-hunting groups like to muddy the true story of hunting because it’s an easy way to make a sales pitch. As they have clearly shown time and again, the facts don’t necessarily matter but the public perception of hunting does. These groups use that to their advantage, twisting the image of hunting and turning it into one that is negatively focused on things such as “trophy hunting” or showing hunters as “bloodthirsty killers,” because that is easy to sell to an already disaffected public.

THE BURDEN OF truth always falls on the hunting community, and when we fail to educate the public about what hunting truly entails, we fail ourselves and our future prospects. If we want our children and grandchildren to have the same opportunities at harvesting wild game, we need to make some hard changes in how we as a community talk about hunting.

There is a reason ballot box biology has become such an alarming trend, and it isn’t just the untruths told by anti-hunting groups. We have failed to put our best foot forward and as a result have not done ourselves or the animals we hunt any justice. We not only need to tell the full story of hunting, but we need to tell a better version of it, and clearly one that is a lot more food-focused. At the end of the day, isn’t that what hunting is essentially all about? 

Unsurprisingly, it isn’t just overall approval of hunting that has been in decline, but predator hunting as well. National approval for hunting black bears has seen a general decrease since at least 2006, registering at 42 percent for the current year, down from 47 percent. Meanwhile, approval for cougar hunting was even lower, tied with grizzly bear and wolf hunting at a mere 38 percent, down from 42 percent. 

One might draw the conclusion from this that the public does not appear to understand that cougar meat is edible, something that can be clearly supported by the current situations in both Washington and Colorado. But the reality is that few people outside of the hunting community – and many within – don’t realize that cougar meat is not just edible but preferred, as is black bear. When Washington faced the loss of its spring bear season, it clearly demonstrated that few members of the public had any notion that bear meat was edible, prized by hunters, or even knew it is required to be taken under the state’s wanton waste laws. 

ALL THIS DEMONSTRATES the need for better educational outreach campaigns between hunters and the non-hunting public, not just around the edibility of predator meat, but around advocating the hunting-for-food message in general. Clearly, we need to do better if we are ever going to continue our ability to hunt, let alone hunt predators.

According to a recent Pew research poll, 72 percent of Americans are very concerned about the price of food and therefore could potentially view alternative sources of procuring food – such as through hunting – more positively. The takeaway from this is that portraying hunting as a means of obtaining food makes it far more agreeable and approachable to the average non-hunter. In the recent report Americans’ Attitudes Toward Hunting and Sport Shooting, public approval was highest when hunting was used as a means to acquire food, ranking even higher than hunting for purposes of conservation. 

Hunters should take a cue from all of this and start sharing an image of hunting that is more food-centric. Unlike anti-hunting groups, the hunting community does not have to compromise its morals to tell a false story about hunting. We just have to tell a different story than the one we currently have been. It’s a true story about food, about respect for the animals that we harvest, and about gratitude for the ability to live off of the land.

As our social scientists are fond of pointing out, perception is everything when it comes to public approval of hunting. Our words and our actions have the ability to safeguard or destroy the very thing that we hold most dear. The future of hunting cannot sustain a continuous level of decline for much longer, and at the end of the day, the choice is ours whether we choose to protect our way of life or continue to help end it. The hunting community needs to paint a much more positive image of hunting – especially around predator hunting – and to take a hard stance and close ranks against the bad actors who stubbornly persist in harming it.

Hunters currently have an opportunity to turn the tide, to rebrand the image of hunting into one that the general public has already demonstrated it can support. Instead of gloating over the death of another “fawn killer,” or posting a grip-and-grin of a dead and bloody bear, consider showing a different side of hunting to the world:

Share pictures of the meals that you made; talk about the huckleberries you enjoyed snacking on while scouting; demonstrate the gratitude that you have for that animal and your ability to harvest wild food from the land. Share those images of hunting as opposed to the ones that merely feed into the anti-hunting side’s already dismal portrayal of it. 

Share a better side of that story, because the future of hunting – and wildlife conservation – depends on it.

Editor’s note: This story appeared in the October 2024 issue of Northwest Sportsman, which also features Scott Haugen’s advice on calling in cougars in Westside foothills and two delicious lion recipes – barbecue slow-cooked cougar shanks and cougar backstrap kebabs – served up by Scott’s wife and cookbook author Tiffany Haugen. Author Jillian Garrett is a hunter, member of First Hunt Foundation, farmer and conservationist living in Northeast Washington. Along with previous articles in this magazine, her writing and photography have also appeared in Sports Afield, Bear Hunting Magazine and Blue Ridge Farmer Magazine.