Ohio's History on Dove Hunting

In 1994, the special interest sport shooting lobby pushed the Ohio Legislature into passing a bill to allow a mourning dove season - it passed by only one vote in the lameduck Senate (similar to the failed attempt in MI 2000). In 1998 the citizens of Ohio gathered over 300,000 signatures to attempt to save the doves with a ballot proposal. The US Sportsmen's Alliance, formerly the Wildlife Legislative Fund of Ohio, spent millions of dollars on an orchestrated "confuse-the-voter" media blitz with voters being told all sorts of things...claiming the proposal would "stop the use of animals in finding a cure for serious diseases, stop modern agricultural practices that feed us, stop all forms of hunting, gun ownership, zoos, etc..." Jack Hanna (for a fee) even assisted the dove shooting agenda as a spokesman in television ads.

In the confusion, the dove was lost 59% to 41%.

Since 1994, the Ohio mourning dove population has shown downward trends - at a cumulative rate. According to the scientific status reports, "dove populations from groups of non-hunting states in the Northeast and Upper Mideast have much higher annual survival rates."

YOUR HELP AND PARTICIPATION IS VITAL TO SAVE MICHIGAN'S DOVES FROM BECOMING TARGETS! See what you can do here.

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Page Updated: 09/14/03