Armies of flannel-clad bear hunters will take to the polls next week, belligerent at the thought that voters hundreds of miles away could interfere with their way of life. And if surveys are correct, women statewide, perhaps drawn to the ballot box by advertisements that depict a snared bear bellowing in fear and pain, will vote overwhelmingly for the ban on bear baiting, trapping and hunting with hounds.

More than a million dollars and countless hours have been spent on “educational” campaigns by both sides, designed to paint the issue in this good-and-evil clarity.

But among many thinking voters, the efforts have failed. A lifelong hunter in northern Maine who would never dream of baiting will quietly vote in the referendum’s favor, while a dedicated environmentalist in southern Maine plans to vote no, swayed by the fate of small businesses that rely on bear hunting. Question 2 is far more complex than the simple yes or no voters will be asked to mark on Nov. 2, and the fate of six states that have held similar referendums over the past decade provide a glimpse into Maine’s future – regardless of whether the ban ultimately succeeds or fails.

As goes Maine

Archived news reports about bear baiting debates in Michigan, Minnesota, Idaho, Colorado, Washington and Oregon read as one. The coverage of an ongoing Alaska debate, though somewhat overshadowed by hot gubernatorial and senate contests there, could be printed in this paper almost verbatim.

In each case, money has flowed to proponents from national animal groups such as the Humane Society of the United States, which have become the enemies of sportsmen by promoting drastic hunting reform nationwide, regardless of local reluctance. In each case, large hunting organizations such as the Safari Club International and National Rifle Association have provided both their millions of dollars and their message of a plot to ban all hunting and fishing.

Last year, the federal government tackled the issue when a Virginia Democrat proposed outlawing the practice on federal lands. The measure had strong support from the Humane Society of the United States, but the NRA was widely credited with its 255-163 defeat in the U.S. House – with both of Maine’s Democratic Reps. Michael Michaud and Tom Allen voting against the measure.

Even here in Maine, the issue is not new, having been considered by the Legislature four times in the past, despite the rancor of the campaign.

For more than a year, referendum opponents here have argued that a successful vote to ban bear baiting, trapping and hunting with dogs would result in a 90 percent drop in hunters and would bankrupt guiding businesses, although the numbers are anecdotal. Advertisements refer to children being menaced in schoolyards by marauding bears because of the resulting boom in population. And Edie Leary, spokeswoman for Maine’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Coalition, urges defeat of the referendum in the interest of public safety, despite the fact that no one in Maine has ever been killed by a black bear.

Proponents accuse her of fearmongering. But they, too, have played on emotion by showing voters only the worst sort of bear hunters, that minuscule percentage who shoot a restrained and exhausted bear at close range – precisely as Teddy Roosevelt famously refused to do. Bob Fisk, spokesman for the pro-referendum Maine Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting, argues that a ban on baiting could change Maine’s image and attract a new type of “fair chase” hunter, or perhaps even hundreds of wildlife watchers.

But the stories that have unfolded after Election Day in other states indicate that neither prophecy is entirely true.

Bear boom?

In three states with recent baiting bans – Colorado, Washington and Oregon – the number of hunters has actually grown drastically since the bans were put in place – an 89 percent jump during the first five years after the referendum passed in Oregon, a 95 percent increase in Washington and a 516 percent boost in Colorado.

Over the same time period, the number of bears killed in these states has remained about the same – a 5 percent drop in Colorado, a 16 percent drop in Oregon and a 10 percent increase in Washington. None of the states has reported a great increase in bear watching, though other types of ecotourism are booming.

Cecil Gray, spokesman for Hunters for Fair Bear Hunting, repeatedly has cited the growth in hunter participation in Colorado, Washington and Oregon, arguing that a bear hunting boom could happen here, particularly if Maine adjusts its game laws to attract more hunters, as several other states have done.

“We could become a mecca for fair chase hunting,” he said.

Gray and other hunters who support the referendum – even some who have no ethical qualms about baiting or hounding – also argue that the state’s system of distributing bear bait sites to guides discourages hunters who might stalk bear before deer season if the woods weren’t being appropriated by the big guiding services.

Even if bear populations did increase somewhat as a result of a decline in hunting, even temporarily, the growth would happen over a number of years, Gray said.

“[State biologists] would have plenty of time to figure out something else to do,” he said.

But the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, which has opposed the referendum, stands by its argument that Maine lacks the freedom to liberalize the bear hunt, as the season already lasts for nearly four months, and history suggests that adding a hunt in the spring, when young cubs are with their mothers, would be socially unacceptable here. No solution but hunting with bait and hounds would work here, they said.

“We’ve got a season right now that runs from the beginning of September until the bears den,” said Ken Elowe, director of DIF&W’s bureau of resource management, at a press conference last week. “We don’t have that flexibility.”

Massachusetts, whose problems with nuisance bears are legendary, has been held up as a cautionary tale because, since a 1996 referendum, its bear population has doubled in landscapes similar to Maine’s, according to DIF&W.

A Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife spokeswoman, however, has said that urbanization in that state has been as important a factor in increasing bear problems as the referendum. The vote that banned hunting with bait and hounds that year was largely symbolic with regard to baiting, as the state had not allowed hunting of baited bear since 1970, she said.

New Jersey, too, has been featured prominently by those opposed to the referendum. DIF&W last week cited 37 “home invasions” by black bears in New Jersey, all but predicting that Maine would experience similar problems if the referendum passed. New Jersey does have serious bear problems, but with 1,500 bears and 8.6 million people crammed into 7,417 square miles – nearly four times as many bears and 28 times as many people per square mile as Maine – conflict is inevitable.

Meanwhile, referendum opponents, led by DIF&W and Edie Leary of Maine’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Council, use the same statistics from Colorado, Washington and Oregon that Fisk and Gray use to defend their position, as evidence that hunting without bait is tremendously difficult. On this question, the numbers are clear. Hunter success rates in states with baiting bans fell from the double digits to 3 to 6 percent, on average.

Hunter success rates would fall similarly in Maine because stalking bears would be a near impossibility, experienced bear guides have said. With the state’s primary bear habitat made up of thick forest and not the meadows or high desert plateaus that compose at least a portion of the habitat in all of the Western states that have faced referendums, Maine’s troubles would be in a class all their own, they said, predicting the loss of hundreds of jobs.

But Tom Beck, an experienced biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and a somewhat controversial voice within the wildlife community, has heard it all before.

Beck has argued that a decline in hunter success rates might not be such a bad thing – after all, it gives more hunters the chance to experience a bear hunt and to learn.

“Defenders of baits and hounds turn to the ‘hunter success’ argument, asserting that the kill will decline radically without these methods: The brush is too thick, the mountains too steep, the canyons too deep. But nary a whisper of the hunter too unskilled,” he wrote in 1995, shortly after Colorado’s vote.

Hunters’ rights

Faced with nearly identical arguments, voters in Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Massachusetts banned baiting. Those in Idaho and Michigan preserved it, and, increasingly, polls suggest that Maine will follow in their footsteps. But however next week’s vote goes, the debate is far from over.

In Oregon, a bear baiting ban was brought back to the voters in a failed attempt to repeal the referendum vote just two years after it passed.

However, history doesn’t indicate that one wildlife referendum is immediately followed by another, as referendum opponents predict. And no organization has ever even proposed a referendum to ban hunting in any state.

As hunting reform efforts by referendum have risen nationwide, hunters have been striking back with new laws to protect their interests. At least a dozen states have considered hunter protections through legislation and referendums of their own in recent years, many of which are based on a 1996 Alabama constitutional amendment guaranteeing “the right to hunt and fish.”

Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine Executive Director George Smith said this week that he has studied these protections and determined that they wouldn’t stop another referendum in Maine like Question 2. Rather, he would like to see Maine follow the example of Utah, which approved a 1998 constitutional amendment that any voter initiatives related to hunting or fishing must pass by two-thirds supermajority.

With Maine almost evenly split on animal issues, this would almost guarantee that no voter initiative to change hunting laws could be successful here in the foreseeable future.

But SAM hasn’t reached a conclusion as to whether Maine needs such a law, Smith said. Several state legislators have raised the possibility of introducing hunter protections, but whether SAM proposes a bill during the next legislative session will depend on what happens on Nov. 2.

“If our campaign wins, it will be a wonderful endorsement of the department [of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife],” he said. “But if we lose … .”