From Ronnie Garrison,
Your Guide to Freshwater Fishing.
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by Jim Shepherd, The Outdoor Wire

Several months ago, The Outdoor Wire reported a new campaign from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that was going to take up a new cause: fish. At that time, we received several notes from people accusing us of reporting something that was, at best, looney, and most likely, a joke.

It's not a joke, folks. Today, it's a reality. PETA's already begun their initial push to "sensitize" the media. The most recent incident is PETA's having told newspaper editors it was time to "either dump their fishing columns or relegate them to the crime and obituary sections where they belong."

In a column called "Let 'Em Eat Worms," Florida Today fishing columnist Bill Sargent reported that "if PETA had its way, you wouldn't be reading this column with your Sunday morning coffee." He then recounted the letter newspaper sports editors had received from Karen Robertson the Fish Empathy Project Manager (I did NOT make this up) for PETA. From her group HQ in Norfolk, Virginia, she brought her 800,000 members and supporters to bear on the fishing columnists of the country.

The letter says "Please consider this: You wouldn't dedicate space in your paper to the recreational abuse of dogs and cats, yet the fishing column encourages cruelty to animals every bit as capable of feeling pain as any dog or cat." Then Ms. Robertson makes her suggestion that the fishing column be relocated.

PETA's serious about the Fish Empathy Project. They're planning a series of billboards across the country to spread the message. One, as we reported earlier, will feature the lovable house pet with a fishing lure through its lip (placed there digitally, of course). One caption will read "If you wouldn't do this to a dog, why do it to a fish?"

In the Far East, that would get an appreciative chuckle from natives who consider a man leading a dog on a leash to be a caterer (and, as the punch line goes, a man leading two dogs is a - vegetarian!). Here in the United States, however, where we apparently believe that meat is grown in shrink-wrapped packages, that's a dynamite sensitivity hot button.

After all, PETA's website writes, "anglers will have more than fishing on their minds when they see this billboard on the way to their favorite fishing hole." Before I forget, you can see all this first-hand on the PETA website www.fishinghurts.com (again, I am NOT making this up).

If the PETA's Fish Empathy Project can get funded to the point it can afford to buy display advertising and kickoff national awareness campaigns with media blitzes, it brings an interesting point to mind: why can't we seem to get "traction" with the message that people who love the outdoors - even if they fish and/or hunt - are people as well. Instead, we're demonized, lampooned and turned into the poster children for all that's wrong with the right to choose our own paths.

This week, The Outdoor Wire's appeared to look more and more like an advocacy publication than a source for "news and events from the outdoor industry." As editor and publisher, I realize we're headed toward what may become a slippery slope for this electronic publication. However, there comes a time when it seems wrong to sit and chuckle any longer at the "antics" of people I have heretofore called "well meaning dunderheads."

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