By Jim Robertson

Ahh, Spring! It’s the time of birth for wild animals and re-birth for the natural world. A time of emergence—an American robin hatching from a powder blue egg; a black bear, followed by her newborn cubs, leaving their cozy birthing den—spring is a sacred time of life-giving celebration.

So, who, in their right mind, could imagine that spring would be a good time to declare open season on bears, turkeys or any species of animal? Well, no one. But we’re talking about sport hunters, so the “in their right mind” part may not apply here.

Majestic, bold and faithful is how founding father Benjamin Franklin would have described turkeys and yet today’s “sportsmen” seem overly intent on going after “gobblers” (as well-thumbed hunting magazines are fond of calling turkeys) in the spring. Gobblers is an over-used epithet aimed at objectifying and degrading the birds in much the same way that the N-word was meant to de-personalize slaves in centuries past.

As a “sport,” spring turkey hunting is getting so popular that it threatens to overtake baseball as a new American tradition. To be clear, baseball is a sport, and along with football and basketball, it’s a team sport, played by two evenly matched teams. But hunting doesn’t qualify as a sport for the simple reason that deer don’t practice archery against hunters and turkeys don’t carry shotguns for self-defense. And unlike hunters, neither of those species has a misguided sense of what kind of behavior constitutes a sport.

Spring hunting season is nothing more than a tweaked and twisted notion that needs to be exposed and squelched before it becomes yet another “tradition” in the name of animal exploitation.

We’re not just talking about the mindless slaughter of one incidental individual turkey for the sake of someone’s sport. Turkeys are social birds, so the perverse pleasure hunters get from crouching in the bushes, fully camouflaged, hoping their imitation mating call draws an unsuspecting turkey into their firing zone is the sort of behavior a civilized society should discourage, rather than promote.

But promoting spring hunting is the rule, not the exception. It makes no difference whether it’s a red state, a blue state, pink, green or purple, every state’s game departments are pushing for new or expanded spring turkey hunting seasons this year after having planted the highly prized “game” birds just about everywhere they could possibly think of—including many regions which never supported turkeys in the past.

But what difference does it make? If people want to hunt turkeys or bears in the spring, shouldn’t that be the right of every taxpayer? Well, if you can’t see the wrong in allowing and encouraging the targeting of non-human animals for the simple pleasure of taking a life for recreation, perhaps the threat that said sport poses for the average citizen would put things into perspective for you.

Today’s headlines announced that two people—in two separate incidents—were struck in the neck, face and/or head with 12-guage shotgun pellets. The first such case took place in Indiana after a landowning hunter blasted a passing hunter as he walked by his property with his son. The 41-year-old hunter was airlifted to the hospital where he survived (by the skin of his teeth). Meanwhile another, very similar turkey hunting accident happened in New York state yesterday. Names and specifics have been withheld in that incident, except for the fact that the victim also ended up in the hospital.  

Close calls like these, as well as fatal hunting accidents, are common occurrences during spring hunting seasons and as more non-consumptive recreationists head to the woods for hiking, mountain biking, bird watching, etc., eventually they too will become victims of all the senseless blasting that game departments are actively encouraging.

One group of non-target victims who are continually being killed during hunting seasons like the spring hunting frenzy are America’s endangered grizzly bears. On May 9^th, a young female grizzly in northern Idaho’s Bonner County was illegally shot to death by an otherwise “law-abiding” spring black bear hunter. Though grizzly bears are threatened with extinction in the lower 48, the killer wasn’t charged with any type of crime, but was merely reminded by Fish and Game that as of January 1^st 2025, hunters are required to pass a bear identification test to differentiate between black bears and endangered grizzly bears to avoid mistaken identity.

Of course, the surest way to avoid hunting accidents such as being shot in the face by a turkey hunter, or bear hunters mistakenly killing the wrong species, would be to simply put an end to spring hunting seasons. Then the animals won’t have to add avoiding armed hunters to their already stressful springtime routine of birthing and raising their young.