Editor's note - Jeff Buchanan, Commissioner, Arizona Game and Fish Department, was so moved by Voice of Leadership Panelist Cassie Gasaway's piece, "It’s Time for a Fair Chase Checkup" that he welcomed an opportunity to add his voice of leadership to the discussion. I applaud Jeff not only for his kind words toward Cassie, but his willingness to add to the discussion.
By Jeffrey S. Buchanan - Lieutenant General, U.S. Army (Retired)
Commissioner, Arizona Game and Fish Department
Public support of legal, regulated hunting is critically important to the survival of hunting. This pursuit (along with angling) is the cornerstone of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, and is the primary source of funding for conservation efforts in North America. Significant drops in that support could lead to loss of hunting privileges and a lack of funding for wildlife management agencies. In Arizona where I serve as a commissioner for our state’s game and fish department, that support has hovered between 70 and 80 percent over the past decade. The concept of fair chase is a key ingredient to ethical hunting and fishing and without it, support from the non-hunting public drops like a rock. According to the Boone and Crockett Club, fair chase is “the ethical, sportsmanlike, and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild game animal in a manner that does not give a hunter or an angler improper or unfair advantage over the game animals.”
In the 16 December edition of the Hunting Wire, Cassie Gasaway wrote an exceptional article on fair chase (“It’s Time for a Fair Chase Checkup.”). Her article caused me to reflect on my own understanding of fair chase, and she motivated me to share a couple of additional thoughts.
The Arizona Game and Fish Commission directed the Arizona Game and Fish Department to establish a Fair Chase Committee that reviews new and evolving technologies for ethical considerations and reports its recommendations during regular meetings. The department uses three criteria to determine whether a new technology or practice is a potential fair chase issue:
- if it allows a hunter or angler to locate or take wildlife without acquiring necessary hunting and angling skills or competency.
- if it allows a hunter or angler to pursue or take wildlife without being physically present and pursuing wildlife in the field.
-if it makes harvesting wildlife almost certain, and/or the technology or practice prevents wildlife from eluding take.
Though ideally fair chase is driven by ethical standards rather than laws or regulations, our commission does not shy away from changing regulations to stay aligned with the considerations of fair chase. Any changes we propose to rules or regulations are part of a transparent process and decided upon in public in concert with our state’s “open meeting” law. In making these decisions, we recognize that what is a fair chase issue in our state may not be so elsewhere. As an example, several years ago in Arizona, we banned the use of trail cameras for hunting. In our state, water is always a critical resource and one could find upwards of 30-40 trail cameras on a water hole on public land. That sort of focused attention affected wildlife populations and caused inevitable conflict between hunters. Though we have 10 great big game species in our state, we don’t have the same sort of issues with density of deer, for example, one can find in the Southeast. “No trail cameras” is an important consideration of fair chase in our state, but that same mandate would not make sense elsewhere.
For more information on fair chase considerations in Arizona, please refer to the department’s website: https://www.azgfd.com/hunting/hunt-draw-and-licenses/fair-chase Regardless of where each of us lives and hunts, a regular “fair chase check-up” is never wasted. Please read Cassie’s article and think about what it means to you.
Lieutenant General (retired) Jeffrey (“Jeff”) Buchanan earned a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Ecology and is passionate about wildlife and natural resources conservation. He and his wife Laura (who also has a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Ecology) are members of various conservation organizations ranging from the Arizona Elk Society to the National Wildlife Federation. Buchanan retired from a distinguished 37-year U.S. Army career in 2019, having commanded at every level from Platoon to Theater Army. His assignments included tours in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, 25th Infantry Division, 101st Airborne Division, the 10th Mountain Division, and I Corps. He served four combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.