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Avid outdoorsmen are slamming a new political coalition formed by the Harris-Walz campaign aimed at winning their vote in the 2024 presidential election.
“Hunters and anglers want to support Harris-Walz as much as the fish and game want to be eaten,” one Maryland-based hunter who recently bagged a state record bear chuckled to The Spectator.
Governor Tim Walz kicked off the “Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz” group on Friday with an article placed in Outdoor Life magazine. The coalition is described as “a new national organizing program to engage, mobilize a broad coalition of sportspeople, conservationists and rural and gun violence prevention voters in key states across the country.” They will have a national organizing call next week, but the campaign has not indicated which prominent hunters and anglers will be a part of the coalition.
Some hunters and anglers are already reacting negatively to the campaign’s plan, pointing out that Harris and Walz have supported gun control measures and that the Biden-Harris administration has made life more difficult for hunters and anglers.
Gabriella Hoffman, the director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at Independent Women’s Forum and host of the District of Conservation podcast, quipped that “No $40 camo hat will convince most sportsmen and women that Harris-Walz represents them.”
“Vice President Harris has been an active partner with President Biden in being the most hostile administration to shooting sports, hunting, and fishing access. Her name is co-signed on closing millions of acres of public hunting lands in Alaska, forbidding lead tackle on national wildlife refuges, and recently shutting down shooting sports opportunities in the entirety of Bears Ears National Monument — 1.3 million acres,” Hoffman said. “Hunters and anglers don’t trust Harris-Walz.”
Lawrence Keane, the senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, accused the Biden-Harris administration of enacting an “anti-gun” and “anti-hunting” agenda when they banned lead tackle in national wildlife refuges. “This is the latest example of the US Fish and Wildlife Service creating rules that punish hunters, threaten conservation funding and advance special interests without sound scientific evidence that traditional lead ammunition is causing detrimental wildlife population impacts,” he said. “This administration is ignoring its promise to ‘follow the science.’”
Democrats are hoping Governor Walz’s history as a hunter and fisherman will give credence to the coalition and on Saturday he attended his first event for the new group, an opening day pheasant hunt in Minnesota. However, critics mocked videos shared from the hunt, which showed Walz and allies from nonprofit group Pheasants Forever traipsing around a field with no shotguns in sight. “Tim Walz pretends to go pheasant hunting with no guns,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzalez wrote on X. Another video showed that the governor did have his shotgun on site, but he struggled to load the Beretta and said he bought the A400 model to reduce kick so that the gun doesn’t hurt his shoulder.
“Take it away before he Dick Cheneys someone,” a Maryland whitetail deer hunter joked. “[Harris and Walz] are wasting their fucking time.”
A Virginia-based waterfowl hunter added, “I wouldn’t share a duck blind with him. There’s just something off with the guy.”
Although Walz says he is a longtime hunter, he did not sign the National Shooting Sports Month declaration in Minnesota until this year. National Shooting Sports Month takes place in August every year and is endorsed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to celebrate shooting sports and educate new shooters. The Minnesota Deer Hunters Association pulled out of the Governor’s Deer Opener last year because of Governor Walz’s support for gun control measures and his opposition to wolf hunting in the state. “Until our governor represents the interests of wild deer and deer hunters around the state, we cannot, in good conscience, support the 2023 event,” the MDHA said at the time.
“This is all a big scam and a 180 on what this administration is about,” Derek Wolfe, the host of the outdoorsman podcast Wolfe Untamed and a former NFL defensive end, explained. “They have made it clear that they are coming for guns, fracking, gas-powered vehicles, just to name a few. They know that ten million hunters didn’t vote in the last election so they are reaching out, but it’s a waste of their time because the hunting community, in my opinion, will vote for someone that puts America first. And I believe that man is Donald J. Trump.”
The Virginia-based hunter said, “This seems like a standard for the Harris Walz ticket. Tim has PTSD from serving in Afghanistan, he was in Tiananmen Square, he makes friends with school shooters, now he claims to be a sportsman. The lying left thinks hunters and anglers don’t know their true records, including advocating for things like gun restrictions and destroying our rural way of life.”
“Whether it be the anti-gun agenda or the liberal policies of the Biden/Harris administration, the outdoor community has been under attack the last four years,” said Ryan Glitsky, field staff for Lone Wolf Custom Gear. “The outdoor community consists of responsible gun owners who share family traditions, enjoying the renewable resources of our great land. The Democrats have continually attacked our freedoms to fair chase hunting all across the US — and this November we plan to tell Harris enough is enough.”
The Trump campaign sent out a press release calling the pheasant hunt “all a show to distract from the anti-gun, anti-outdoorsmen records of Harris-Walz.” They cited Harris previously stating that a national gun confiscation program is a “good idea,” her and Walz calling for a national “assault weapon” ban and being endorsed by anti-gun groups, and Walz restricting private firearm transfers and banning binary triggers.
In addition, the Biden-Harris administration is pursuing speed restrictions on boats that industry experts say could severely impact both commercial and recreational fishing and pulled funding from scholastic hunter and archery education programs. Congress passed legislation rebuking the administration’s decision to defund hunting education in public schools and funding was restored.
An avid outdoorsman in Oklahoma said, “I don’t know what’s more likely — sportsmen being conned into voting for Kamala or Sam Bankman-Fried running a publicly traded company.” He added, “Kamala does know using a Glock on ducks is difficult, right?”
The new coalition seems to be another example of Democrats hitting the panic button as polls show Vice President Kamala Harris performing poorly with men; a New York Times/Siena College survey has her eleven points underwater, with 40 percent of men to Donald Trump’s 51. Former president Barack Obama lectured black men during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, insinuating that their objections to Harris are rooted in misogyny. “You just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Obama said.
Jacob Reed, a filmmaker unaffiliated with the campaign, cut a pro-Harris ad for Creators for Harris with the message that “real men” vote for Harris. The ad featured paid actors pretending to be normal, masculine men, but the ad was quickly labeled “cringe.”
“The only men the party recognizes are these emasculated, AI generated putzes,” Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon said.
Even if hunters and anglers would consider voting for Harris-Walz, they say the Democratic Party’s attempt to reach rural voters and outdoorsmen is simply too little, too late.
“The Democrat Party has lost rural support consistently in every election since George W. Bush won in 2000. So for twenty-four years Democrats have been happy to trade rural voters for urban leftists. But twenty-seven days before an election they look poised to lose, the Harris/Walz ticket rolls out a ‘hunters’ coalition?” the Virginia-based hunter said.
A Great Plains hunter snarked, “It’s that time of year: the new guy shows up sporting designer camo with the tags still on and unsure about which direction the shells go in the gun. Sure, they look a little silly, but they’re still welcome to try because, unlike Democrats, we aren’t trying to take their rights away.”
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