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.













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