As we head toward autumn and the initial opening of several hunting seasons, I’m reminded of a special anti-hunting program that CBS televised years ago. The program, “The Guns of Autumn,” aired in 1975, depicted hunting as a cruel, outdated activity, carried out by blood-thirsty killers and mentally inferior morons. Its level of inaccurate biasness bordered on the absurd, to say the least.
The reason this came to mind is the fact I’m noticing more and more officials elected or appointed to high government positions were reared in urban climates and are basically unfamiliar with the world beyond the city or suburban lines. Their often naïve and biased views can easily butt heads with the reality of the environment and demographics of their subjects …oops, make that constituents. And their inaccurate views on hunting and firearms ownership are often the basis of constituents’ fears.
For example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled a vote for this week on a presidential nominee opposed by many American hunters, gun owners, and farmers. The nominee, Cass Sunstein, has been tapped to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) or “Regulatory Czar” (I hate that term) as the position is now known.
The job functions as the “choke point” between the White House and regulations from government agencies including the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Sunstein has written and spoken extensively regarding his anti-hunting and anti-Second amendment positions. He’s also advocated in favor of the legal standing in a court of law for animal rights.
The sale of firearms has skyrocketed since last November’s election. Nationwide, according to data from the FBI and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, November gun background checks increased 42 percent from the year before. In December, background checks were up 24 percent, 29 percent in January, and 23 percent in February. Background checks are considered an indication of retail sale activity. Why the buying binge? Because of the continuing suggestions being made by high government officials that hunting is no longer necessary and civilian firearms ownership needs to be controlled and curtailed more.
For those who never saw it or have forgotten, several segments of “Guns” were obviously shot and choreographed on private hunting preserves and edited to show wounded, dying animals struggling while nearby “hunters” laughed and joked. It was pretty obvious that the producers of the show knew next to nothing about wildlife or hunting. The sequence on deer hunting showed a wounded fallow deer struggling in a waterhole. Fallow deer are native to Asia and only found in fenced hunting preserves and commercial venison farms.
Writer-Producer Irv Drasnin let his bias lead him into either inaccuracies or misrepresentations of the true role and state of hunting. In the days following the telecast CBS probably got even more attention than it desired in the nation's press, as paper after paper castigated the show for assorted prejudices and inadequacies: "A new low in the standards of electronic journalism," "extreme and inflammatory," "massively ignorant or deliberately false."
Its scheduling coincided all too neatly with not only the start of the hunting season in many states but with Congress' consideration of strict new anti-gun legislation being considered back then and the nationwide campaign by the National Rifle Association on the old "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" theme. CBS was boldly hammering on the NRA's knees to see how its reflexes worked. Before show time, the NRA apparently kicked almost all the sponsors where they live, because all but one pulled out. CBS was reduced to airing public-service announcements and promos for its own fall activities.
In the Detroit Free Press , outdoors writer, Tom Opre commented, "What patent garbage! Where were the guys with bird dogs patiently seeking wild pheasants, quail or partridge? Where were the fellows who tromp mile after mile looking for rabbits? Where were the hunters scrambling up steep cliffs and mountainsides after sheep, wild deer and elk that outwit them, more often than not, at the last minute? Where was the camaraderie? Where was the fair chase that most hunters do experience?" Or in the words of Bill Cochran, an editor for the Roanoke Times , "Most of the so-called hunting on the show was done by one Irv Drasnin, whose prey was the hunter himself, something he stalked as murderously as did the fat slob who pursued the penned white deer."
Greg Cooke, who filmed nearly all the “hunting segments” of the show, acknowledged (as CBS never did) that no effort was made to follow the "typical" seek-and-search, uphill and downhill hunter, because it would have been technically too tough to film and because a hunter shooting at a target 100 yards distant doesn't make an impressive picture. Instead, CBS filmed things it could get to easily. Primarily city boys who knew little of hunting and wildlife when they started, they hardly knew it when they finished. Cooke said that after they visited one "recommended" place after another, "we began saying to each other, 'My God, what's going on?' "
Sadly, there were probably many people who actually thought the show’s depictions accurately represented hunting and hunters. Equally sad is the fact that some may still believe it.

Oxford Club To Hold Sportsmen’s Weekend
The Oxford Rod and Gun Club will be hosting a special Sportsmen’s Weekend at their clubgrounds Sept. 19 and 20. In addition to the 7:30-10 a.m. all-you-can-eat breakfast, there will be a variety of shooting sports activities, antler scoring, displays, seminars, taxidermy, flytying, knife sharpening, door prizes and raffles, food and drinks. The event will run 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday and is open to the public.