He is the same legislator who last year proposed hunting the protected sandhill crane, which only recently fought its way back from near extinction. As a sporting man, Johnsrud must consider it more of a challenge to get a bead on birds that are really rare or really skinny. Their brains may be really tiny, but somehow doves can still outsmart many hunters. What the debate over hunting mourning doves really does is expose the fraudulent arguments hunters regularly use to justify their blood sport. That is why more sensible hunters wish Johnsrud and his ilk would stop embarrassing them in public.
Hunters feel they have been on the defensive in recent years.
As a result, they've had to work out elaborate justifications to explain how blowing away wildlife benefits not only their fellow man, but also the birds and the beasts themselves. They are protecting farmers' crops and highway safety by curbing dangerous overpopulation of nature run amok. They are doing a great, big favor to wildlife itself by thinning it out so the survivors will have more to eat. The problem is, all those arguments go right down the tubes when you try to expand hunting to species that are elusive. It's pretty hard to argue that an elusive bird is too plentiful.