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Bills to close the current 11 sites have failed, and two others would expand its scope.

KATIE D. LISNIK, Special to the Press Herald April 22, 2009

Captive hunts are a dirty, demeaning business. Often occurring at places with innocent names like "game ranches" and "shooting preserves," they are actually commercial killing factories where customers pay large sums -- often several thousand dollars -- to kill animals inside enclosed areas.

The victims -- ranging from wild boar and exotic deer, to elk and bison -- are bred on the ranch or bought from dealers.

Whether bred or bought, they are typically semi-tame, hand-reared animals who have lost most of their fear of humans. They look like wild animals, but they are no longer wild enough to know that humans are a threat. They are proverbial fish for the barrel -- the gun barrel.

Some captive hunts utilize tiny pens, while others convey the illusion of more space by covering hundreds of acres. But the size does not matter.

Ranch hands, who call themselves "guides," know all of the haunts and hiding places. They can always lead the customer straight to the target. In some cases, animals are killed as they eat at their regularly scheduled feeding time.

That is why the operators of even the largest captive hunts can advertise with perfect confidence, "No kill, no bill!"

There is no conceivable justification for this kind of profane profiteering. This is not sport. It is not hunting. It's drive-by shooting, killing for killing's sake by people who are in a rush and don't want to get their boots scuffed.

Don't let them fool you. They are not hunters. Most real hunters abhor them. David Petersen, editor of the book "A Hunter's Heart," has called captive hunts "staggeringly stupid."

They are staggeringly stupid, indeed. So much so that Maine banned new captive hunts from opening in the state 10 years ago. At that time 11 were in operation and the new law allowed them to continue.

This year, a bill to completely outlaw captive hunting and a bill to completely legalize captive hunting were introduced.

Unfortunately, the Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry killed LD 560, the bill to ban captive hunts. The good news is that LD 936, a bill that would have essentially legalized new captive hunts, was also withdrawn.

Two other bills which would expand captive hunting in the state were also introduced this session. LD 316 has been amended to allow the permits of inactive facilities to be re-issued to new facilities and LD 438 removes the restriction that allows hunting only for those species offered at the time Maine banned new captive facilities from opening.

If these bills are approved, it would be a step in the wrong direction, considering Maine has already restricted new facilities and other states have restricted captive hunting even further in recent years.

Although animal advocates are heartened that Maine did not take a step backwards and legalize new facilities, this battle is clearly not over.

We will continue to work to put an end to the unsporting and unethical practice of shooting animals within a fenced enclosure in Maine and across the country.