Think about our own Maine woods. Here, it’s still legal to bait, hound, and trap our bears. We’re the only state to still allow all three.

As The Lion King song describes, animals die so that others may live – a cycle of birth, death, and predation. This thinking about death makes it easier to abide – there’s a fairness to it. Today though, most bear hunting has lost that fairness – lost what makes it sportsmanlike. Historically, we’ve hunted bear for food, now more bears are hunted for a trophy – for a bearskin rug. The loss of fairness makes even a supposedly painless death, with head buried in jelly-donuts, a devastating death to accept. I’m voting yes in November.

Olia Cobb

Yarmouth