The Sportsman Who Threatened the State Budget to Save His Hounds
B. B. Palmer of King County is accused of telling capitol employees that if they keep lobbying to ban deer hounding, appropriations will suffer.
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OLYMPIA, Jan. 23.—B. B. Palmer of King County is laying plans to protect his favorite pastime of hunting deer with hounds, and employees of the state capitol are taking decided exception to his methods.
It is said that Palmer has told several capitol employees that if they did not cease lobbying in favor of the bill to eliminate hounding he would see to it that appropriations for state officers were materially curtailed. Palmer and some of his friends, it is said, maintain a game preserve in the vicinity of Hood Canal, where they keep a pack of hounds, which run the deer into the salt water, where the animal has no show whatever. Deer hunting around Olympia is good, and the employees of the state house are all enthusiastic hunters.
Heretofore they have always urged upon legislators to pass a bill prohibiting the hounding of deer. Palmer in previous sessions, either as a legislator or a private individual, has worked and succeeded in defeating this game reform.
Every state official is in terror of the legislators, as the legislature by cutting down appropriations for offices and departments can work great official hardship. With the prospect of a fight against appropriations on the part of Palmer, the holders of state offices feel constrained to warn their employees to have nothing to do with the bill relating to the hounding of deer. Palmer, however, is neither on the game committee nor the committee on appropriations, and it is not thought that his opposition to any appropriation will have much weight.
“If they did not cease lobbying in favor of the bill to eliminate hounding he would see to it that appropriations for state officers were materially curtailed.”
This is a small, early example of a familiar statehouse dynamic: a private interest using the budget process to punish or frighten officials over a single regulatory bill. The hunting method itself—hounds driving deer into salt water—also anticipates later wildlife-management fights over fair chase and conservation.
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