THOUGH just an hour's drive from the state capital, little Bethune is a nowhere town that's actually everywhere in rural South Carolina: It's the kind of humble haven of tractors, peach trees, and croplands where most of the state's residents live, and the big buck deer and the wild turkeys roam.

As South Carolina's wild-turkey season kicks off this week, hunters stalking these wobbly birds in the loblolly pines say that hunting, fowling, and fishing are the very essence of American self-sufficiency.

These pursuits, they contend, represent the pioneer spirit persevering in an age of plastic-wrapped meats and farm-raised salmon. For them, shooting game is as much of a "God-given right" as plowing the land.

Now, in fact, many hunters want to enshrine "the right to hunt" in state constitutions.

The moves come against a backdrop of pressure from proponents of animal rights. From trying to halt the mourning dove hunt in Wisconsin, to limiting Sunday hunting, to trying to stop the "culling" of heavy deer populations at Devil's Den Nature Preserve in Connecticut, animal-rights activists have been filing lawsuits and proposing laws that hunters say are limiting their freedom to hunt.

In response, hunters in at least 13 states – including Wisconsin, Idaho, Florida, Michigan, and Georgia – are climbing down from their deer stands in an unprecedented show of unity to formalize the right to hunt and fish.

Already, such efforts to amend state constitutions have been successful in six states since 1996: Virginia, North Dakota, Minnesota, Alabama, California, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

"There are so many different organizations fighting against the right to hunt, that [the constitutional referendum] is a way for the legislature to show their approval for something that's traditional," says Gene Houston, the assistant enforcement chief at the Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries in Montgomery.

Standing on the porch of his hunting cabin, empty boxes of birdshot strewn about, Bethune game preserve owner Grady Roscoe says he supports the move to add more ink to the South Carolina constitution. He sees it as a safeguard against attacks on the hunting lifestyle by animal-rights groups.

"Hunters like to say, 'If you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone,' " says Mr. Roscoe. "Well, that's not working anymore."

Proponents in the South Carolina legislature say they expect the constitutional provision to go to voters for approval this fall.

Critics, however, say the efforts here and elsewhere are overkill.

These amendments, they say, burden vital state documents with superfluous provisions. What's more, they say hunters are using constitutions to forestall future debate on issues that deserve to remain in the public forum.

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