State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is pictured in hunting gear for a campaign flier.

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Madison — State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley made an implicit appeal to hunters before this month's primary by appearing in a mailer in blaze orange and holding a shotgun.

The photo was taken at a Waukesha game farm where she hunted for the first and only time last November. She has never had a hunting license, which aren't required at game farms.

She didn't hit a pheasant during the hunt, said her campaign manager, Luke Martz.

"She really enjoyed it and she looks forward to going again," said Martz.

The flier — sent just before the Feb. 16 primary — doesn't mention hunting or gun rights, but prominently shows Bradley crouching in a grassy field at the Wern Valley Sportsmen's Club with two black Labrador retrievers by her side and a 12-gauge shotgun tucked under her elbow. She is wearing an orange hunting vest and baseball cap emblazoned with the initials of the National Rifle Association.

State Department of Natural Resources spokesman George Althoff said there is no record of Bradley having a hunting, fishing or boating license in the past five years.

Bradley's opponent in the April 5 election, Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, also hasn't had those licenses in the last five years, according to the DNR.

Bradley is a gun owner who holds a concealed-weapons permit, according to her campaign. She is a former member of the NRA.

Kloppenburg does not own a gun or have a concealed-weapons permit, said her campaign manager, Melissa Mulliken. She does not belong to the NRA and is not a hunter, she said.

The NRA is now reviewing whether it will endorse anyone in the race, said Amy Hunter, a spokeswoman for the group.

Scot Ross, the executive director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, criticized Bradley for the flier.

"Rebecca Bradley doesn't even have a hunting license, but that didn't stop her from giving a literal 'hat tip' to the gun lobby," he said in a statement.

Neither candidate has spelled out her views on the right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment. They declined to say whether they agreed with the majority ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, which found the right to gun ownership belongs to individuals rather than a militia.

The decision was written by the recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia. Bradley has said her views line up closely with Scalia's.

While Kloppenburg would not speak to the substance of the gun rights case, she issued a statement that questioned Scalia's approach to interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Scalia advanced the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted as the founders meant it to be at the time they wrote it.

"What I can say is that Heller does demonstrate that a judicial philosophy that claims to hew to the original intents of the men who wrote the Constitution 230 years ago does not by itself resolve complex legal questions," Kloppenburg said in her statement. "Both Justice Scalia in his majority opinion and Justice (John Paul) Stevens in his dissent reviewed the text and history of the disputed Second Amendment language. Justice Scalia chose to place less weight on some of the words in the Second Amendment as compared to others and so reached a decision that some legal scholars contend was consistent with Scalia's own ideology rather than with an originalist reading of the Constitution."

Bradley and Kloppenburg have been closemouthed about other legal matters, with neither willing to say whether she agrees with recent rulings allowing gay marriage, upholding Wisconsin's voter ID law and approving the Act 10 limits on collective bargaining for public workers.

Bradley has secured backing from conservatives and Kloppenburg from liberals.

A Marquette University Law School poll released Thursday found 37% of likely voters supported Bradley and 36% supported Kloppenburg. Nearly a quarter of likely voters — 23% — were undecided in the survey, which found that most people didn't know enough about the candidates to form an opinion about them.

In the primary, Bradley got 45% of the vote and Kloppenburg got 43%. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joe Donald got 12% and was eliminated from the race; he later endorsed Kloppenburg.

A much bigger turnout is expected for the April 5 general election, when Wisconsin's presidential primary will also be held.