I think that this could be a fun way of showcasing the actual diversity of the country (not the phony corporate diversity where everyone has to be heterogenous on the outside but homogenous on the inside). America is full of colorful people if you actually get out there and go looking for them. I mean, how many white liberals in a Blue-Team city and/or state would ever imagine a Hispanic/Latino man in a Red-Team city and/or state going deer and boar hunting with his mom? Their image is probably either an androgynous "Latinx" activist (note: here in Florida I work with a bunch of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, Venezuelans, etc.) and every time I've introduced that term to them they've literally lol'd) who's just a tanner version of themselves or an immigrant utterly dehumanized by capitalist exploitation and nativist/xenophobic discrimination.
It must come as a shock to some people that people actually vote based on their perceived self interest, like a job. The Democratic cognoscenti are so focused on categorizing people by race, gender, etc. that they are blinded by the actual individual.
Playing a race card with Hispanics is incredibly ill-informed. Hispanics are of European, indigenous, African descent plus all the above. Hell, many Hispanics have been in Texas perhaps longer than the Mayflower descendants. Lumping them in a grievance racial cause is clueless. Poverty issues, sure for some. Immigration, for some, but definitely not all as many look at uncontrolled immigration as a disaster. It just shows how clueless and lazy the press is.
Hunting hogs is what you might call a true sport. In deer hunting, you may come home empty-handed, and sometimes you get shot accidentally by your buddy, but the deer never wins. If you get caught unawares by a hog, you can bleed to death.
No shit. It's the new big-game hunting for poor folx; you don't have to fly to Africa and spend six or seven figures to kill an endangered species. If you win, you literally get to bring home the bacon.
I think big city people may generally not have a good sense of the extent to which feral hogs have basically become garbage-dump rats throughout rural America. Hog hunters are doing everyone a favor.
To be a professional hog hunter, that is someone's dream job. Actually someone I know. His mother-in-in law is a professional bow hunter, sponsored in competitions by Cabela's. Probably city people don't realize that there are sponsored competitions, with serious prize money, in hunting and fishing. But anyway, this big guy -- he stands 6'6" with a good body build to match -- is a federal employee, trapping hogs on forest lands. Unfortunately, he's not permitted to take home the bacon from the federal lands, but I think he gets some bonus money.
In Texas, there is no specific season for hunting hogs. The counties pay bounties any time of year. As you say, they are garbage rats, multiplied by a hundred pounds or more.
Especially themselves. Pig hunting is big bidness in Texas. Far from nobly controlling the problem, many shooting 'ranches' exacerbate it by releasing pigs and charging up to $1500 or higher to paying clients. They sure as heck don't want any high fallutin fertility control messing up the works. Other Texans identify the business as part of the problem. Humans create the problem, in this instance by importing wild boars for trophy hunting. The boars then bred with pigs selected for high productivity. The resulting animals are 'garbage' or 'vermin.' How graceless we are.
'Ranches' or glorified abattoirs release ill-fated and semi -tame animals, exotics and 'surplus' zoo animals, for canned hunts. In Texas game interests work to increase deer populations for the gun. Canned bird shoots drop captive-raised birds who've never flown a day in their 14-week lives from towers to barrages of gunfire to waiting 'sportsmen' below or release and drive crated, disriented birds with no survival skills over the guns. Have another beer. A la Dick Cheney, shooting parties kill hundreds of enfeebled birds in an hour or two. This makes a lot of 'big city' people sick.
The billions of animals humans factory farm and condemn to the hell of slaughterhouse bleeding and kill floors are gentle herbivores. The pigs are highly emotional, and scream. One of the most moving experiences of my life was visiting a cow sanctuary. The ones who got away --jumped or fell off a truck, or had the luck to be rescued by a good Samaritan. They are lovely. Visit a farm sanctuary sometime. Da Vinci predicted, or hoped, that the day would come when 'educated men would view the ' murder of animals as they do the murder of men.' Wow, was he wrong.
Good shining a light with this series on just one reason of many that idpol is dumb. I've never known anyone who spoke like the politicians that claim to represent their minority group. In my personal experience, most minorities are too busy working and getting shit done to worry about bullshit like labels and pronouns. I suspect most of the time they correctly perceive people who push that type of agenda as trying to distract them from economy and Class issues.
Jobs. The people in Texas feed their family with the oil industry. They see the Green New Deal promising to end oil but bring them other jobs. They probably believe only half of that - the first part - based upon experience. "Hey, let me take something important away from you but I promise I'll give you back something later."
The thing about Green Energy is that you can do it in lots of places, and the jobs will be created in those places. The thing about the oil industry is you can only do it where the oil is, so those jobs stay put. Most of these Trump voters aren't stupid, they just see through the current Dem leadership.
Perhaps if the Dem's had a history of following through on their promises, they'd be able to sell these plans. Unfortunately we all have to deal with the legacy of Clinton and Obama's economic and trade (and war, and human rights, and...) failures.
We need a better DNC if we're ever going to get anything done.
I take it you're referring to Bernie's attempt to get Ellison as Chairman and/or AOC's anti-corporate money proposal getting tabled into oblivion by that prick Barney Frank... or probably some other terribly corrupt stuff I haven't heard about on top of the perpetual election interferences.
I hear ya, it's a long shot to reform the DNC but I'm not sure if the odds are any better than trying a 3rd party again. Bernie could give it the best chance but I don't know if he has the desire to lead the way.
I hate to be a defeatist asshole, but Bernie's two failures have convinced me the institutional Dems will not permit leftward movement. Biden merging with the NeverTrump GOP into the shiny Elohim Mystic/Skeksis pro-debt creature from The Dark Crystal convinces me of this.
Having become a defeatist asshole, I now think the only slim hope for the future is left-populists and MAGA folks getting together and ignoring our glaring differences through the power of magic. If the power of magic can turn us into a hybrid creature, it's probably gonna be pretty fuckin' ugly.
Funny, I was just proposing something similar in a conversation I was having with a friend re: Republican Party falls apart and progressive Left merges with them to form a working class focused party.
I jokingly called them "Bull-Moose."
If the Magic Plague doesn't get something like this going, idk what will. I respect Defeatism as a logical reaction at this point, I just don't know how to switch off my desire to try something.
At this point it’s clear only real change to the Republic will come through “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants” or a new political party that is not beholden to or connected to the existing multiparty in any way. I see either way as having an equal chance of success.
The oil! I got stuck on thinking Pennsylvania and fracking. I forgot about some people in Texas depending on the industry. I wonder why it mattered to Texans and didn't seem to be reflected at all in the Pennsylvania results?
Hunting wild hogs is a lot more dangerous than hunting deer. FWIW, I thought tapas were an Iberian peninsula thing, not a Tejano thing. Mr. Gonzalez is good people.
Good feature, good format. Could have even used one or two more questions, as the transition from "hey, how are ya" to "answer the political question, which is why I'm talking to you in the first place" is jarring. Anyway, I always enjoy learning about people that have lived vastly different lives than mine. I'll look forward to this column!
Pigs are smarter, and more affectionate, I'm pretty certain, that many of the humans who pursue them, trap them, and bash their skulls in. The deer by my pond are gentle, the definition of grace, and smart. They've a family, as many of us do. What a comment that in 2020, hurting animals makes someone more relatable, one of the guys. Pfft.
The pigs are hybrids. Introduced by humans with artificially selected traits (by humans)
that increase fertility. Deer, muskrats, respond to removal or killing with compensatory breeding. Wildlife fertility control by dart or bait is far more powerful and humane. But then, good ole boys don't get to kill anyone.
Have you read a study on this? Fertility control is incredibly expensive and often ineffective. You pay a professional to spend hours to stick a deer with an expensive dart, and afterward the deer may remain fertile.
Coyotes are renowned for their compensatory fecundity. Brood sizes vary widely based on factors like food availability. Deer? No.
Does will have 1-2, rarely 3 fawns per year. If food is a problem, more fawns die.
That's why populations are healthier where hunting is allowed.
You are using obsolete and self-serving arguments from the 60s. I recommend reading Yale studies and affidavits by Os Schmitz, see attached link, and the Science of Overabundance published by the Smithsonian. Fertility control works --when it is needed, and that is not nearly as often as some may surmise. Hunting in the United States is overwhelmingly recreational and commercial, with trail cams, razor-tipped broad heads and bolts, and sites that could draw a bead on a flea at 3000 feet. That is because sporting arms manufacturers and wealthy trophy hunters who designed the U. S. statutory scheme in the 1930s put themselves in charge -- of everything--of state and federal policy, wildlife departments in state land grant universities, and federal research. Cronyism with industry is in the open and rampant, the long-standing 'industry-agency partnership' decried by William Temple Hornaday as the 'Interlocking Directorate' in the 1920s.
WMI, a firearms trade association thus decried, still audits each state wildlife agency annually. Steinbeck called commercialized hunting a seasonal slaughter and wanted no part of it, but then he was so honest. After the CBS Guns of Autumn documentary horrified its audience in the 60s, the industry reframed shooting and fur trapping as faux altruism; so many of its customers hide behind that , don't they? Just admit you like it, even with soaring crippling loss for birds and other animals, all the gratuitous suffering.
Hunts, or more aptly bait and shoots, lead to perpetual hunts especially in the suburbs. Hunting creates more food for survivors and consequently larger litters. Habitat management carried out by state agencies especially the creation of edge an early succession is Optimum deer breeding range. The sporting arms industry and its customers fight nonlethal as an existential threat. Just last week during a national webinar hosted by the Botstiber Institute, the leading deer contractor in the U. S. Said that sterilization is effective and becomes much cheaper when using volunteers. One of the reasons it's expensive is that the gun lobby blocks darting.
OK I'll admit it: I enjoy hunting. I enjoy the time afield, the huge rush of adrenaline that comes when you take your deer, I enjoy the field dressing and meat processing and cooking and eating. I have hunted since I was 6 years old, and at 37 I still shake with adrenaline when I see my first deer each season, even if its a yearling. I use a high-powered rifle with an expensive scope, and I practice with it often. I strive to kill deer quickly with a well-placed shot, and that tool ensures that happens. I could stick with using iron sights, but then the risk of crippling game goes up. I hate that feeling.
No doubt, game animals are managed to improve hunting. There's gobs of money in it, and that money is the biggest source of funding for maintaining our natural resources.
You use a lot of scary words, and you quote Steinbeck, and you linked to your opinion editorial in a New Jersey newspaper. If your goal is to change my opinion, you're doing it wrong. You're a sad case. Hunting is so heavily ingrained in our culture, it's not stopping anytime soon. Even if we could afford to sterilize instead of harvesting, it's not going to happen.
I think anti-hunting people fail or refuse to understand that hunters have a profound, visceral, even (and I semi-cringe at the use of this word, but I don't have a better one immediately handy) spiritual relationship to the chase, to feeling alive and vital, to being part of the natural cycle. You eat something else; at some point, something else eats you. Most hunters are conservationists. Most state Game & Fish departments are reliant on tag sales for survivable income.
I think Susan means well; I just disagree with her on many points. As an unrepentant carnivore, I actually agree with many vegetarian/vegan/PETA critiques of factory farming, and believe that more people independently hunting their own game would help in even a small way to ameliorate the issue.
Sad case? Looks like you were outmatched by a razor sharp professional, who backs up everything she says. You enjoy killing. That's sad. Hunter numbers are declining everywhere, so you're desperately trying to justify your adrenaline fix. Susan is on to you and others like you. And science backs her.
Coyote populations will grow to help manage deer herds, right?
In 5 years, when the nation is overrun with Lyme disease, and foliage is depleted within 5 feet of the ground, and CWD is everywhere, and suburbanites can't have flowers or shrubs for deer eating them, and they can't walk Fido for fear of marauding packs of coyotes, and deer are the leading cause of highway accidents, and our outdoor recreational facilities are going to pot due to lack of funding (Pittman Robertson is a big deal), at least we'll have plenty of cute, if skinny and likely diseased, deer to comfort us. The pigs will be a bigger problem, and less cute, but we can handle that right?
Blaming deer for Lyme disease is fearmongering and it’s false, discredited for years. The culprits are acrons or mast crops and whitefooted mice.
The Cary Institute’s Tick Project -- the expert source for the Times, the Wash. Post: Dr. Rick Ostfeld, senior scientist, Cary Institute: “It's commonly believed that Lyme disease risk is tied to the presence of deer ticks and white-tailed deer. But this simply isn't correct.” https://www.caryinstitute.org/news-insights/podcast/have-deer-gotten-false-rap-lyme-disease
Your link didn't discredit the point. It simply said if you remove deer, ticks will feed on other small mammals.
We trap those, and send them where? Somewhere more rural? Guess how long that solves the problem?
Listen, I respect someone like you a hell of a lot more than I respect the person that fusses at me for hunting while they bite down on their McDonald's cheeseburger. I don't expect you to appreciate the cultural appeal of hunting. But do you really believe it can be terminated without massive ecological and even economical consequences?
Please inform the Tick Project, the CDC, and Harvard. Researchers say the opposite of what you are saying: opossum, fox, raccoons, coyotes, small predators, are key ecological actors that, through different mechanisms, limit the spread of the infection. Opossums hoover up some 5000 tick larvae in late summer. The mere presence of a fox or raccoon frightens the white-footed mouse who doesn't circulate as much. So why would we transport them anywhere? That is why the Tick a project is telling people to leave them alone.
This is a super interesting, well constructed and depressing piece of science research that you compiled here, Susan. What an uphill battle you’re fighting. Hunting is as endemic as any critter in the forest. Like guns in general, it will never go away. But it would be great if people could at least assimilate some of the baseline cause and effect realities of Lyme disease and apply that knowledge to their recreational choices. The photo of that pathetic opossum in a cage breaks my heart.
My goal isn't to change your opinion. I said the materials wouldn't change your mind. It was to not wrong information stand in a public forum. I'm pretty satisfied I did that. Animals can't talk; God knows I can.
I'll concede on Lyme disease, that correlation is not as clear cut as I thought it was. Great job. Now what about deer-car collisions, loss of undergrowth, increased incidence of whitetail diseases (that may in turn affect other organisms), negative impact on agriculture?
Any case studies on places where hunting was outright banned in the U.S. and it worked out beautifully?
I will admit in advance that I am unfairly enlarging the scope of the argument, but was anything ever outright banned in the U.S. and it worked out beautifully? Prohibition and the War on Drugs; excellent examples. Making things illegal that people want and will pay to get did not in any way work to increase the profitability and power of organized crime; of course not.
I sure hope that when hunting becomes 100% illegal the federal government will find a way to fund a minimum-wage Game & Fish Agent to follow me around at all hours of the day to ensure I don't kill a deer, or a hog, or a coyote, or a stoat, or a vole, and eat him. Probably will have to abolish Social Security and crack the lock-box. I hope it delivers me a turkey on Thanksgiving in exchange for my vote, too.
Compassion makes people more relatable. I'm a country gal, living near the woods to enjoy nature. I've seen the suffering hunting causes. The orphans left without their moms. The bloody entrails left behind. Most of my neighbors hate this time of year. If there's an issue, let's solve it without stalking, maiming, and killing. Simple.
You can stop eating the animals, but you can't stop the animals from eating each other.
Carnivores gonna carnivore.
I'm sympathetic to your compassion and distaste for needless pain, but Nature works by her own standards, which are frequently cruel. Apes with hifalutin' aspirations thinking they get to "run things" by virtue of their allegedly superior intelligence is pretty much the Greek definition of hubris.
This dude makes me feel really fucking lazy.
I think that this could be a fun way of showcasing the actual diversity of the country (not the phony corporate diversity where everyone has to be heterogenous on the outside but homogenous on the inside). America is full of colorful people if you actually get out there and go looking for them. I mean, how many white liberals in a Blue-Team city and/or state would ever imagine a Hispanic/Latino man in a Red-Team city and/or state going deer and boar hunting with his mom? Their image is probably either an androgynous "Latinx" activist (note: here in Florida I work with a bunch of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, Venezuelans, etc.) and every time I've introduced that term to them they've literally lol'd) who's just a tanner version of themselves or an immigrant utterly dehumanized by capitalist exploitation and nativist/xenophobic discrimination.
It must come as a shock to some people that people actually vote based on their perceived self interest, like a job. The Democratic cognoscenti are so focused on categorizing people by race, gender, etc. that they are blinded by the actual individual.
Playing a race card with Hispanics is incredibly ill-informed. Hispanics are of European, indigenous, African descent plus all the above. Hell, many Hispanics have been in Texas perhaps longer than the Mayflower descendants. Lumping them in a grievance racial cause is clueless. Poverty issues, sure for some. Immigration, for some, but definitely not all as many look at uncontrolled immigration as a disaster. It just shows how clueless and lazy the press is.
Lots of Mexicans also identify as German or Irish because . . . they are German or Irish. Obregon!
Bunch of Mennonites and Mormons in Chihuahua and Sonora with MX citizenship, too. I think Mitt Romney has a connection here.
Hunting hogs is what you might call a true sport. In deer hunting, you may come home empty-handed, and sometimes you get shot accidentally by your buddy, but the deer never wins. If you get caught unawares by a hog, you can bleed to death.
No shit. It's the new big-game hunting for poor folx; you don't have to fly to Africa and spend six or seven figures to kill an endangered species. If you win, you literally get to bring home the bacon.
I think big city people may generally not have a good sense of the extent to which feral hogs have basically become garbage-dump rats throughout rural America. Hog hunters are doing everyone a favor.
To be a professional hog hunter, that is someone's dream job. Actually someone I know. His mother-in-in law is a professional bow hunter, sponsored in competitions by Cabela's. Probably city people don't realize that there are sponsored competitions, with serious prize money, in hunting and fishing. But anyway, this big guy -- he stands 6'6" with a good body build to match -- is a federal employee, trapping hogs on forest lands. Unfortunately, he's not permitted to take home the bacon from the federal lands, but I think he gets some bonus money.
In Texas, there is no specific season for hunting hogs. The counties pay bounties any time of year. As you say, they are garbage rats, multiplied by a hundred pounds or more.
Who else wants to chip in to Patreon/Substack/whatever to send Matt and Katie on a Useful Idiots hog hunt? I'm game.
Especially themselves. Pig hunting is big bidness in Texas. Far from nobly controlling the problem, many shooting 'ranches' exacerbate it by releasing pigs and charging up to $1500 or higher to paying clients. They sure as heck don't want any high fallutin fertility control messing up the works. Other Texans identify the business as part of the problem. Humans create the problem, in this instance by importing wild boars for trophy hunting. The boars then bred with pigs selected for high productivity. The resulting animals are 'garbage' or 'vermin.' How graceless we are.
'Ranches' or glorified abattoirs release ill-fated and semi -tame animals, exotics and 'surplus' zoo animals, for canned hunts. In Texas game interests work to increase deer populations for the gun. Canned bird shoots drop captive-raised birds who've never flown a day in their 14-week lives from towers to barrages of gunfire to waiting 'sportsmen' below or release and drive crated, disriented birds with no survival skills over the guns. Have another beer. A la Dick Cheney, shooting parties kill hundreds of enfeebled birds in an hour or two. This makes a lot of 'big city' people sick.
The billions of animals humans factory farm and condemn to the hell of slaughterhouse bleeding and kill floors are gentle herbivores. The pigs are highly emotional, and scream. One of the most moving experiences of my life was visiting a cow sanctuary. The ones who got away --jumped or fell off a truck, or had the luck to be rescued by a good Samaritan. They are lovely. Visit a farm sanctuary sometime. Da Vinci predicted, or hoped, that the day would come when 'educated men would view the ' murder of animals as they do the murder of men.' Wow, was he wrong.
Nice to see PETA activists still fighting for the animals. You go girl!
Good shining a light with this series on just one reason of many that idpol is dumb. I've never known anyone who spoke like the politicians that claim to represent their minority group. In my personal experience, most minorities are too busy working and getting shit done to worry about bullshit like labels and pronouns. I suspect most of the time they correctly perceive people who push that type of agenda as trying to distract them from economy and Class issues.
Jobs. The people in Texas feed their family with the oil industry. They see the Green New Deal promising to end oil but bring them other jobs. They probably believe only half of that - the first part - based upon experience. "Hey, let me take something important away from you but I promise I'll give you back something later."
The thing about Green Energy is that you can do it in lots of places, and the jobs will be created in those places. The thing about the oil industry is you can only do it where the oil is, so those jobs stay put. Most of these Trump voters aren't stupid, they just see through the current Dem leadership.
Perhaps if the Dem's had a history of following through on their promises, they'd be able to sell these plans. Unfortunately we all have to deal with the legacy of Clinton and Obama's economic and trade (and war, and human rights, and...) failures.
We need a better DNC if we're ever going to get anything done.
liked this post on principle but not holding my breath for a "better" DNC. saw enough shenanigans since 2016
I take it you're referring to Bernie's attempt to get Ellison as Chairman and/or AOC's anti-corporate money proposal getting tabled into oblivion by that prick Barney Frank... or probably some other terribly corrupt stuff I haven't heard about on top of the perpetual election interferences.
I hear ya, it's a long shot to reform the DNC but I'm not sure if the odds are any better than trying a 3rd party again. Bernie could give it the best chance but I don't know if he has the desire to lead the way.
What other pathway remains? Gotta try something.
I hate to be a defeatist asshole, but Bernie's two failures have convinced me the institutional Dems will not permit leftward movement. Biden merging with the NeverTrump GOP into the shiny Elohim Mystic/Skeksis pro-debt creature from The Dark Crystal convinces me of this.
Having become a defeatist asshole, I now think the only slim hope for the future is left-populists and MAGA folks getting together and ignoring our glaring differences through the power of magic. If the power of magic can turn us into a hybrid creature, it's probably gonna be pretty fuckin' ugly.
Funny, I was just proposing something similar in a conversation I was having with a friend re: Republican Party falls apart and progressive Left merges with them to form a working class focused party.
I jokingly called them "Bull-Moose."
If the Magic Plague doesn't get something like this going, idk what will. I respect Defeatism as a logical reaction at this point, I just don't know how to switch off my desire to try something.
Jesus, what I wouldn't give to get T. R. back. Not a fan of the imperialism but nobody's perfect. Bully!
Teddy Roosevelt would be kicking monstrous amounts of asses in today’s “society”!
lol, a real-ass dude.
At this point it’s clear only real change to the Republic will come through “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants” or a new political party that is not beholden to or connected to the existing multiparty in any way. I see either way as having an equal chance of success.
It's hard to make someone understand something when their salary demands entirely on not understanding something _ Upton Sinclair
The oil! I got stuck on thinking Pennsylvania and fracking. I forgot about some people in Texas depending on the industry. I wonder why it mattered to Texans and didn't seem to be reflected at all in the Pennsylvania results?
Easier to "hide" those results in PA.
It mattered in rural areas. Urban areas don't feel the effects of fracking.
Hunting wild hogs is a lot more dangerous than hunting deer. FWIW, I thought tapas were an Iberian peninsula thing, not a Tejano thing. Mr. Gonzalez is good people.
Good feature, good format. Could have even used one or two more questions, as the transition from "hey, how are ya" to "answer the political question, which is why I'm talking to you in the first place" is jarring. Anyway, I always enjoy learning about people that have lived vastly different lives than mine. I'll look forward to this column!
Pigs are smarter, and more affectionate, I'm pretty certain, that many of the humans who pursue them, trap them, and bash their skulls in. The deer by my pond are gentle, the definition of grace, and smart. They've a family, as many of us do. What a comment that in 2020, hurting animals makes someone more relatable, one of the guys. Pfft.
The wild pigs in Texas really are a huge problem. Not native or wild at all--feral. Shoot 'em, eat 'em.
The pigs are hybrids. Introduced by humans with artificially selected traits (by humans)
that increase fertility. Deer, muskrats, respond to removal or killing with compensatory breeding. Wildlife fertility control by dart or bait is far more powerful and humane. But then, good ole boys don't get to kill anyone.
Have you read a study on this? Fertility control is incredibly expensive and often ineffective. You pay a professional to spend hours to stick a deer with an expensive dart, and afterward the deer may remain fertile.
Coyotes are renowned for their compensatory fecundity. Brood sizes vary widely based on factors like food availability. Deer? No.
Does will have 1-2, rarely 3 fawns per year. If food is a problem, more fawns die.
That's why populations are healthier where hunting is allowed.
Why yes, I have. In fact I write reports and reviews and other things, and commentary. This would seem to respond to your points
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.northjersey.com/amp/2812628002
You are using obsolete and self-serving arguments from the 60s. I recommend reading Yale studies and affidavits by Os Schmitz, see attached link, and the Science of Overabundance published by the Smithsonian. Fertility control works --when it is needed, and that is not nearly as often as some may surmise. Hunting in the United States is overwhelmingly recreational and commercial, with trail cams, razor-tipped broad heads and bolts, and sites that could draw a bead on a flea at 3000 feet. That is because sporting arms manufacturers and wealthy trophy hunters who designed the U. S. statutory scheme in the 1930s put themselves in charge -- of everything--of state and federal policy, wildlife departments in state land grant universities, and federal research. Cronyism with industry is in the open and rampant, the long-standing 'industry-agency partnership' decried by William Temple Hornaday as the 'Interlocking Directorate' in the 1920s.
WMI, a firearms trade association thus decried, still audits each state wildlife agency annually. Steinbeck called commercialized hunting a seasonal slaughter and wanted no part of it, but then he was so honest. After the CBS Guns of Autumn documentary horrified its audience in the 60s, the industry reframed shooting and fur trapping as faux altruism; so many of its customers hide behind that , don't they? Just admit you like it, even with soaring crippling loss for birds and other animals, all the gratuitous suffering.
Hunts, or more aptly bait and shoots, lead to perpetual hunts especially in the suburbs. Hunting creates more food for survivors and consequently larger litters. Habitat management carried out by state agencies especially the creation of edge an early succession is Optimum deer breeding range. The sporting arms industry and its customers fight nonlethal as an existential threat. Just last week during a national webinar hosted by the Botstiber Institute, the leading deer contractor in the U. S. Said that sterilization is effective and becomes much cheaper when using volunteers. One of the reasons it's expensive is that the gun lobby blocks darting.
OK I'll admit it: I enjoy hunting. I enjoy the time afield, the huge rush of adrenaline that comes when you take your deer, I enjoy the field dressing and meat processing and cooking and eating. I have hunted since I was 6 years old, and at 37 I still shake with adrenaline when I see my first deer each season, even if its a yearling. I use a high-powered rifle with an expensive scope, and I practice with it often. I strive to kill deer quickly with a well-placed shot, and that tool ensures that happens. I could stick with using iron sights, but then the risk of crippling game goes up. I hate that feeling.
No doubt, game animals are managed to improve hunting. There's gobs of money in it, and that money is the biggest source of funding for maintaining our natural resources.
You use a lot of scary words, and you quote Steinbeck, and you linked to your opinion editorial in a New Jersey newspaper. If your goal is to change my opinion, you're doing it wrong. You're a sad case. Hunting is so heavily ingrained in our culture, it's not stopping anytime soon. Even if we could afford to sterilize instead of harvesting, it's not going to happen.
I think anti-hunting people fail or refuse to understand that hunters have a profound, visceral, even (and I semi-cringe at the use of this word, but I don't have a better one immediately handy) spiritual relationship to the chase, to feeling alive and vital, to being part of the natural cycle. You eat something else; at some point, something else eats you. Most hunters are conservationists. Most state Game & Fish departments are reliant on tag sales for survivable income.
I think Susan means well; I just disagree with her on many points. As an unrepentant carnivore, I actually agree with many vegetarian/vegan/PETA critiques of factory farming, and believe that more people independently hunting their own game would help in even a small way to ameliorate the issue.
Sad case? Looks like you were outmatched by a razor sharp professional, who backs up everything she says. You enjoy killing. That's sad. Hunter numbers are declining everywhere, so you're desperately trying to justify your adrenaline fix. Susan is on to you and others like you. And science backs her.
We should eliminate all hunting right now.
Coyote populations will grow to help manage deer herds, right?
In 5 years, when the nation is overrun with Lyme disease, and foliage is depleted within 5 feet of the ground, and CWD is everywhere, and suburbanites can't have flowers or shrubs for deer eating them, and they can't walk Fido for fear of marauding packs of coyotes, and deer are the leading cause of highway accidents, and our outdoor recreational facilities are going to pot due to lack of funding (Pittman Robertson is a big deal), at least we'll have plenty of cute, if skinny and likely diseased, deer to comfort us. The pigs will be a bigger problem, and less cute, but we can handle that right?
Blaming deer for Lyme disease is fearmongering and it’s false, discredited for years. The culprits are acrons or mast crops and whitefooted mice.
The Cary Institute’s Tick Project -- the expert source for the Times, the Wash. Post: Dr. Rick Ostfeld, senior scientist, Cary Institute: “It's commonly believed that Lyme disease risk is tied to the presence of deer ticks and white-tailed deer. But this simply isn't correct.” https://www.caryinstitute.org/news-insights/podcast/have-deer-gotten-false-rap-lyme-disease
Trapping small predators, opossum, fox, raccoon, removes a vital ally in the battle against Lyme. Opossum: https://www.caryinstitute.org/news-insights/media-coverage/opossums-killers-
Foxes: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/science/ticks-lyme-disease-foxes-martens.html
Here’s my white paper with the sources, the CDC, Harvard and more! It will make no difference to you whatsoever. https://tinyurl.com/LymeDiseaseWP-7-2019
Your link didn't discredit the point. It simply said if you remove deer, ticks will feed on other small mammals.
We trap those, and send them where? Somewhere more rural? Guess how long that solves the problem?
Listen, I respect someone like you a hell of a lot more than I respect the person that fusses at me for hunting while they bite down on their McDonald's cheeseburger. I don't expect you to appreciate the cultural appeal of hunting. But do you really believe it can be terminated without massive ecological and even economical consequences?
Please inform the Tick Project, the CDC, and Harvard. Researchers say the opposite of what you are saying: opossum, fox, raccoons, coyotes, small predators, are key ecological actors that, through different mechanisms, limit the spread of the infection. Opossums hoover up some 5000 tick larvae in late summer. The mere presence of a fox or raccoon frightens the white-footed mouse who doesn't circulate as much. So why would we transport them anywhere? That is why the Tick a project is telling people to leave them alone.
Sorry, I misread your post regarding trapping. I agree with you 100% that small predators, even coyotes, are very important.
I'm still not buying that whitetail overpopulation doesn't contribute to Lyme disease prevalence.
Can't help you there.
This is a super interesting, well constructed and depressing piece of science research that you compiled here, Susan. What an uphill battle you’re fighting. Hunting is as endemic as any critter in the forest. Like guns in general, it will never go away. But it would be great if people could at least assimilate some of the baseline cause and effect realities of Lyme disease and apply that knowledge to their recreational choices. The photo of that pathetic opossum in a cage breaks my heart.
My goal isn't to change your opinion. I said the materials wouldn't change your mind. It was to not wrong information stand in a public forum. I'm pretty satisfied I did that. Animals can't talk; God knows I can.
I'll concede on Lyme disease, that correlation is not as clear cut as I thought it was. Great job. Now what about deer-car collisions, loss of undergrowth, increased incidence of whitetail diseases (that may in turn affect other organisms), negative impact on agriculture?
Any case studies on places where hunting was outright banned in the U.S. and it worked out beautifully?
I will admit in advance that I am unfairly enlarging the scope of the argument, but was anything ever outright banned in the U.S. and it worked out beautifully? Prohibition and the War on Drugs; excellent examples. Making things illegal that people want and will pay to get did not in any way work to increase the profitability and power of organized crime; of course not.
I sure hope that when hunting becomes 100% illegal the federal government will find a way to fund a minimum-wage Game & Fish Agent to follow me around at all hours of the day to ensure I don't kill a deer, or a hog, or a coyote, or a stoat, or a vole, and eat him. Probably will have to abolish Social Security and crack the lock-box. I hope it delivers me a turkey on Thanksgiving in exchange for my vote, too.
Compassion makes people more relatable. I'm a country gal, living near the woods to enjoy nature. I've seen the suffering hunting causes. The orphans left without their moms. The bloody entrails left behind. Most of my neighbors hate this time of year. If there's an issue, let's solve it without stalking, maiming, and killing. Simple.
You can stop eating the animals, but you can't stop the animals from eating each other.
Carnivores gonna carnivore.
I'm sympathetic to your compassion and distaste for needless pain, but Nature works by her own standards, which are frequently cruel. Apes with hifalutin' aspirations thinking they get to "run things" by virtue of their allegedly superior intelligence is pretty much the Greek definition of hubris.
You ever seen coyotes eat a fawn? Or seen a deer die from CWD, or blue tongue (EHD)?
If we don't manage these creatures then nature will, and it will not be pretty.
Nature don't care about being pretty. Everybody else takes selfies while she gets down to business. My girl.
The whole border from CA to TX is much more nuanced than realized. The NYT and WaPo don't get it 'cause they ain't here. To your point!